Quick answer: it’s possible to use <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-dutching">dutching</a> techniques on extra place races to improve your position, and in theory to lock in a profit. However, this is difficult to do and can involve significant risk, so many bettors may find a more traditional <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/extra-place-offers">Extra Place Matched Betting</a> or <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-value-betting">Value Betting</a> strategy to suit them better.

Horse racing is a popular sport for <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting</a>, as well as for recreational betting. It goes on all year round, is unpredictable enough to be exciting, and also, crucially, is very popular for bookie offers.

The Gambling Commission found that 4% of adults in Great Britain had participated in horse-race betting in the four weeks covered by its July–October 2025 survey, demonstrating the perennial popularity of betting on horse racing.

- <a href="https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/statistics-on-gambling-participation-wave-3-july-to-october-2025-official">Gambling Commission</a>

Extra place races are an extremely common offer, but the most simple ‘Bet £10 Get £10’ Matched Betting technique is useless for taking advantage of them. There are other strategies you can use, however, and dutching on extra place races is one of them.

In this article, we’ll explore how <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutching">dutching techniques</a> can be used to make the most of extra place races, as well as looking at other strategies that can help you get the most out of this kind of offer.

In horse racing, each race will have a number of places that will pay out if you place a bet on them. The larger the number of runners, the larger the number of paid places.

Most commonly, a race will feature three paid places (1st, 2nd and 3rd), but races with a particularly large field may offer four paid places, and narrower fields may only have two places, or even one in rare cases.

A place is paid out at a certain fraction of the win odds. E.g. it might be paid at ¼ or ⅕ odds - this fraction will be shown on the racecard in question, as well as the number of paid places.

Most people will place an each-way bet in order to take advantage of the paid places. This is a bet in two parts; half on your horse to win, and the other half to hit one of the paid places.

For example, if you enter a £5 stake on your chosen runner and tick the ‘E/W’ box, your stake will be automatically doubled to £10 to account for both halves of your each-way bet.

In extra place races, a bookie will increase the number of paid places, usually just by one, but occasionally two or even three for extremely high profile races, without changing the payment terms. Many bookies offer multiple extra place races each day to draw in extra customers and keep them betting.

The Gambling Commission’s research found that 76% of respondents who had received a gambling promotion went on to use it. For free bets specifically, 58% of respondents who had seen the offer took it up, highlighting the appeal of promotional betting offers to consumers.

- <a href="https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/report/exploring-consumer-journeys-using-gambling-promotional-offers-and-incentives/consumer-understanding-and-engagement-exploring-consumer-journeys-using">Gambling Commission</a>

There are several ways you can use sports betting strategies and techniques to take advantage of extra place races; read on to explore each of them.

First, though, we’ll quickly explain the principles of dutching, to help you understand how this technique can be applied to extra place races.

Dutching is a fairly simple concept - it involves betting on more than one selection in a single market, across multiple bookmakers. This improves your chances of winning a bet and, if you’re able to cover every possible outcome in a market, can even lock in a profit.

When dutching on horse racing, you’re very unlikely to be able to cover all outcomes due to the sheer size of the field in most races. This means that, in most cases, dutching will allow you to improve your chances of a win, but not to remove all risk or lock in a profit.

The most common choice bettors make when dutching on horse racing is to cover a handful of the favourites in a race in order to improve their chances of one of their bets winning.

Let’s imagine we want to dutch the race shown below (in reality, we’d be using different bookmakers, but we’ll use the odds shown here for ease).

We might decide to dutch our bets across the three favourites, Jojo Rabbit, Hi Lord and Pedros Dream.

Entering these details into a dutching calculator, with a £10 stake for each selection, produces the following results:

As you can see, we’ll end up making a profit if any of our runners goes on to win, but we’ll make the greatest profit if Pedros Dream, at the highest odds, is the winner. Of course, if another runner wins - not unlikely, given the size of the field - we’ll lose our entire £30 stake.

How Can You Use A Dutching Strategy On Extra Place Races?

Before we get started, it’s important to note that dutching an extra place race isn’t a beginner-friendly strategy: it’s relatively high-risk, requires a significant degree of experience, and involves quite a bit of time and maths.

In essence, this strategy involves placing each-way bets on the entire field in a race - or, at least, as much of that field as possible. You’ll aim to work out what the <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/true-odds-for-horse-racing">true odds</a> would be for all runners (i.e. the odds that would represent an accurate probability of the horse winning), and to place bets at <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/positive-expected-value-betting-guide">positive expected value</a> wherever you can (i.e. at odds that are higher than the true odds).

Your stakes will need to be varied in order to balance your profits as far as possible - generally speaking, that means staking more money on runners at lower odds, and less money on runners at higher odds.

Having backed as many runners as possible - which may be the whole field, or just most of the field - you should assess your position. Work out your best possible position, your worst possible position, and the average, in order to decide whether you should adjust your stakes in order to balance things out more, or to avoid excessively high worst case scenario losses.

If you’re competent with spreadsheets (which is a definite advantage when using this kind of strategy), you may find it easiest to create a spreadsheet that allows you to enter your odds and stakes on each runner, and which will then automatically calculate your position depending on the outcome of the race, making it much easier to make adjustments to your staking and recalculate your results.

‘The biggest danger with dutching a large-field race is confusing broad coverage with genuine risk control. Even if you back most of the runners, a cluster of losing outcomes can leave you significantly out of pocket. Model the result for every finishing position before staking, and pay particular attention to how much you could lose if none of your selections makes the frame.’

If this sounds like a complicated or intimidating strategy, that’s because it is! There’s no getting around the fact that dutching an extra place race is an advanced strategy. It involves a significant degree of risk, especially if you don’t manage to cover all runners, and extremely high stakes.

For experienced <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/sports-betting-guide">sports bettors</a> who are comfortable with the risk and have a substantial bankroll, this strategy could well be a useful one, but we wouldn’t recommend that newer sports bettors take on a complex strategy like this.

If you’re newer to sports betting, or simply prefer to limit your risk, read on to find out about other strategies you can use on extra place races to optimise your results.

Other Strategies To Take Advantage Of Extra Place Races

Dutching an extra place race can be a highly profitable strategy, but it can also be complicated and time-consuming. For anyone who isn’t already a competent statistician and an experienced bettor, it’s likely that a somewhat more beginner-friendly strategy will be easier for them to execute successfully.

Fortunately, there are other ways you can take advantage of extra place races, with varying degrees of risk, depending on your preferences. Check out our dedicated <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/extra-place-offers">guide to extra place races</a> for a full breakdown of how you can take advantage of them - for now, we’ll take you through the basics of each option.

‘An extra place is only valuable when the additional payout potential justifies the price you're paying for it. Compare the place terms with the available odds and your own estimate of the horse's chances of finishing in the expanded places. A bigger place offer can look attractive on paper while still representing poor value if the odds have shortened accordingly.’

This is the lowest risk option, and involves fully backing and laying your bets with traditional Matched Betting techniques.

With this strategy, you place an <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-does-an-each-way-bet-work">each-way bet</a> on an extra place race with a bookie, and then lay both the win and the place (to the standard number of places) with a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-betting-exchange">betting exchange</a>.

If your runner wins, hits one of the standard places, or fails to place, you’ll typically make a small qualifying loss. However, if your horse hits the extra place, both the place part of your back bet and both parts of your lay bet will win, making you a sizeable profit.

It isn’t very likely for a horse to hit the extra place specifically, of course, so more often than not you’ll make a qualifying loss. However, the profits you make when you do hit that extra place are more than large enough to compensate, making this a great, low-risk strategy with potential to make you excellent profits in the long run.

Outplayed’s <a href="https://outplayed.com/products/extra-place-master">Extra Place Master</a> makes it incredibly easy to find good selections for this strategy, and guides you through exactly how to place your bets, as well as telling you the profits you can expect to make depending on the outcome of your bet.

By laying only part of your bet, you can increase the potential value - although you also increase your risk, so this strategy is better suited to advanced bettors with a large bankroll.

When using the part lay strategy, you lay only the win part of your bet, leaving the place part open. This means that you stand to profit if your horse hits any paid place (including 1st), not just the extra place.

If your horse finishes outside the paid places, however, your qualifying loss will be much higher than with the full lay method, so this is a significantly higher risk strategy.

An example of the possible results you might see when placing a part lay bet with the help of Outplayed’s Extra Place Master are as follows:

This is the highest risk of the three options, but holds the greatest potential value. We recommend that you only embark on this method if you’re an experienced sports bettor with a good bankroll, as you could experience significant downswings that you’ll need to be able to ride out.

As you might have guessed, the no lay option involves placing no lay bets at all; your strategy is based on placing each-way bets on horses that hold positive expected value, especially in the place part of your bet.

The Extra Place Master highlights runners whose odds make them a worthwhile choice. Statistically speaking, consistently betting on these over-valued horses is likely to result in your making profits in the long run, even though any individual bet may win or lose.

An example of a potential Each Way No Lay (often shortened to EWNL) bet is shown below:

As you aren’t laying your bets, you lose your full stake if your horse fails to place, which is why this is a much higher risk strategy than the previous two described. However, many experienced Outplayed members have had a lot of success with this strategy, so if you’re ready to take on advanced extra place strategies, it’s certainly worth considering.

Dutching can be a profitable strategy for extra place races, but it’s best left to advanced bettors who really know what they’re doing.

If you’re newer to sports betting, or if you’re just more risk-averse, then there are much safer ways to take advantage of extra place races. With Outplayed’s Extra Place Master, you can choose the degree of risk that suits you, from the very low-risk full lay mode, to the higher-risk and higher-value no lay mode.

Get access to the Extra Place Master, plus other Value Betting tools, casino offers, and our full range of Matched Betting tools, with an <a href="https://outplayed.com/pro">Outplayed Pro membership</a>.

Alternatively, if you’re not sure which <a href="https://outplayed.com/pricing">membership level </a>is right for you, you can always take out our free trial to gain access to 40+ sign up offers worth over £800 in profit, so you can see for yourself what Outplayed membership can do for you.

1. Can I use dutching to lock in a profit on any extra place race?

Probably not - it’s actually pretty rare to be able to lock in a profit by dutching on horse racing. However, you can give yourself a great chance of turning a profit with dutching techniques, or use lower-risk strategies to make a potentially smaller profit.

2. Is dutching extra place races beginner-friendly?

No, this is definitely an advanced strategy that isn’t suitable for beginners. If you’re new to sports betting, <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Matched Betting</a> is a much better place to start.

Yes, dutching is completely legal, but bookmakers don’t appreciate dutch bettors. You should therefore take care to blend in with regular punters by sticking to popular events and using rounded stakes.

4. Can dutching get my account restricted?

It’s possible, yes. If your betting behaviour makes it obvious that you’re dutching your bets, a bookie may respond by limiting your ability to take part in offers, limiting your stakes, or even banning you altogether.

5. Can I dutch my bets on sports other than horse racing?

You can indeed! You can in theory dutch a bet on any sport, but football and tennis are particularly popular choices for dutching.

Stephanie Sorrell

A Guide to Extra Place Race Dutching

Quick answer: Dutching can be a useful strategy for betting on horse racing, but it’s important to be aware that it’s much harder to cover all outcomes, and so you’re likely to retain an element of risk. Matched Betting is a safer strategy if you’re a risk-averse bettor.

Betting on horse racing has a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/horse-racing-history">long history</a>, and it remains hugely popular, with bookies taking £766.7m in gross gambling yield in the 2024-2025 financial year, according to the <a href="https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/industry-statistics-annual-report-financial-year-april-2024-to-march-2025">Gambling Commission</a>.

Yet actually making money from horse racing bets is really quite rare, and bettors turn to all sorts of strategies to improve their fortunes.

One of those strategies is <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-dutching">dutching</a>, which can be used to potentially improve your chances of winning a bet, or in some cases to lock in a profit.

But how exactly does it work when applied to horse racing, and is it the best option out there for most sports bettors? In this article, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about horse racing dutching strategies, and the risks and pitfalls to be aware of.

Horse race betting participation was 7% in the Gambling Commission’s April–July 2025 survey, up significantly from 4% in January–April. The Commission attributed the increase to the period coinciding with several major horse-racing events.

- <a href="https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/statistics-on-gambling-participation-wave-2-april-to-july-2025-official">Gambling Commission</a>

At its heart, dutching is nothing more complicated than placing more than one bet within a single market across different bookmakers. If you cover only some of the possible outcomes, you simply improve your chances of winning at least one bet, but if you’re able to cover all outcomes you may be able to lock in a profit, if the odds are good enough.

When dutching on horse racing, you’re very unlikely to be able to cover all outcomes due to the sheer size of the field in most races. This means that, in most cases, dutching will involve improving your chances of a win, but not removing all risk or locking in a profit.

To illustrate how dutching typically works in horse racing, we’ll imagine that we’re betting on a race and dutching our bets across several runners.

We decide we want to dutch a bet on the following horse race - the screenshot below shows the odds available with Bet365 for the most likely horses to win. In reality, we’d need to place our bets across multiple bookies, but we’ll use the odds shown here for ease.

Based on the odds shown, we decide to dutch our bets across the three horses that appear to be most likely to win:

We enter these details into a dutching calculator, with stakes of £10 per bet, which produces the following results:

As you can see, so long as one of your picks ends up winning, you’ll end up making a decent profit of at least £25. Of course, it is still quite possible that another horse will end up winning, in which case you’d lose your full £30 stake.

What’s The Best Way To Dutch Bet On Horse Racing?

Although horse racing offers somewhat more limited possibilities for dutching than other sports, there are a few different horse racing dutching systems you can use for your dutching strategy.

This is the method we employed in our example above, and it’s likely to be the method of choice for most dutch bettors.

By covering a handful of the horses considered most likely to win a race, you improve your chances of winning one of your bets without reducing your profits too heavily.

Of course, horse racing is a volatile sport, and it’s not uncommon for a long shot to end up winning a race, so the risk involved in this method isn’t insignificant.

Still, for a recreational sports bettor, this option isn’t horrendously risky, and doesn’t require too much time or effort from the bettor.

‘The shortest-priced runners aren’t necessarily the best horses to include in a dutch. What matters is whether the odds give you enough return for the probability you’re assigning to that runner. A wider shortlist can sometimes be more sensible if the additional selections are genuinely mispriced.’

This is a much more difficult method to execute successfully, and requires a significant degree of time and effort. That said, for experienced racing bettors, it may be possible to dutch your bet across an entire race and still come out in profit.

This strategy relies on the bettor being able to identify positive <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-expected-value">expected value</a>, to have an excellent bankroll, and to act swiftly and decisively.

The bettor will usually place their bets in the couple of hours before a race begins, taking advantage of the rapidly changing odds. Whenever they judge a runner to be available at positive expected value - i.e. disproportionately high odds - they will jump in and place a stake on it.

The aim is to end up with the entire field covered, but with odds and stakes that allow the bettor to come out in profit no matter which runner ends up winning. However, this is much easier said than done, and it’s possible that they might be forced to leave one or more runners uncovered if the odds never shift enough in their favour.

This strategy is very much best left to the experts, as it involves significant risk. Your total stake can end up being very high, and there’s a reasonable chance that you might either make it impossible to come out in profit, or have to leave a runner uncovered and risk losing all your bets.

In 2025, 60.3% of UK horse races had eight or more runners, while 15.1% had fewer than six. The relatively large proportion of races with eight-plus runners helps explain why covering an entire horse-racing field can require considerably more stakes than dutching smaller markets.

- <a href="https://www.britishhorseracing.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2025_Annual-Data-Pack-1.pdf">British Horse Racing</a>

A lower risk option is to dutch on the place market. This has the advantage of increasing the chances of at least one of your bets winning - and the possibility of more than one winning, if two or more of your runners manage to place.

The downside of this method is that your returns will be comparatively smaller, and, assuming you aren’t covering the entire field, there is still a chance of losing all your bets.

<a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/extra-place-offers">Extra place races</a> can be a good choice for this method of dutching, as the likelihood of a horse placing is increased without the odds decreasing.

‘With place betting, the headline number of places isn’t the only thing to check. Place terms, deductions, non-runners and dead-heat rules can all affect the eventual return, so a seemingly attractive extra-place opportunity can be less valuable once the full settlement conditions are taken into account.’

What Are The Risks Of Dutching On Horse Racing? 

Dutching has its merits, but it also has some significant downsides and risks, especially when used on horse racing. The most significant are as follows:

Are There Any Other Strategies You Can Use When Betting On Horse Racing To Maximise Your Profits?

Horse racing is enormously popular in the UK, and it’s well suited to most smart betting strategies. While dutching is a useful technique to understand, there’s a good chance you’ll find one of the following to be more effective for betting on horse racing.

Similar to dutching, Matched Betting involves placing more than one bet on a single market. With Matched Betting, though, one bet will be a back bet (for an outcome) with a bookmaker, while the second will be a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-lay-betting">lay bet</a> (against that same outcome) with a <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-betting-exchange">betting exchange</a>, which ensures that one of the two will win.

The trick to making money from Matched Betting is taking advantage of bookmaker offers, which they dispense liberally in order to tempt new customers and retain existing ones - and with so many horse races going on every day in the UK, you’re likely to find plenty of bookie offers on horse racing.

Usually, Matched Betting works as a two step process, corresponding with the normal format of a bookie offer, which tends to be along the lines of ‘Bet £10 Get A £10 Free Bet’.

First, you must bet £10 of your own money with the bookie in what is known as a ‘<a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/qualifying-bet-guide">qualifying bet</a>’. You match this bet with a lay bet at a betting exchange, and usually make a small loss of a few pence at this stage.

Then, once your qualifying bet has settled, you’ll be awarded your free bet, which is where you make your profit. You repeat the process of placing and matching your bet, which should result in your making a profit of about 70-80% of your free bet - so £7-£8 for a £10 free bet.

Horse racing can be particularly useful when it comes to using your free bet, as you’ll almost always find runners at relatively high odds - and you’ll typically find it easier to make a good profit from your free bet if it’s placed at high odds.

Because Matched Betting is designed to produce the same result no matter the outcome of an event, it’s an extremely low-risk strategy that can make you as much as <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-much-can-you-make-from-matched-betting">£300-£1000 per month</a>.

To find out more, take a look at our <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Beginner’s Guide to Matched Betting</a> for a full breakdown of the process and how you can get started.

Arbitrage betting is another very similar technique, which involves placing bets for and against the same outcome. In fact, it’s possible to create an arbitrage bet that locks in a profit by dutching between different bookmakers - though this is rarely possible on horse racing, as it requires you to cover all outcomes in an event.

Arbitrage betting hinges on finding disproportionately favourable odds that produce a profit with every single bet.

This is easiest when you place a back bet with a bookmaker and a lay bet with a betting exchange, like with Matched Betting. All you need to do is find odds for your back bet that are higher than the lay odds; if this is the case, you’ve got an arbitrage bet, which will generate you a profit regardless of the outcome of the event. And with so many horse races going on every day, you have a good chance of finding arbitrage opportunities.

Tools like <a href="https://outplayed.com/products/oddsmatcher">Outplayed’s Oddsmatcher</a> make this a really easy process, making arbitrage a popular strategy even with relative newcomers to sports betting.

To find out more, take a look at our dedicated <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-arbing-or-arbitrage">guide to arbitrage betting</a> for all you need to know about how this strategy works.

Value Betting is a more advanced strategy than arbitrage betting or Matched Betting, and it’s best suited to experienced sports bettors, who have built up a strong bankroll.

If that applies to you, Value Betting can provide a massive boost to your profits. Like arbitrage betting, it relies on locating favourable odds from bookies. Specifically, odds that are higher than the true probability of a win would imply.

Value bettors only place bets on selections with these disproportionately favourable odds, which means that they’re statistically likely to end up profiting overall, even though they aren’t locking in a profit on any individual bet, as is the case with Matched Betting or arbitrage.

Again, Value Betting can be a highly effective strategy on horse racing, as it’s a volatile market with odds changing all the time, especially in the hour or so before a race begins. This makes it possible to slip in a bet at disproportionately high odds before the bookmaker manages to update them.

To find out more about how Value Betting works and how you can get started, check out the <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-value-betting">dedicated Outplayed guide.</a>

Dutching is a very useful technique to understand, and it can do a lot to improve your chances of having a winning bet when used on horse racing.

However, it’s rarely possible to lock in a profit when dutching on horse racing, so for newer sports bettors or anyone who’s keen to minimise risk, other strategies like Matched Betting or arbitrage betting may be more appealing.

To find out more about how you can lock in profits from bookmaker offers, check out the <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Outplayed Beginner’s Guide to Matched Betting</a> for all the information you need to get started.

