Coral have been running their Beaten By a Length promotion both instore and online for about the past month now. The offer is simple: If your horse comes 2nd and is beaten by a length or less in 1 selected meeting each day then you get your stake back as a free bet up to £25.

The problem is that most races end up with the front running horse way ahead of everyone else. However you can help give yourself an advantage and make some great returns from this offer by being selective of which races you bet on.

To have the best chance of hitting this offer you want short races with few riders as this means the leading riders will generally be quite bunched up at the finishing line giving a good chance of it being a short lead distance. 7f or less are perfect and generally no more than 8 horses. Find a decent match on one of the top 3 horses in the race and place a £25 qualifying bet with a qualifying loss of less than £1 to make it worthwhile.

By doing this, I’ve managed to hit the refund about 40% of the time. This means that for every 10 races, I’m losing £10 in qualifying losses but making 4 x £20 from the average free bets. A return of £70 profit, or £7 average per race.

If you haven’t yet signed up for Coral they also have a ‘Bet £5 get £20’ signup offer.