Hedging a Bet Guide & Hedge Bet Calculator

What Does Hedging a Bet Mean?

If you have been betting for a while you have probably heard someone talk about hedging a bet and wondered what they meant or whether it is something you should be doing yourself.

It is actually a pretty simple concept once you get your head around it and it can be a really handy tool for locking in a profit or reducing your risk when the situation is right.

Hedge Bet Calculator

Work out exactly how much to hedge to lock in a guaranteed profit

Original Bet Stake

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Hedge Odds

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Hedge Mode

Your Hedge Results

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If Original Wins

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How hedging works

Say you put $50 on a team to win a premiership at the start of the season at $15.00 odds. That is a potential payout of $750. Fast forward a few months and that team has made the Grand Final.

Suddenly your bet is looking pretty good but there is still one game to go and anything can happen. Hedging is where you place a second bet on the other side of the equation to guarantee yourself a profit no matter what happens.

In this case you would put a bet on the other Grand Final team so that regardless of who wins you walk away with money in your pocket.

How much should you hedge

The amount you put on the hedge bet depends on how much of your potential profit you are willing to give up in exchange for that safety net.

Some punters hedge to lock in an equal profit on both sides. Others hedge just enough to cover their original stake so they are freerolling on the original bet from that point onwards.

There is no single correct approach and it really comes down to your own appetite for risk and how confident you are feeling about the original bet getting up.

Hedging a multi bet

This is where hedging comes up the most. Say you have a four leg multi and the first three legs have all come in.

You have got one leg left and the potential payout is sitting at $800 off a $10 bet. You could let it ride and hope the last leg gets up or you could hedge by putting a bet on the opposite result in that final game.

If you put $200 on the other side you are guaranteed a profit either way. Your multi wins and you pocket $800 minus the $200 hedge, or the last leg loses and you collect $200 minus your $10 original outlay.

Either way you come out well ahead of where you started.

Using a hedge bet calculator

The maths behind hedging is not that complicated but it does help to use a calculator so you can work out the exact amount to put on your hedge bet.

We have built one at the top of the page that does the hard work for you. Just plug in your original bet details and it will tell you how much to hedge and what your guaranteed profit looks like on each outcome.

When to hedge and when to let it ride

Hedging is not something you need to do on every bet. Most of the time you are better off just letting things play out. But when you find yourself sitting on a big potential payout with one result left to go it is worth knowing that the option is there.

Plenty of punters have learned this the hard way after watching a massive multi fall over on the last leg when they could have locked in a tidy profit with a quick hedge bet ten minutes before kick off.

Tips Writer

Murphy Adams

Murphy is an absolute greyhound racing tragic. If he's not eating or sleeping, he's consuming as much greyhound content as he can get his hands on.

Having worked as a greyhound racing journalist for more than 10 years, Murphy has an astute ability to match up various form lines to find the best value in each race he analyses and he enjoys nothing more than pulling off a huge plunge.

As a greyhound owner himself, Murphy loves cheering home a live winner down the road at Albion Park or at the pub on Sky Racing, and he hopes to tip you a few winners too!