Or if you’re already convinced and want to get going right away, take out our free trial to gain access to 40+ sign up offers worth over £800!

1. Does dutching allow me to lock in a profit on horse racing?

It’s theoretically possible, but with horse racing it’s pretty unlikely. Instead, most people use dutching techniques to improve their chances of a win, without eliminating the risk of losing their bet.

2. Is dutching the best betting strategy for horse racing?

It depends on your aims, but in our opinion there are better strategies out there. For the risk-averse, Matched Betting can be a much more successful strategy, while Value Betting is likely to be the best option for experienced sports bettors comfortable with risk.

3. Should I dutch all my horse racing bets?

Not necessarily! You should ideally only dutch a bet on horse racing if you can establish that the risk involved is worth the potential reward. If you aren’t sure of this, we’d suggest an alternative strategy, like Matched Betting.

4. Is dutching beginner-friendly?

It’s not hugely complicated, but there is a bit of a learning curve, and when dutching on horse racing it does tend to involve some risk. If you’re a newcomer to sports betting, you’ll probably find that Matched Betting is a better place to start.

Yes, dutching is a completely legal strategy - all you’re doing is placing bets at the odds listed by the bookmaker. However, as we know the bookies themselves are keen on dutching, so you should try to blend in with regular punters by focusing on popular events and using rounded stakes.

A Guide to Horse Racing Dutching

Quick answer: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutching">dutching</a> can be a very useful technique for betting on tennis, especially for matched bettors, allowing you to potentially lock in a profit without the risk of falling foul of retirement rules.

Tennis is one of the <a href="https://observer.co.uk/news/the-sensemaker/article/tennis-has-never-been-more-popular-why-are-its-players-so-unhappy">most popular sports in the world,</a> with enormous sums of money riding on the outcome of a match - both in terms of prize money, and the amounts bettors will have staked on that match.

But turning a profit from betting on tennis is easier said than done. Ultimately, when betting recreationally without any particular strategy, the chances are that all you’ll do is end up contributing to the bookies coffers; although a relatively large number of Brits regularly bet on sports, comparatively few end up making any money.

A Gambling Commission survey found that 8% of adults had bet on sports and racing online or through an app in the previous four weeks.

There are strategies you can use to swing the balance in your favour, however, and dutching is one strategy that’s particularly well-suited to tennis betting.

In this article, we’ll take you through how dutching can be used on tennis matches, the best ways to use it, and other strategies you can employ to get the most out of your <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/tennis-betting-guide">tennis betting</a>.

In essence, <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-dutching">dutching</a> is nothing more complicated than placing more than one bet on a single market between different bookmakers.

In some cases (if you don’t cover all possible outcomes in that market) you may only improve your chances of winning at least one of the bets you place - but in others, it’s possible to cover all possible outcomes and emerge with a winning bet no matter how the match goes.

The strategy can be sub-categorised into several different types:

The exact type of dutching you choose to use will depend on your aims and your tolerance of risk.

Let’s imagine we want to dutch a bet on a tennis match. Having had a look at the odds across various bookies for upcoming matches during the Australian Open, you notice the following odds on the Match Winner market for a match between Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic:

You’re pretty sure you’re seeing a dutching opportunity, based on how high the respective odds are, but you double check those odds with a dutching calculator to make certain. Sure enough, the calculator tells you you have an opportunity to create an arbitrage bet by dutching on the Match Winner market, coming out in profit no matter who ends up winning.

You decide you want to place a £50 bet on Alcaraz, and use a dutching calculator to work out your stakes accordingly:

As you see above, if you place a £22.73 bet on Djokovic with Bookie B, you’re able to come out with a profit of £2.27 no matter who ends up winning the match.

This isn’t an enormous profit, given you’re staking a total of £72.73, but it comes with negligible risk, and by repeatedly placing dutched bets like this you’ll be able to build up your profits over time.

What’s The Best Tennis Dutching Strategy?

As part of a Matched Betting or arbitrage strategy

One of the biggest advantages of dutching on tennis is for matched bettors or arbitrage bettors, who might otherwise struggle to take advantage of tennis offers with the match winner market. This is due to tennis retirement rules, which relate to how a bet is settled if a player retires due to injury (or is defaulted - although this is extremely rare).

