Cheltenham Festival 2017 : A Matched Bettor’s Festival Survival Guide

The Cheltenham Festival 2017 is just around the corner and if you are a serious matched bettor or even a newbie looking to make a decent profit then you should try and make the most out of this festival.

Cheltenham Festival 2017 Overview

For those of you that don’t know, the Cheltenham Festival 2017 is probably the biggest race meet of the year with a total of 28 races, scheduled over a period of 4 days.

The original event dates back to 1911 when it was held at Prestbury Park, but now this has expanded from 3 days to 4 days.

Last year over 70,000 people visited Cheltenham each day that the festival was on and a total of £4 million of prize money was given out!

Preparation for the 2017 Cheltenham Festival

Last year was the first year that I partook in the festival as a matched bettor and have to say that it was an immensely fun, but also an immensely stressful 4 days.

There were a lot of things I wish I had done better, but these are the key takeaways for me from last year, that you can start to prep for now:

Sign Up with the Right Bookies

Not all the bookies were doing offers last year and I expect that in 2017 they are going to be even thinner on the ground.

But to give yourself as much chance as possible, make sure you have signed up with at least the key bookmakers.Last year the main bookies that were giving out offers were:

Make Sure you Understand the Offers available at the Cheltenham Festival

Last year there were literally hundreds of offers and as a beginner who didn’t necessary understand how to play all of these different types of offers it could be a little overwhelming.

Take some time before the festival to research the different types of offers and how you should play them.

There are plenty of horse racing offers available each weekend so I’d recommend trying a few of these out first of all so you really understand what you are doing.

In general last year, the types of Offers Available at the Cheltenham Festival were:

• Money back if your horse comes 2nd
• Money back if you pick a winner
• Money back if the favourite wins
• Money back if you lose​

Get Organised before the 2017 Festival Happens

With over 28 races happening, lots of different bookies to keep track of and a multitude of offers available it’s best for you to try and develop a system and keep track of what you’re doing.

This will prevent you placing multiple bets on the same race with the same bookies or losing track of your freebets and things like this.

By the end of Day 4 last year, I created my own Festival Tracking spreadsheet and system which really helped me. You can download a copy of this here

Before the start of each day I would:

• Use the spreadsheet to add all of the day's races and allow a space for each of the offers that I may go for if I found a suitable match
• I pre-populated the stake and the basic terms of the offer for each bookie (ie money back if 2nd) so that it would be easier for me to fill out on the day of the race

During each day I would:

• Keep smarkets open in one browser and in another browser I’d have all the different bookies websites open.
• Go through each tab and compare the first 5 horses from Smarkets against the Bookies
• If there was a good match then I’d add the horses name and odds to the spreadsheet

Alternatively you could use something like Oddsmonkey’s Racing Matcher to find these matches for you a lot more easily.

At the end of each day I would:

• Go through each race and record if I had hit a refund or not – this was really important in case the bookies were trying to be sneaky and not pay out
• Make a list of where the free bets were and their terms to ensure they didn’t expire

Think About Your Strategy for the Cheltenham Festival 2017

Try to be as methodical as possible with your approach and try to stick to a strategy.

For example:

• Are you going to focus on profiting from the offers?
• What qualifying losses are you willing to take for each type of offer? My rule was if the qualifying loss was more than 10% of the value of the free bet, then I wouldn’t do the offer
• Will you try and cover the whole field and make money from the extra place races?• Are you going to try and take advantage of price boosts?
• Are you going to underlay or overlay any races?
• Are you going to use something like Oddsmonkey Eachway Matcher to profit
• How are you going to use your free bets?
• Are you going to use them as punts?​

Remember, you will only have a limited amount of time and you can’t jump on every offer or employ every technique so try to focus your strategy on a couple of ideas

Make Sure your Exchanges are fully stocked

​It’s not going to be an option for everyone but I would recommend filling your exchanges with as much cash as you can afford ahead of each day of the Cheltenham Festival 2017.

The worse thing that can happen is you find a good match, you add your back bet and then you don’t have enough money to cover it in the exchange.

Try to ensure you have a good float at the end of each day.

Top Matched Betting Tips for the 2017 Cheltenham Festival

So, its going to be crazy, its’ going to be busy, you’re going to be stressed, but the most important thing is that you come out of the festival with both your sanity, your accounts intact and a bag full of money.

My final tips for the Cheltenham Festival 2017 should help you over the line:​

1 - Don’t Rush

Every mistake I made last year was because I was rushing to get a bet on. This was either because I was still trying to place bets right before the off or because I was doing this on my lunch break or at work where I needed to be really quick.

Try to find a quiet place to do this if you can where you can fully focus on what you’re doing

2 - Don’t be Greedy

Every year after the Cheltenham Festival there is a mass gubathon from the bookmakers.

Basically they will be reviewing your accounts and any suspicious matched betting behaviour will be penalised and you will lose your accounts.

Don’t try to hit every single offer that you see and make sure that you spread the offers out over the different bookies if you can to reduce the risk of getting banned.

3 - Try to Relax

It’s not going to be easy as you are trying to make money out of this but if possible, try to make this a fun 4 days.

Set yourself smaller targets and anything else you make over that is a bonus.

If you’re stressing, you’re likely to make mistakes so try and do everything in a measured way and you’ll be fine.​

Cheltenham Festival 2017 Race Schedule

Join the discussion below and let us know what you'd recommend for the best horse racing festival of the year: