Bet less than the minimum amount

Many people want to try their hand at trading without risking large amounts of money. Knowing how to place a bet that is less than the minimum amount is useful to know and also explains how some of the software packages do it.

When this article was first published a few years ago, little did I know that it would be copied, plagiarised and generally stolen from this site and used by other websites. But after thinking about it for a while I realised that it is obviously something that people want to know. So I have re-written it here.
 

Placing a back bet at less than the minimum amount

At bettingtraders.com we would recommend starting off with minimum stakes when learning how to use the exchanges and learning how to trade. So backing at less that the minimum amount is a useful thing to know.

Step one

The first thing to do is place a back bet at a price OUTSIDE of the current available price so that it will not get matched. Generally, we would choose 1000 but if your horse or team or whatever it is you wish to bet on is currently priced at 6.8 then you could use 7.2. Choosing a high price minimises the risk of getting this bet matched because at this stage we do not actually want to place a bet

From the image below you can see we have placed a bet of £2 at 1000. We have to do this first as this is the minimum amount.

Click for a larger image. Note - if the price is ALREADY at 1000 then we cannot place a bet for less than the minimum as the initial £2 will get matched.

Step two

Go into the "My bets" section of the screen and modify you order for £2 + £amount you want. In this example you can see that we want to place a bet for 1p so I have modified the order value to £2.01 When you have done this submit this bet.

Click for a larger image.
 

Step three

The new bet will enter the market. But not as one, but two bets. One bet for the original stake of £2 then another bet for 1p!

Click for a larger image.
 

Step four

Now cancel your £2 at the large price of 1000

Click for a larger image. although we eventually placed a bet for £0.01 we actually needed £2.01 in our account as a minimum. If you have less than £2 + amount you wish to bet then this method will not work.