Auto and Partial Cash-out

We’re all familiar with the idea of Cash Out – quitting whilst you’re ahead, or cutting your losses and accepting a return before an event has finished. Having said that, many bettors find that the Cash Out option raises more questions than answers.

• You’re winning. Do you Cash Out for a small profit whilst the going is good? Or do you let the bet run for maximum payback... But also risk losing altogether?

• You’re losing. Do you could cash out for a loss, and live to bet another day? Or keep the faith in your original assessment and hope for a win against the odds?

Fortunately, with the Betfair Exchange there are options available to avoid these dilemmas, and help smart bettors come away with more profit, more often.

Using Auto Cash Out

Part of being a smart bettor is deciding how much you’re happy to take away as a win – not to mention knowing how much you’re prepared to lose – before an event begins. By having a plan, you can minimise unnecessary risk for yourself, and the unnecessary frustration that results from believing you made the ‘wrong’ decision. 

Auto Cash Out helps enable this plan of action, by letting you choose the amount of profit you’re happy to take from a bet, in advance. To set up your Auto Cash Out: 

• Click the dropdown next to the Cash Out button – they grey button with the settings icon

• You’ll be given the option to set a profit value at which you would like to Auto Cash Out your bet

• Choose the amount you want, and hit save

If at any point during an event your Cash Out value matches the amount you’ve set, the Exchange will cash out your bet automatically – you don’t even have to be using the app.

And don’t worry – if you change your mind about the level of profit you’re happy to walk away with, you can click the dropdown again to remove or edit your Auto Cash Out settings.

Using Partial Cash Out

As we’re all aware, a simple Cash Out option doesn’t always provide the answers. If you’re unsure of what’s going to happen with your selection – you don’t want to walk away with nothing, but you also don’t want to lose any chance of a win – you can always choose Partial Cash Out.

It lets you cash out just part of your bet, and leaves the other part of your stake playing. What portion goes where, you can choose yourself.

To cash out part of your bet: 

• Hit the same grey button next to the Cash Out button, and select Cash Out Part of My Bet in the drop-down list

• Choose the amount you wish to cash out. It's that simple

How Timeform can help you play smarter

Continuing from our previous example in the Cash Out Guide, Timeform’s in-play symbols, Pace Map, Pace Forecast and Hints might have given you some idea as to how exactly a race is likely to unfold. If you think your horse’s odds before a race are likely to decrease during the race, having read up on those clues, you could use Auto Cash Out to set an amount of profit you’d be happy taking away, whilst the odds are in your favour. 

In fact, because most races are fairly short in duration, it’s a lot easier to use Auto Cash Out than to Cash Out manually – which requires you to watch both the race and the market at the same time!

When to use Auto & Partial Cash Out

You can already see why it’s useful to have a plan in place when you make a bet – especially if you’re confident you’re ahead of the rest of the market. In this example, you can see how Partial Cash Out and Auto Cash Out work in practice, and how they can represent an improvement on your regular options.

Let’s say you’ve backed Horse A to win at odds of 26.0 with a £50 stake, a week before the Grand National. Your potential return for the win is £1300 (minus commission). By the morning of the big race, the field is down to the final 40 horses, your trainer has hit form and the odds on your selection have reduced to 11.0 – you find you’re already being offered £200 to cash out. 

At this point, you essentially have four options:

1. Let the bet run. It’s the only way you can ever get your potential return in full, though you would also lose your stake in full if your horse doesn’t win

2. Cash Out in full for the £200, making a £150 profit without any further risk

3. Set an Auto Cash Out level. If you weren’t happy with the £200 Cash Out value, you could set an amount of profit you would be happy with – knowing that there’s a chance your Cash Out level won’t be met, and you’d still lose your stake

4. Take a Partial Cash Out, reducing your liabilities or removing them altogether, and let the rest of the bet play out for a reduced return

(Of course, the Grand National is a long race in both distance and duration, so if you really wanted to you could always watch the race and the market simultaneously, and Cash Out or Partial Cash Out in-play.)

By choosing option 4, and accepting £50 of your Cash Out, you’ve now effectively ‘laid-off’ your losses – there’s no way you can lose overall on this bet, because you’ve already cashed out the amount of your initial stake. The potential profit on your bet is now reduced by the same ratio – you now stand to win a further £975 if your horse wins the race. 

As always, it’s a question of betting smart: forming a plan, and deciding how much you want to win, versus how much you can afford to lose.