Some bookmakers will settle a bet normally if a player retires, so long as at least one full set was completed beforehand, while others will void a bet no matter when in a match a player retires. <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-a-betting-exchange">Betting exchanges</a> won’t necessarily use the same terms as a bookmaker, which means that using traditional Matched Betting or arbitrage betting techniques can risk both sides of your bet losing in the event of a retirement.

Research covering professional tennis found that 2.11% of ATP Tour matches and 1.73% of WTA Tour matches ended in a player's retirement. That makes retirement settlement rules a genuine consideration for tennis bettors, rather than a purely theoretical complication.

- <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11451576/">European Journal of Sport Science</a>

Dutching between two bookmakers that use the same terms ensures you don’t run into this issue (check our <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/tennis-retirement-rules">guide to tennis retirements</a> for details of which bookies fall into which group), so dutching on tennis can be a popular choice for matched bettors, allowing them to make use of any tennis offers they come across.

If you’re betting recreationally and comfortable with a degree of risk, you might choose to dutch across a market with a larger number of possible outcomes, such as the exact score in a particular set.

You might choose to bet on a handful of the most likely scores - e.g. 6-3, 6-4 and 7-5 - in the hope that at least one of those will win. Because the odds on any particular score are pretty high, you’ll snag a decent return if any of your choices are accurate.

Of course, you’re taking the risk of losing all the money you’ve staked if none of those scores end up winning, but depending on your read of the match and players you may well feel that the risk is worth the potential reward.

For example, let’s have a look at the First Set Score market for an upcoming match between Djokovic and De Minaur:

We might decide to dutch a bet on this market across the three most likely outcomes (though of course in reality we would need to use three different bookies rather than just one):

We can use a dutching calculator (using advanced mode if we use Outplayed’s own calculator) to work out our potential profits if we place a £10 bet on each of these outcomes:

As you can see, we end up making a profit as long as any of those outcomes wins, though naturally we make the greatest profit if the outcome with the highest odds goes on to win.

It’s important to remember that just because these are the three most likely scores (at least according to the odds), that doesn’t mean we can assume that one of them will be accurate. There is still a good chance of losing all our bets, and our full stake of £30. We’d therefore recommend that you’re an experienced sports bettor with a strong bankroll before you embark on a dutching strategy that involves this degree of risk.

‘The biggest mistake with tennis dutching is comparing the headline odds without checking how each bookmaker settles retirements and defaults. A small difference in settlement terms can turn what looks like a neatly balanced position into an outcome where both bets are effectively exposed.’

What Are The Risks And Downsides Of Dutching On Tennis? 

While dutching on tennis can be a great way to optimise your betting, it’s important to be aware that there can be risks involved, even if you cover all outcomes.

The most important to be aware of are as follows:

‘Execution speed matters more than many bettors realise, especially when betting in-play. Tennis odds can move sharply after a break, injury concern or momentum shift, so an opportunity that was profitable when identified may disappear before every leg is placed. Recheck the combined odds immediately before committing the full stake.’

Are There Any Other Strategies You Can Use When Betting On Tennis To Maximise Your Profits?

Dutching can be a great way to optimise your sports betting, but it’s not the only strategy out there - and there are other strategies that can do even more to maximise your success with tennis betting, especially when combined with dutching.

As we’ve already seen, traditional Matched Betting on tennis has its downsides due to varying retirement rules. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore tennis Matched Betting altogether!

You can use dutching techniques as part of a Matched Betting strategy to lock in profits at very limited risk.

Matched Betting relies on bookmaker offers, e.g. ‘bet £10 and get a £10 free bet’. By betting on opposing outcomes (e.g. on both players in the match winner market), both on your initial <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/qualifying-bet-guide">qualifying bet</a> and on your free bet, it’s possible to lock in a reasonable profit no matter the outcome of that match.

You’re most likely to encounter offers on tennis during major tournaments, such as Wimbledon or the US Open, so keep an eye out for offers in the run up to these tournaments if you’re keen to make use of them.

To find out more, check out the <a href="https://outplayed.com/what-is-matched-betting">Outplayed Beginner’s Guide to Matched Betting</a> for all the information you need to get started.

Arbitrage betting on tennis can be subject to the same risks regarding retirement rules as Matched Betting, but again you can use dutching techniques to produce successful arbitrage bets.

