Betfair Cash Out & Smarkets Trade Out

In this guide, you will learn exactly how Cash Out & Trade Out works and the two benefits when matched betting!

Betfair Cash Out and Smarkets Trade Out

Cash Out and Trade Out are features offered by the two main exchanges, Betfair and Smarkets.

They are the same feature with different names, where they allow you to settle your bet early by placing a bet on the opposite outcome of the bet you have placed.

This feature allows punters to lock in their profits or loss, before the game has finished. This means they are taking a smaller profit if their bet is going their way, or locking in a smaller loss if their bet is going against their way, regardless of the actual final outcome of the game.

Example Why Punters Cash Out / Trade Out

A punter places a £10 stake lay bet on Betfair on Chelsea to win at odds of 2.0 as he thinks Chelsea won't win the game.

That means if Chelsea win, the punter would have a £10 loss. If Chelsea draw or lose, the punter would have a £10 profit.

During the game, at 60 minutes, Chelsea conceded a goal and are now trailing 0-1. Great news for the punter! The back odds for Chelsea at the exchange is now 5.0.

Rather than hoping Chelsea don't turn the 0-1 into a 2-1 win, the punter sees he can lock in a £6 profit by 'cashing out' his bet. This means he gets £6 profit right away, rather than holding out for the £10 profit if the result holds up.

Instead, in this example Chelsea were winning 1-0 then the punter would have the option to cash out their £10 lay bet and accept around a £6 loss rather than risking losing his full £10 lay stake if he waits till full time.

How It Works (optional)

The way this actually happens is Betfair would automatically place a back bet on Chelsea to win of £4 for us at odds of 5.0, this compares to our pre-match £10 lay bet at 2.0 odds.. Don’t worry about the calculations, Betfair will always automatically calculate the back bet and place it for us.

If Chelsea ends up winning the game, he'd end up losing his pre-match £10 lay bet. However, his cash out back bet of £4 at 5.0 odds would’ve won him £16, which leaves him with a £6 profit, after losing his pre-match £10 lay bet.

If Chelsea doesn’t end up winning, he'd win his pre-match lay bet of £10, but lose his cash out out back bet of £4, which leaves him with a £6 profit, too.

How To Use Cash Out and Trade Out

Betfair Cash Out

You can open the game in which your bet is placed, and there should be a large orange “Cash Out” button, which you can click to cash out.

When you click the Cash Out button, Betfair will automatically calculate a new back bet and place it for you.

The profit / loss of your cash out will be shown as well.

Another way to do it on Betfair is to click on the Cash out tab on the top menu, and Betfair will show you a list of bets that you can cash out on.

Smarkets Trade Out

To trade out a bet, open the sports event you placed a bet on. Next, find the green TO symbol next to the bet you placed on Smarkets.

Click on the TO symbol, and click on Trade Out and Smarkets will automatically calculate and place a back bet for you that will lock in your profit / loss.

If you’re still on the old Smarkets website, you can manually enter next.smarkets.com into the address bar and the new site should appear.

Benefits For Matched Betting

Cash out has two benefits for matched betting. The main benefit is when you make a mistake, but it also comes in handy for the Paddy Power 2 Up offer.

Main Benefit: Mistake With Your Lay Bet

If you made a mistake on our lay bet, such as laying the wrong bet, or laying a wrong amount, you can cash out our lay bet for a small loss, of around 25p to 50p.

After cashing out, we can lay the bet that we wanted to lay!

Extra Benefit: Paddy Power 2 Up Offer

A great way to profit with cashing out is to use it for Paddypower’s 2 Up offer.

Paddypower’s 2 Up offer states that if the team you placed a bet on is up 2 goals in a football game (2-0, 3-1, 4-2), Paddypower will consider your bet won and pay you out, regardless of what the actual outcome of the game is.

We can take advantage of this by placing a bet on a team, and laying it as we normally do for refund offers. Then, when our team has gone 2 goals up, our back bet has won, but we rather than wait till full time and likely lose our lay bet, we can instead cash it out for a small profit!

Paddy Power 2 Up Example

We place a bet on Arsenal to win at odds of 2.0 with a £50 stake. This would give us a potential win of £50.

We lay the same bet on Smarkets at odds of 2.0 with a £50 stake as well, matching our bet and making it risk-free. This would give us a liability of £50, which means we’ll lose £50 if Arsenal wins.

At half time, Arsenal is now leading 2-0. Since Arsenal is now 2 goals up, Paddypower would consider our bet won and paid us out without waiting for the actual results, giving us £50.

At Smarkets, the back odds for Arsenal is now 1.2. We trade out our bet, where Smarkets will automatically calculate and place a back bet for us. Smarkets automatically places a £83.33 bet on Arsenal to win at odds of 1.2.

Example Outcomes

If Arsenal ends up winning, our Paddypower bet gives us £50. We would lose our original lay bet on Smarkets, which loses us £50.

However, our £83.33 trade out bet at 1.2 odds would’ve won, giving us an extra £16.67 win. Our net profit in this example would be (£50 - £50 + £16.67) £16.67.

If Arsenal ends up losing or drawing the game, our Paddypower bet would’ve still given us £50, as they’ve gone 2 up in the game.

We would win our original lay bet on Smarkets, giving us £50. However, our £83.33 trade out bet would’ve lost, losing us £83.33.

Our net profit in this example would be (£50 + £50 - £83.33) £16.67.

Regardless of the actual outcome of the game, we would have taken a profit of £16.67 by trading out our lay bet!

Note that in this example, I have excluded commission rates to keep the example simple. In reality, our net profit from this would be much different, as the lay odds might be slightly higher, and commission rates would be accounted for. However, by trading out / cashing out our lay bet, we would still be in the profit if our team goes 2 goals up in a football game.

Paddy Power 2 Up Summary

So basically, to profit from the Paddypower 2 Up offer, just place a bet on Paddypower on a team on a football game, and lay it. When the team goes 2 goals up, trade out / cash out your bet!

When You Have Multiple Lay Bets

Cashing out / Trading out will trade out ALL your bets on that team, and you cannot choose to only trade out one bet.

So, if you have placed multiple lay bets on the team for other bets on other bookies, do not Cash out or Trade out your bet.

Instead, we can use this formula provided by Smarkets to calculate an optimal trade out bet for us.

Back bet to place = (lay odds x lay stake*) / current back odds

*where lay stake is the lay stake of the bet you are looking to cash out.

In our Arsenal game example above, our lay odds are 2.0 with a £50 lay stake. With the current odds of 1.2 at half time in the example, our calculation would go:

(2.0 x 50) / 1.2

That formula will give us £83.33, which we then place as a back bet on Arsenal to win.

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