Cashing out

Cashing out closes your position by placing opposing bets at the current best prices, locking in a profit or loss regardless of how the market eventually resolves. B&L’s cashout is built on top of Betfair’s normal bet placement — there’s no Betfair “cashout” button being pressed; we work out the right opposing stakes and submit them as regular bets.

When you tap Cashout, the work happens on our server: it fetches fresh prices, recalculates your position, places the opposing bets, and — if some don’t fill first time — retries them for you. You just see the result.

When the button appears

The Cashout button only shows when you have at least one matched bet on the market. No exposure, nothing to close, no button. It’s disabled while the market is suspended or closed — you can’t trade then.

You’ll find it in two places:

Market toolbar — above the runner cards. Closes your full position across every runner in one go.
Trading ladder — in the footer beneath the ladder. Same effect, without leaving the ladder view.

What it locks in

The button shows the net P/L that will be locked in — the same number whichever runner wins, which is the whole point. It’s calculated from every matched bet across every runner and the current best prices.

This figure is gross (before commission). Betfair deducts its commission on your net winnings at settlement, not at cashout time, so your final credited amount is slightly lower than the number shown.

What it does behind the scenes

First, any unmatched bets you have resting on the market are cancelled — Cash Out means “flatten me”, and an order left in the queue could match later and quietly re-open the position you just closed. The refunded stake goes straight back to your Betfair wallet.

Then, for each runner you have exposure on, the server works out the single opposing bet that brings that runner to zero:

Net long (you’d profit if it wins): lay it, to flatten.
Net short (you’d profit if it loses): back it, to flatten.

These go in as fill-or-kill bets at the best available price — they either match in full immediately or are cancelled outright. That means cashout never leaves a stray unmatched bet resting on the market at a stale price.

If a bet is killed (the price moved in the instant it was placed), the server re-quotes it at the new price and tries again — up to a few rounds over about 8 seconds — until you’re flat or it gives up. You don’t have to babysit it.

The slippage guard

Cashout won’t chase a runaway price to force you flat. If the best achievable P/L drifts more than £0.05 worse than the figure you were shown, it stops and tells you rather than locking in a worse result. You’ll see the new quote and can decide whether to tap again — in fast markets that re-quote loop is normal, and it keeps every penny of slippage consented.

What you’ll see afterwards

Cashed out — locked in, you’re flat.
Cashed out N of M — tap to retry the rest — some runners filled, others didn’t (usually thin liquidity). Tap again to have another go at the rest.
Paused — price moved — the slippage guard fired. Re-quote and tap again if you’re happy with the new number.
Couldn’t cash out — tap to retry — nothing filled this time (price gapped or the market’s too thin). Try again.

Things that can go wrong

Suspended market. The button is disabled — wait for trading to resume.
Thin liquidity. Cashout takes the best price, and fill-or-kill needs the whole stake to match there at once. If there isn’t enough size at the best price to take your full opposing stake, that runner won’t fill and you’ll get a “tap to retry” — common on thin or in-play markets. A small residual position fills easily; a large one on a shallow book may need a few tries.
Fast in-play moves. On a volatile market the price can move between rounds; the slippage guard is what stops that turning into a bad fill.

What cashout doesn’t do

It doesn’t cancel your existing matched bets — Betfair has no concept of un-matching. The “cashout” is just new opposing bets that net your position to zero.
It doesn’t leave anything resting. Every leg is fill-or-kill, so you’re never left with a half-placed cashout sitting on the book.