How To Prepare For Cheltenham

Check out our Ultimate Matched Bettors Guide To Cheltenham 2024 to make this year's festival your most profitable!

The biggest event of the year in the Matched Betting calendar is nearly upon us: The Cheltenham Festival.

The 2023 Cheltenham Festival will take place over 4 days from Tuesday 14th March until Friday 17th March.

Traditionally these 4 days can be some of the most profitable of the year for anyone Matched Betting – regardless if you’re quite new to the process or an old hand.

See: Matched Betting Cheltenham 2022: How much could you make?

Why Is The Cheltenham Festival Such A Big Deal In Matched Betting?

That’s easy...the more popular an event is with traditional punters the better that event is for Matched Betting.

Cheltenham is MASSIVELY popular with punters and over the course of the festival they will bet hundreds of millions of pounds with the bookies. Each bookie will be fighting it out to make sure the punters are choosing them to bet with.

This means they’ll be pushing very competitive odds, loads of free bet offers, money-back specials, price boosts and more extra place races, with ‘extra’ extra places!

These all add up to give us an absolute load of opportunities to earn some extra cash through Matched Betting.

For 4 days solid! Lovely :)

If this is your first time Matched Betting the Cheltenham Festival and you want to see the best returns for the time you put in you need to get prepared right now.

As always, we’re here to help our Platinum and Diamond members with some top tips to get you ready for Cheltenham.

Profit With Matched Betting This Cheltenham: 7 Top Tips To Prepare

1) Practice Makes Profit

If you’ve never bet on Horse Racing before then RIGHT NOW is the time to start.

First of all – please watch and read this super useful guide on Horse Racing Terminology.

We tend to recommend beginners to place your bets on the actual day of the race and as late in the morning as possible This is so you can benefit from Best Odds Guaranteed (BOGs). However, if you can only do your bets the evening before due to work and other commitments then do that - as getting as many offers done as you can is more important than trying to get a BOG too. 

If you’re a beginner to Matched Betting, we'd also recommend to avoid betting near the very start of the race (30 minutes or so before) as the odds can move very quickly at this time making it harder for us to place our Matched Bets at the odds we want.

Start by placing a few Qualifying Bets for any relevant weekly bet clubs and/or by doing a few Mug Bets on horse racing. Then add in any Price Boosts that pop up on Horse Racing too.

Next, start to add in a few Horse Racing Refunds (a.k.a. Money Back Specials). There is a great introductory guide on these types of offer available here. At this point you want to become pretty confident at finding good bets using both the Oddsmatching Tool filters and the Match Catcher Tool.

If you have a decent bankroll available, you then also want to start learning about Extra Place Offers – right here.

Extra Places are considered to be a more advanced type of Horse Racing Matched Betting reload offer – but are well worth investing the time in learning because of the substantial profits they can make you once you master them.

We’d advise to spend your time up until Cheltenham learning how to do Extra Places and about the strategic approaches to doing them (i.e. strict control of Qualifying Losses and choosing horses with good implied odds). As well as reading ALL THE GUIDES and getting to grips with using the Extra Place Catcher, we’d also recommend reading through the Daily Extra Place threads in the forum over the next few days (which is in the Sports Reloads > Horse Racing section). In these threads you can pick up TONS of additional tips and advice on how to approach Extra Places direct from the members who really excel at them.

ASAP would then be a good time to have a go at doing your very first Extra Place Offers. From there you can then keep practising and refining your skills until Cheltenham where you will then hopefully be confident enough to tackle as many Extra Places Races as you can.

In summary, here's the 5 guides to start with TODAY if you want to be Cheltenham Ready:

1. Horse Racing Terminology
   
2. Best Odds Guaranteed
   
3. Price Boosts 
   
4. Money Back If X Offers (Horse Racing Refunds)
   
5. Extra Places
   

2) Watch & Get Active In The Outplayed Communities

Towards the end of February you need to be getting active in BOTH the Outplayed Matched Betting Forum and Facebook Community whenever you can. Make sure you know your way around the forum especially.

