Dutching or ‘Dutch Betting’ is when you’re able to back more than one outcome in the same event to win the same amount whichever of those selections wins. Dutching can also be used as a method of arbing — where backing all outcomes of a sports event guarantees a profit.
Article Contents
Dutch Betting — The Basics Explained
Key Points
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- You can Dutch any number of selections in the same sporting event, producing an equal profit each time.
- Dutching is ideal for events where you you have narrowed the possibilities down to 2-3 likely (value) outcomes.
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- Dutching fewer selections carries more risk than Dutching several outcomes. An increased number of outcomes lowers the variance (profit swings)
- Reverse Dutching is the same as regular Dutching — except using Lay bets on the betting exchange. All of the above principles apply. This time your liability is reduced by every new bet you add to your Dutch.
Let’s assess both the advantages of disadvantages of Dutch Betting…
Advantages & Disadvantages Of Dutching
Advantages
More Winning Bets
I don’t mean more profit. I mean that the variance is reduced by backing more selections. By Dutching you’re covering more outcomes, thereby decreasing your total odds. This means there’s more chance of hitting a winner. The main advantage is that it helps to preserve your betting bank.
New Opportunities
Leading on from the last point, Dutching creates opportunities to bet where you may find it hard to separate 2 outcomes. For example, there might be 2 horses in a race that you’ve calculated as equally likely to win, or similar scorelines in football having the approximate same chance (e.g. 2-1 or 2-0). Dutching may enable you to make these situations pay, instead of taking on more risk by backing just one outcome.
Value Can Be Found
Just because you’re backing multiple selections doesn’t mean you aren’t able to secure value.
For example, you might determine that a short priced favourite in a race has no value, whilst several bigger priced outsiders offer positive value. As long the returns from your combined bets pays more than the ‘fair’ value of one of those outcomes winning then you are getting value through Dutching.
Note that you should always aim to find value in each individual selection — otherwise you’ll ‘dilute’ the ‘good’ (value) bets in your Dutch.
To start finding Dutch value bets, I can recommend the Betting Mastermind package. This includes tutorials and tools to help subscribers to capitalise on:
- “extra place” promotions at bookies, in order to lock in a profit by backing every horse in the race.
- cases when bookies pay more for a horse to place than the win-odds imply they should.
Check out my full Betting Mastermind Review to learn more.
Disadvantages
Dilution Of Profit
I’ve touched on this a little. Basically, the more selections you cover when Dutching, the more you decrease your total odds. Therefore you need to decide whether this actually offers you more ROI %. The last thing you want is to undo your positive value bets by including fair or negative value bets from your other selections.
So long as every bet you place is positive EV, then you’ll be fine.
Calculating The Stakes For Dutch Bets
The point of Dutching is that you’re able to win the same amount on any outcome. With different odds involved it can be tricky to work out the correct stake sizes. Here’s 2 examples.
Example 1
Let’s suppose you are backing 2 selections at 6.0 and 9.0 and you want to return the same amount whatever the outcome.
You can decide what amount you want to return per outcome. I’ve chosen £100.
£100 / 6.0 = 16.66% = £16.66 £100 / 9.0 = 11.11% = £11.11 Total stake = £27.77
- In the above calculations, 16.66% and 11.11% represents the implied probability of the outcomes
- You stand to lose £27.77 if both bets lose
- Either of the bets striking returns an equal profit of: £100 Winnings – Stake – Losing Bet = £72.23.
If this still seems confusing, then check out the fully worked below example under the heading ‘Dutching arbitrage’.
Example 2
Now assume the same odds as ‘Example 1’, but you specifically want to risk a total of £50. Let’s call ‘A’ the smaller stake on the 9.0 outcome.
You need to distribute the £50 stake across the outcomes as follows.
Calculate the ratio... 16.66 / 11.11 = 1.5 (factor) Therefore, the higher stake is 1.5 times bigger than the smaller one (A). Use this factor to create an expression for (A)... (1.5 x A) + A = £50 A(1.5 + 1) = £50 2.5A = £50 Working out the 2 stakes is easy from here... A = £50/2.5 = £20 (smaller stake) £20 x 1.5 = £30 (larger stake) Total stake = £50
- The above formula is best applied to a spreadsheet so that you can quickly work out the correct stakes.
