Dutching for Profit (part 1)

Dutching is an extremely profitable betting technique that literally everyone needs to have in their betting portfolio as it is an excellent way of lowering the risk involved in backing the winners of literally any market. In this first part of our Dutching articles we will examine the mechanics of the Dutching bet and how to check whether your selections can make you a profit or whether you should bypass the event. We will develop these articles further explaining how to select your runners to Dutch and then more complex approaches like variable target Dutching and Ratio's to enhance profits further.

Dutching allows us to back multiple runners in an event to return a profit should any of our selections be successful. Another way of looking at Dutching is we create our own list of likely winners and discard what we don't think has a chance. Using this approach we are in fact creating our own Dutching 'book' just like our bookmaker we have a threshold to keep an eye on. Our bookmaker wants the accumulated probability figure above 100% to make it an advantage to the layer or an over-round 'book'. When we create our Dutching position, we need the accumulative probability figure BELOW 100% or an under-round (or over-broke) 'book' to make a profit. If we have a 100% figure we can back every outcome and we will neither win nor lose just return our total stake.

So our initial calculation when creating a Dutching position is to calculate our 'book' price, remember this needs to be BELOW 100% to ensure we can initially make a profit by backing all of our selections, the lower our accumulated book price is the greater our profit potential.

To work out the probability of a runner is a simple calculation we divide 100 by the selections decimal odds to return the probability figure. We then simply repeat the process for all the runners we have selected and finally add the resulting percentages together to achieve our 'Book' price.

Let's say I have 3 selections listed for a Dutch and the decimal odds are 4 on each runner so I convert to my probability.

100/4 = 25%; 100/4 = 25%; 100/4 = 25%

This means my 'book' price for this Dutching position is 75%

25%+25%+25% = 75% under-round

I can make a profit by backing all of the runners to proportionate stakes. In simple terms I could outlay £75 to return £100 should one of my selections oblige.

If however I have the following position for my selections a different picture appears. I have decimal odds of 1.8, 3, 3.25 so I convert to probability percentages to work out my 'book' price.

100/1.8 = 55%; 100/3 = 33%; 100/3.25 = 31%

I now add the probability and my book price is

55%+33%+31% = 119% over-round

I CANNOT make a profit on the Dutch in this example. I would need to outlay £119 (on all 3 selections) but I can only profit £100 so I would LOSE £19 on every successful bet of £100. So when the accumulated probability is greater than 100% we would be losing the percentage above 100% in this case 19% per bet.

Here is a screen shot of the Bet-IE screen and the caption shows how she calculates from the live market your Back Book Price and Profit available.

Dutching is a very versatile method and can be carried over into any market of your choice, Horse Racing, football, cricket, golf, tennis, any sports betting market where you can back on the outcome of the event. Maybe you would like to Dutch the winner of the World Cup in Football, the winner of the US Masters in Golf, the winner of Wimbledon in Tennis. The basic starting point is your 'book' price, is it below 100% for your immediate fancied selections, if it is a Dutching profit is possible.

Stay Lucky

Dave and Nessie