Follow the Offers Team in the Forum if you haven't already. 
You can do this by going to the OffersTeamOP profile, then clicking the green plus sign next to their profile image.

The tips and advice available in these communities are on another level. If you have a question about horse racing offers, Cheltenham or anything related please ask it! All the expert Outplayed team and 1000's of experienced members are all ready to help you make the most of you Matched Betting.

The Outplayed Team will also be running numerous live events and Q&A sessions in the lead up to Cheltenham. Make time to watch any and everyone that you can. If you can't make the 'live' event - the recording are always available afterwards. Just ask the team if you can't find one you're looking for and they'll point you in the right direction.

3) Make Sure You Have Your 0% Commission at Smarkets Activated

Follow this guide to make sure you have activated your 0% commission at Smarkets for the Cheltenham Festival. Both new customers and existing customers (via our Outplayed partnership) are eligible.

This will take a couple of minutes to do but will ensure you are making the most profit possible over the festival and throwing none away to the Betting Exchanges.

Outplayed members who aren't signed up to Matchbook Betting Exchange can also access 0% commission via this offer.

4) Boost Then Organise Your Matched Betting Bankroll

Assuming you've already started Matched Betting, in the weeks leading up to Cheltenham if you’ve got signup offers left to do get them done and out of the way. 

Also hit any and every reload offer you are able to do that comes your way - no matter how small the profit - it all soon adds up. You want to build up your bankroll as much as you can ready for Cheltenham.

If you have access to casino offers, then blasting through a few of the easier, lowest-risk casino signup offers could also we very worth your while too.

As Cheltenham draws closer you want to start looking at moving as much of your bankroll as possible, especially from the bookies you use less often, into your bank and preferred betting exchange accounts.

You want to have as much as you possibly can available in your exchanges and Matched Betting bank account. There is nothing worse than seeing an awesome offer over Cheltenham that you can’t do because you’re out of liability.

5) Understand And Know How To Use Shared Liability

Shared liability is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to master for Cheltenham. Learn about it here.

If you don’t learn how to use shared liability to your advantage you will miss out on opportunities to profit at Cheltenham – especially if you only have a smaller bankroll.

6) Get Organised

If you don’t already have a system in place to keep tabs on what offers you need to do by when, you need to sort it now.

You have to be organised over Cheltenham otherwise you will miss out on profits.

At the bare minimum have a notepad where you can put free bets down or similar offers that you haven't yet done. The last thing you want is a free bet to expire as you forgot to use it! Easy money, down the drain.

7) Get Ready To Hustle

We all know with Matched Betting the more time you can put in the more money you can make. This won’t be possible for everyone but if you can arrange it so you have as much time as possible to do Matched Betting over those four Cheltenham Festival days, it will pay off.

If, for example, you are lucky and have flexible hours at work – see if you can start late on those days or have a long lunch break. You can then completely fill that time with Matched Betting. (We have experienced members who actually take the time off work so they can solely focus on the festival. Of course we can't all do this but the fact members do it at all just makes the point of how much is up for grabs).

If you normally exercise at some point during the morning or afternoon – get it done first thing instead – and replace that normal exercise time with Matched Betting time.

Leave any jobs that aren’t completely and utterly necessary to do during the day for late evening. Over these 4 days – unloading the dishwasher or getting that laundry out can wait until the Matched Betting is all done and dusted!

You may want to warn family/friends in advance that you will be super busy over the festival period too. Then they’ll be prepared for it when you suddenly run off after getting a notification from the OffersTeam on the forum or a private email offer from a bookie.

If you can really only find 10-20 minutes in the day for Matched Betting - don't worry and please do not compare yourself to others who have more time (and likely no toddlers, babies or similar to think about).

Any extra cash you can put in your pocket for spending how you like is a positive. Focus on that. 

Interested in Getting Started Matched Betting In Time For Cheltenham?

Why not learn more about Matched Betting? Want to join in this Cheltmas?

You can start learning for free with our free trial and make your first profits.

Alternatively, upgrade to our Platinum Membership here. You can easily make the cost of your membership back within an hour or so once you get the hang of things. Talk about value for money!