- It can be modified to include more than 2 outcomes by creating a ratio, as I have shown above (the 1.5A expression, in this case).
Calculating The Combined Odds Of A Dutch Bet
When Dutching you’re always backing multiple selections. This effectively means you’re betting at ‘combined’ odds.
It goes without saying that you still need to consider the value in individual outcomes you bet on to maintain a good overall price. This gives your combined odds the best chance of earning you a profit in the longrun.
So how do you calculate the combined odds?
The Simple Formula
There’s an easy way to work out the combined odds:
Combined odds = potential returns / total stake.
For example, suppose that your combined selections returns 2x your stake. Therefore a total of £100 staked will return £200 (£100 profit) when it wins. Intuitively, it’s easy to see that this is the equivalent to betting at 2.0 odds.
Let’s take a more difficult example, such as £139.5 winnings from an £41 total stake. This calculates as:
139.5 / 41 = 3.4 decimal odds (29.4% implied chance)
It’s simple. The hard work was done by calculating the stake sizes in the Dutch to begin with…
Dutching Arbitrage
Have you ever wondered if there was a way to back every outcome of a sports event and secure a profit whatever happens? Well Arbitrage Dutching is the answer — and it doesn’t require Betfair to Lay against an outcome.
A Dutch Arbitrage scenario occurs when the bettor is able to produce a Bookmaker overround of less than 100%. But one single Bookmaker won’t ever offer an overround like this. So the solution is to use multiple Bookmakers, offering different odds.
An Example
Suppose you have a tennis match between Player1 and Player2. There are 2 outcomes to this match.
- The odds at Bookmaker1 for Player1 are 1.5. This implies a 66.67% chance.
- The odds at Bookmaker2 for Player2 are 3.5 This implies a 28.57% chance.
So what you have here is a case where the total overround calculates as: 66.67 + 28.57 = 95.24%. This means that these 2 particular Bookies aren’t aligned, and the punter can achieve +4.76% ROI from this Dutch.
The easiest way to illustrate the +4.76% advantage is to create an equal risk Dutch, as I showed earlier in this post. For simplicity, I’ll use £100 again:
£100 / 1.5 = 66.67% = £66.67 £100 / 3.5 = 28.57% = £28.57 Total stake = £95.24
When Player1 Wins:
(£66.67 x 1.5) - 66.67 (Player1 stake) - £28.57 (Player2 loses) = +£4.76 profit
When Player 2 Wins:
(28.57 x 3.5) - 28.57 (Player2 stake) - £66.67 (Player1 loses) = +£4.76 profit
And there you have it — the +£4.76 risk free profit for either outcome!
Why Do Arbitrage Dutches Occur?
In this scenario, one or more of the Bookies tends to be wrong in their pricing.
Suppose that in our example Bookmaker2’s price of 3.5 was too high for Player2. If those odds were reduced down to 2.5 then you’d have 66.67 + 40.00 = 106.67%. This creates an overrround of 6.67%, and therefore a negative edge for the player to back both outcomes. In reality this is much more likely scenario to find. After all, Bookmakers are trying to earn money from punters.
You can learn more about the Bookmaker’s overround here.
How Can I Find Arbitrage Dutch Bets?
That’s a good question. And the great news is that all of the arbitrage finders I recommend on this site offer risk-free Dutches as part of their service.
Furthermore, you won’t ever have to do any of these calculations because they work it all out for you!
Check those out from the article: What’s The Best Sports Arbing/Sure Bet Software?
Further Reading:
Alternative Arbing — Middles, Negative Middles & Polish Middles
What’s The Best Sports Arbing/Sure Bet Software?
How Do Bookmakers Earn? How Big Is Their Edge?
Calculating The Expected Value (EV) Of Your Bets
What is Value Betting? What Is A Value Bet?
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