Even the most confident sports bettors know that any prediction can fail. To mitigate a portion of the risk involved in betting, experienced gamblers rely on “hedging” strategies. If you are doing it right, you are covering opposite outcomes and cutting the potential risks to a minimum, or even better, making a profit regardless of the outcome.
There are many ways to hedge your bets, and you can do it to meet different ends, but you will need a hedged betting calculator to work out how much you need to lay against your initial bet.
The main strategy in hedge betting revolves around placing the opposing bet prices on a scale and determining how much money should be invested in each wager for a guaranteed return.
We present you our hedging calculator, a simple free-to-use betting tool that can help you instantly determine the optimal size of your hedge wagers, estimated profits, and return on investment expressed in percentages.
Users of our hedge calculator tool only need to input the original stake and odds for both the original and hedge outcomes, while the software will do everything else.
Using Our Hedging Calculator
The hedging calculator tool is divided into the data table and the summary. Below, we will dissect each feature of this software and provide a detailed guide on how to use it.
Data Table
The data table uses decimal odds – which you can easily get by toggling the odds format from fractional to decimal at your bookie. Alternatively, you can enter them into our odds calculator to find out the Implied Probability, Value on your wager, and get the Decimal and American odds from your fractional odds. With the decimal odds entered, state your initial stake and input the Laying odds (decimal, again) for the desired outcomes.
In the “Original Wager” section, you should input the amount of cash you would normally wager on the desired outcome without worrying about the hedged bets. For example, if you believe team A will win your chosen event and want to bet £50 on that outcome, simply type “£50”.
The following two fields relate to original and hedge odds. The “original odds” are the odds for the main outcome you are betting on; this is usually the riskier and potentially more rewarding event of the two.
The “hedge odds” are the odds for the secondary event meant to cover your losses if your prediction for the original outcome was incorrect. These odds are ideally placed on events with multiple contesters where the original bet is wagered on the favourite and the hedged bet on the second favourite.
Summary Screen
The “summary” screen will be displayed as soon as you tap “Calculate”. It will list the amount of money you need to place on your hedge bet for a guaranteed profit, your total wager, and estimated returns.
The “hedge amount required” calculates the optimal secondary bet based on the odds you’ve previously provided. For example, if you are betting £50 on a primary outcome with the odds of 4.5 while the hedged outcome has odds of 5.5, you will need to place £40.91 on the second event to guarantee a profit of £134.09.
Your “total wager” is the sum of your initial stake and hedge bet stake. In the example above, you initially wagered £50 on the main outcome, and £40.91 on the second, leading up to £90.91 in total stakes.
The ROI (return on investment) is calculated by dividing your total profits by the total bet costs. In this case, your winnings of £134.09 are divided by the total wagered sum of £90.91, which results in a 1.48% return on investment.
Formula of our Hedging Calculator
This tool operates on a simple principle. It puts the stake and odds of the main outcome on one end, and the odds of the second outcome on the other.
The price of the hedged bet is the missing link, which is calculated by simulating numerous wagers with the provided odds until a guaranteed profit is reached.
Hedged Betting Strategies
With the theory under your belt, the next step is to figure out exactly what you want to achieve with the hedged bets – because there are different scenarios you can look into here.
Break Even
Placing a hedged bet to break even, is basically when your hedging wager should just cover the amount you staked on your initial bet. You want that first bet to win, but if it doesn’t, the hedged bet should cover the stake you lost, so you return to square one.
It doesn’t matter if the hedged betting odds are very long or short – you will have to proportion the stake accordingly. The amount you stake on the hedged bets will eat out of your initial bet’s potential returns, but this is the price you pay to cover the opposing outcome, and make sure you don’t lose heavily if your initial bet doesn’t settle as a win.
Even Returns
Another scenario is when you want the hedged bet to make an equal return to your initial bet. Say you staked £10 to win £30 (odds of 2/1), and the opposing hedged bet has odds of 3/2. Instead of staking £4 to get £10 and break even (covers your initial stake), you could aim to make £30 with your hedged bet. So you lay £12 to make £30. That way, it doesn’t matter which bet wins, you will get a return of £30, and you will only lose either £10 or £12, depending on which bet loses.
