There’s always the potential of a dead heat in some sporting events. But what do they mean for your back and lay bets when matched betting? At OddsMonkey, we will answer the question: ‘what does dead heat mean?’, especially when it comes to matched betting and your potential profits.
What Does Dead Heat Mean?
First things first, what does dead heat mean? Essentially, a dead heat is a tie situation. Dead heats happen when two or more competitors finish in exactly the same position or at the same time. They occur mostly when golf betting on one of the many tournaments or in horse racing betting.
What Does Dead Heat Mean In Betting
Now that you know what dead heat means, we’re going to look at more specifically what a dead heat is in matched betting.
Normally when a dead heat occurs, your back stake is divided amongst the number of tied places. The same thing happens at the betting exchange as well; your liability and lay stake are split amongst the tied places. Check the dead heat rules for individual bookmakers and exchanges to make sure this is how they are operating.
Dead Heat Example
But how can you work out what dead heat means in monetary terms? Let’s take a look at the example below.
This was the final leaderboard for the US Masters 2019:
As you can see, there is more than one dead heat situation in this tournament. Four players are tied in 5th position and three players are tied for 9th.
Jason Day is one of the competitors who finished in the four-way tie at 5th position. Now, if you had used the Extra Place Matcher and had Jason Day paying out if he finished 6th, would you have won anything? Did anyone actually finish in 6th position?
Dead Heat Rules
Dead Heat rules divide your stake between each of the tied places and then payout depending if that part bet won or lost.
For Jason Day you would have 1/4 of your bet treated as finishing:
- 5th (Win at the bookmaker but Lose at the exchange).
- 6th (Win at the bookmaker and also Win at the exchange).
- 7th (Lose at the bookmaker but Win at the exchange).
- 8th (Lose at the bookmaker but Win at the exchange).
Roughly you’ll have only made 1/4 of the expected profit. However, if you also had Molinari, Simpson and Finau you’d also get something for each of them. If your bookmaker was paying out more places, you’d have more winning parts.
Trying to calculate the actual profit can be tricky. Luckily for OddsMonkey members, we have a Dead Heat Calculator. Just enter all the bet details, stakes and odds and then state where your player finished and how many people were tied.
Dead Heat Calculator At OddsMonkey
Here at OddsMonkey, we have a specialist Dead Heat calculator on site to help should your matched betting selections be involved in an event that results in a dead heat. This is just one of the many betting calculators we have on site, with this being able to be used in tandem with specific sports betting guides in order to identify which sports could potentially result in a dead heat
Although dead heats could significantly impact the result of a matched bet, there are still tools that can be used to accommodate this. Start your OddsMonkey free trial and you could gain access to said pieces of utility as well as a whole range of other resources that delve deeper into the matched betting strategy itself.