For most sports, arbitrage bettors will choose to create an arbitrage bet between a bookmaker and a betting exchange, which is the simplest way to arb - but it’s not the only option. In the example at the start of this article, we created an arbitrage bet using dutching techniques, producing a profit no matter who won the match.

With the match winner market in tennis, dutching is the most effective way to arb, to ensure you don’t run the risk of losing both your bets in the event of a player retiring from a match. Of course, if you bet on other markets not subject to retirement rules, you can still arb between a bookmaker and a betting exchange, which has the benefit of making it easier to identify arbing opportunities (all you need to do is find back odds that are higher than the lay odds).

Value Betting is a more advanced and higher risk strategy, so we recommend that you only attempt it if you’re already an experienced sports bettor with a solid bankroll. Unlike Matched Betting and arbitrage, it isn’t a strategy that can be carried out using dutching techniques.

The idea of Value Betting is that you bet only on selections with disproportionately high odds - i.e. those that are higher than the true probability would imply. Statistically speaking, if you consistently bet on those excessively high odds, you’re likely to end up making a profit overall, even though any individual bet could win or lose.

To find out more about how Value Betting works and how you can get started, check out the dedicated <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-value-betting">Outplayed guide</a>.

Dutching is a fantastic strategy to have in your back pocket if you’re a keen tennis bettor, making it possible to engage in Matched Betting or arbitrage without having to worry about retirement rules causing problems.

And if you’re looking for a good side hustle to get the most out of tennis betting, as well as betting on other sports, Matched Betting is definitely the way to go - many Outplayed members are making <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/how-much-can-you-make-from-matched-betting">£300 - £1000+</a> from their Matched Betting activity.

Or if you’re already convinced, take out our free trial to gain access to 40+ sign up offers worth over £800!

1. Why is dutching a good technique for tennis betting?

Tennis retirement rules can make it difficult to avoid risk when using traditional Matched Betting techniques, with back and lay bets between a bookmaker and betting exchange. Dutching allows you to bet between two bookmakers that subscribe to the same retirement rules, avoiding the risk of losing both bets.

2. Is dutching beginner-friendly?

It’s relatively straightforward to pick up, but it’s not quite as easy to get the hang of as Matched Betting. If you’re brand new to sports betting, we’d recommend starting with Matched Betting on other sports before you tackle dutching on tennis.

Yes, it’s completely legal. But that isn’t to say that bookmakers themselves are very happy about dutching, so you should take care to blend in with regular punters.

4. Can dutching get my account limited?

A Complete Guide to Tennis Dutching

Quick answer: football can be a great sport to dutch on, as its enormous popularity means there are a wide range of available markets. Whether you prefer to cover all outcomes or just a few, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to dutch your bets on football when you start looking for them.

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutching">Dutching</a> has a surprisingly long history. It probably goes back all the way to the 1920s or 1930s, when a New York gangster nicknamed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Schultz">Dutch Schultz</a> is believed to have invented the concept as a way to get more from the horse racing side of his operation.

But dutching isn’t limited to horse racing - it can be profitable on any sport, and as football is the most popular sport in the UK, we expect that many bettors will be keen to make the most of any strategy available to improve their fortunes on football bets.

Football generated £1.2 billion in Gross Gambling Yield from remote betting in Great Britain during April 2025–March 2026, making it the largest remote betting category, and responsible for half of all remote betting revenue. Horse racing generated £769.3 million over the same period.

- <a href="https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/statistics-and-research/publication/industry-statistics-annual-report-financial-year-april-2025-to-march-2026-official-statistics">Gambling Commission</a>

So what are the best strategies for dutching your bets on football? Which matches and markets should you go for? And will the bookies catch on to what you’re up to?

In this article, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about football dutching, as well as suggesting a few alternative strategies that might be even more successful for budding sports bettors.

For a full breakdown of how the strategy works, take a look at our <a href="https://outplayed.com/blog/what-is-dutching">complete guide to dutching</a>. For now, we’ll just take you through the basics of how dutching works.

In essence, dutching is nothing more complicated than placing more than one bet on a single market, across different bookmakers. You might choose to place the same stake on each bet (known as equal stake dutching), or vary your stakes in order to produce the same profit no matter the outcome (known as equal profit dutching).

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