The idea is that you aren’t leaning more towards the initial back bet or the hedged lay bet – you want the returns to be equal.
How to Get the Best Hedged Betting Odds
Bookmakers aren’t going to just hand you a betting market with 5/2 on Team A and 3/2 on Team B, as then they would lose money. They need to implement juice to gain an edge over punters, making it difficult to pull off hedged bets. Unless, that is, you know how to source the odds needed to make this strategy profitable.
There are three main ways you can do this, though please note, there are no guarantees you will find value odds any of the three ways, the opportunities may be scarce, so you will need to keep an ear to the ground.
- Live Betting: Odds can fluctuate heavily during a match, especially when one team or contestant takes an early lead. This can open up possibilities to place hedged bets using the live betting markets, either breaking even and covering your losses, or making a lay bet to bring the same returns. Our experts recommend looking at sports with highly volatile scoring structures – such as basketball, footie or tennis – where a matter of minutes can drastically impact the odds.
- Closing Line Value: Preceding a match, the bookie odds are liable to change, especially in the days and hours before the match starts. It is a risk strategy, as there are no guarantees the odds movements will open up hedging opportunities prior to your match starting, but if they don’t, you can always shift to live betting when the match is in play.
- Using Different Bookies: A key tactic hedged betting punters use is signing up to several bookies and looking for mismatched betting prices or discrepancies that can make it possible to hedge bets successfully. You will be placing an initial bet at one bookie, and the corresponding lay bet at another.
To expand on hedged betting, there are more specific hedged betting strategies such as matched betting, dutching, middles, or perhaps the most well known, arbitrage betting. These are different types of hedged betting systems. Arbitrage is based on getting even returns, and looking for discrepancies in the odds at different bookies.
Whereas matched betting is all about using a free bet at one bookie, and then laying that with a hedged bet at another bookie. The reason? You aren’t actually backing the first bet with real money, but a free bet stake. Therefore, it enhances the possibility to create a fixed return, and the ROI tends to be a lot higher. But you will need to find bookies with regular matched betting reload offers to pull it off.
Another one you may have heard of is Dutching, typically done with outright wagers or horse racing bets. Basically, you need a betting market with many possible outcomes, and with dutching, you cover several outcomes but not all. The idea is to cover the scenarios you think are most likely to win, and by leaving out some others, the Net returns can be a lot bigger than classic hedged betting. The only downside is that you are leaving some blind spots, so there are risks that your backed and multiple laying bets will all fail.
Hedged Betting Software to Enhance Your Picks
To make life easier, there are hedged betting software and AI tools that can help you source the odds and assess the betting markets with the highest value for your wagers. You can find matched betting software, and even sure bet tools that pick out arbitrage wagers.
They aren’t free though, like our hedged betting calculator. You will have to pay to secure the services of a value bet software, or any other hedged betting tool, and pay a monthly subscription to use these. But if you are dedicated to mastering hedged bets and have a longterm strategy in place, it can do wonders for your bankroll.
How Our Hedging Tool Can Help You
One of the vital aspects of hedge betting is determining the exact amount of money required to ensure a profit if the initial wager fails. If you bet too little with the bookie, you may end up losing money; if you bet too much, the hedged bet is no longer securing your primary stake but presents a risk of additional losses in itself.
Our hedging calculator tool was designed to help you accurately and rapidly determine optimal stake sizes for your chosen betting outcomes. This betting calculator is just one of our many betting tools that we offer to punters for free.
FAQs
-
What is hedge betting?A hedge bet is a form of insurance bet placed against the main outcome, helping players break even or make profits if the primary wager loses.
-
Do hedge bets guarantee a profit?Hedge bets mainly exist to mitigate as much risk as possible. They are very likely to provide returns but do not guarantee success.
-
Which betting types work best with hedging?Hedge bets are ideal for sports events with multiple contesting teams (e.g. futures in basketball), but they also work well with straight and spread betting types.
