What is hedging your bet?

Hedging a bet provides you insurance, protection from your main bet in case it goes wrong.

You do this by having a bet placed already, then hedging it by betting on the opposite outcome to what you first bet on.

That might sound counter-intuitive at first, but by doing at the correct odds you might guarantee a profit, but only in the right scenario. Put simply hedging your bet allows you to cover all outcomes.

Some bettors may advise you to stay away from hedging because you’ll be putting money in the bookmakers pockets.

That can be true, but it’s worth learning about hedging as they’ll be times where it’s worth the cost in order to protect and reduce risk.

Example: If you bet on a team to win at 2.50 and they lead 1 – 0, it is likely you’ll get betting odds above 2.00 on the losing team to win or draw later in the game. Betting on this covers all three outcomes and guarantees a profit.

Hedging your bets by backing more than one outcome in in-plays can limit a loss or guarantee a profit, though your profit might be less, your chance of a loss might be far less.

Hedging your bets can be seen as insurance on your main bet, so if your main bet fails, you reduce the risk and protect yourself from a harder loss. This would make recovering losses much easier.

On betting exchanges, you can easily do this with the back and lay options but it’s still possible to hedge your bets on your bookmaker.

 

Advantages of hedging your bets

  • Hedging a bet provides better cover if you think that you have a risky position and would like to reduce the financial cost of a loss.
  • It’s possible to have an in-play situation where if you back a certain outcome of a game you could guarantee a lot of overall profit and your risk of loss would be much less than placing a single bet, this is like an arbitrage situation.

 

Disadvantages of hedging your bets

  • Even when you hedge your bets you will eventually make a wrong decision that will result in a loss. Hedging your bets can be a good way to protect yourself from a riskier bet but can cost you a lot of profits on your wins which could have been unnecessary
  • You will be giving the bookmaker more margins. Even if you do protect your losses and make a safe profit you are not going to be making more profit per bet by hedging your bets. You will also need to think about the bookmakers taking their cut out of the bets you place between can be between 5 to 7%

 

Hedging a bet might not be for every bet but it is a great addition to a bettors arsenal for those riskier bets that could go wrong

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