While Monday was fairly low-key across the board, the 2023 Cheltenham festival kicked off on Tuesday with plenty of exciting racing action, including joyous scenes when Honeysuckle brought the curtain down on her phenomenal career with an emotional victory in the Close Brothers Mares' Hurdle. Meanwhile, Constitution Hill also lit up day one of the festival by taking the Champion Hurdle crown in sublime style.

In the football action, Man City secured passage through in the Champions League on another record-breaking night for the Norwegian phenomenon Erling Haaland as he scored no less than five(!) goals in a 7-0 drubbing of RB Leipzig.

In the cricket action, England once again fell to a disappointing defeat with a 16-run reverse against Bangladesh in their T20 fixture.

With all of that and more in mind, we have picked out three big winning spread bets from the past two days.

Please remember that unlike fixed odds betting, when spread betting losses can exceed deposits.

MAN CITY V RB LEIPZIG – HAALAND SUPER MEGA MINUTES (SETTLED AT 315)

After a 1-1 draw in the first leg in Germany, few predicted the scale of the dominance of City in the second leg at the Etihad. With a 7-0 win, qualification to the quarter-finals was secured and a significant marker has been laid down – will this be the year that City finally get their hands on the trophy?

The result was secured within the first 45 minutes as Erling Haaland grabbed a first-half hat trick. However, just the three goals aren’t enough for the Norwegian to be satisfied these days, and he promptly netted twice more in the second stanza to become only the second player after Lionel Messi to score five or more in a Champions League knockout fixture, and simultaneously becoming the youngest player in the competition’s history to reach the 30-goal mark.

But where was the profit for punters? With his quintuple, Haaland’s SMM spread make-up was 315. With the starting spread being 74 - 86, buyers of that market would have made 229x their opening wager!

CHELTENHAM DAY 1 – RACING POST FAVOURITES (SETTLED AT 110)

Spreadex offer a wide range of betting options on the Cheltenham festival, and one such option is our daily markets which aggregate particular outcomes or statistics on a named racing meeting

One of these markets is the Favourites market. This works by taking the indicated betting favourite horse for each race and aggregating these picks. Each winning favourite is worth 25 points, while 10 points are awarded if the named horse finishes second, or 5 points for third place.

With the market opening with a spread of 80 – 84 but with a settlement of 135, buying punters would have been left with a cool 51x their opening stake!

BANGLADESH V ENGLAND (3^RD T20) – ENGLAND TO WIN (SETTLED AT 0)

And finally, England suffered a late-innings batting collapse as Bangladesh clinched a 3-0 T20 international series sweep with a 16-run victory in Mirpur. England's batting had stuttered as they lost the first two matches by six and four wickets respectively and they faltered again on Tuesday chasing 159, slipping from 100-1 after 13 overs to 123-5 after 17 and finishing on 142-6 once a 95-run stand between Dawid Malan (53) and Jos Buttler (40) for the second wicket came to an end.

For punters foreseeing England’s collapse and ignoring their status as pre-match favourites, selling on the spread at 61.9 – 68 would have left them celebrating a make-up of 0 and a 61.9x return on their opening stake!

Please note that these are examples of winning bets from the past week, and it is important to remember that spread betting carries a high level of risk to your capital and can result in losses larger than your initial stake/deposit.