A “back” is a bet that you place in favour of a selection winning. This is the same as a traditional bet placed with a bookmaker. When you place a back bet you can only lose your chosen stake.

For example: If you back a horse at odds of 5.00 with a stake of £10 you will make £40 profit if the horse wins the race, but will lose £10 if the horse fails to win.

When you opt to “lay” a selection you are essentially betting on that selection not winning. You are taking on the role of the bookmaker and letting people bet with you. With a lay bet you will only win whatever stake you choose to lay.

For example: If you lay a football team at odds of 2.00 with a stake of £50 you will make a profit of £50 if the team fail to win the game, however if they win the game you will lose £50.

A matched bet is a bet that has been matched against another exchange user. Once a bet is matched, it cannot be changed or cancelled.

An unmatched bet is a bet which has been submitted to the market but is yet to be taken by another user. This might happen when there is not much money in the market or if you have requested a significantly higher price than is current available. Unmatched bets stay in the market until its suspension (unless you decide to cancel them).

A partially matched bet is a bet which has been submitted, and a portion of this bet has been matched by another user, but the rest is yet to be taken. For example; you may want to back a football team and submit a bet of £10 @ 3.0. Another customer comes along who doesn’t think that team will win so wishes to lay them, but doesn’t want to risk more than £15 on the outcome. So this customer may choose to lay £7.50 of your £10 stake @ 3.0, risking his £15. This would mean that £2.50 of your bet would remain unmatched. That unmatched part of the bet will remain in the market, waiting to be taken.

In an instance where part of your bet is unmatched and the market is suspended, the unmatched stake will be returned to your balance.

Once a bet is matched it cannot be cancelled. However, a bet which is unmatched (either partially or in full) can be cancelled. You can do this by selecting the “Cancel” button (a white “X” within a red box) next to the chosen bet in the betting slip. Additionally, If you wish to cancel all your bets within a market across all selections, you can click the “Cancel Bets” button at the top of the betting grid (a white “X” within a black box).

bet.me does not apply a minimum bet rule. The only restriction is that any bet must be at least 0.01 GBP (1p) to win at least 0.01 GBP (1p) so we are able to pay the winnings. There is also no maximum bet limit.

Yes. The in-play delay for all of our sports will be detailed in the market display. This delay is in place to protect customers who are betting in the market and allows customers to cancel unmatched bets if there is a change in the market conditions.

A reduction factor is a percentage that is taken off all bets when a horse gets withdrawn from a race. The reduction will reflect the horse’s price in the market. A horse towards the head of the market would be allotted a large reduction factor, meaning that if this horse was to be withdrawn a bigger percentage would be taken off all bets on the remaining horses that were matched before the specified time of withdrawal.

You can see that your bet winnings have been reduced due to a reduction factor in the “flags” column on your Account Statement.

Information on a specific non-runner’s reduction factor can be found in the non-runner's entrant data. This can be found by hovering over the non-runner in the market. You will see (along with all of the regular race card info) a section at the top detailing the time of withdrawal, reason for withdrawal and the reduction factor amount.

The keep option stops bets from being cancelled (lapsed) when we suspend a market. Your bet will then still be active and available to be matched. For example; in horse racing, we suspend markets at the start of the race and set the event status to in-play, lapsing all regular bets. A trader might decide to override this lapse, using the “keep” betting option, because they have already set-up and submitted their in-play trades as part of their trading strategy on that race.

Fill or Kill; if your bet cannot be matched in its entirety when submitted then it will be killed and none of it will be matched.

Immediate or Cancel; when only part of your bet gets matched at the time of placement the remainder will be cancelled.

One Click refers to one-click betting and is a key trading function which allows users to get bets on with great speed. When one click is selected a bet is instantaneously placed into the market and this means a bet slip is not necessary. Users should take care when operating with one click enabled.

There are a few reasons why you may not have been paid the return you were expecting.

Was there a Dead Heat on the event? If there is more than one winner in a market then our dead heat rules will apply and you will subsequently return a smaller pay out than if there was one single winner.

Were there any withdrawals/non-runners? When there are withdrawals or non-runners in a horse race a reduction factor may be applied. Please see our reduction factor rules here.

We also round to two decimal places when paying out. This could lead to you receiving a very small adjustment to your pay-out.

If you are still in doubt to as whether your bet has been settled correctly please contact us via e-mail.

Dutching is a quick way to back or lay numerous selections in a market in one easy process. It allows you to enable your chosen selections and enter your desired stake and then automatically splits your stake evenly across these selections. This gives the same or a very similar return if one of these selections is a winner.

Hedging on a betting exchange is a feature which allows you to “take” your current offer within a market at any time. Traders often use this function to lock in a profit or limit losses. This is also commonly referred to as “cash-out”.

Net liability refers to the overall exposure incurred on all of your open bets within a market. When you have multiple lay bets on different outcomes in the same market, your exposure may be less than the sum of your liabilities for each individual bet. This is because it may not be possible for all of your bets to lose.

Your net exposure is the highest amount you can lose, given the worst case scenario for all of your open bets.

For example: if you lay 3 horses in the win market of a horse race, only one of these bets can lose as there is only one winner. Therefore, only the maximum amount that can be lost on this market will be deducted from your balance as your exposure.

At this point in time our API is not being released to the public. If you have a proposal for using it, please feel free to contact us via email.