Online Racebook Betting
Here is the workflow that experienced punters follow, stripped of anything unnecessary. And some operators apply BOG only to bets placed after a certain time in the morning, which means very early ante-post-style wagers do not qualify. Most bookmakers cap BOG payouts — some at a maximum enhanced payout of 500 pounds, others at a maximum uplift of a certain number of odds points.
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Hundreds of thousands of pounds are matched, and the spread between the back and lay prices is narrow. That difference — roughly 10 per cent on the individual price — is the cost of the bookmaker margin. One person backs a horse to win; another lays it (bets against it winning). The betting exchange — Betfair being the dominant platform — operates on a fundamentally different model to a traditional bookmaker.
Where a bookmaker might offer 5/1 on a horse with a 120 per cent book, the exchange might show 5.5 (or 9/2 in fractional terms) on the same runner with a total market overround of 103 per cent. When bookmakers extend place terms on big handicaps — paying five or six places instead of four — they compensate by widening the margin on the place element of each-way bets. At the lower end, you find small-field Flat races — Group 1 contests with five or six runners where the form is well established and bookmakers compete aggressively on the headline price of the favourite. The difference between 3/1 and 7/2 is not dramatic on a single bet, but across 200 bets over a season it represents dozens of units of profit or loss. Checking the overround before you bet is not something most punters do, but it takes less than a minute with a calculator or an odds comparison site.
Unlike free bets, which come with qualifying conditions and wagering requirements, BOG applies to every qualifying bet you place. A few bookmakers restrict BOG to races shown on ITV or feature meetings, excluding the smaller afternoon cards where drifts are more common. That means BOG triggers on a meaningful proportion of bets, and the average uplift when it does trigger is typically between half a point and two full points of odds. Research on UK racing suggests that around 35 to 40 per cent of runners drift to a higher SP than their morning price. The value of BOG depends on how much Starting Prices drift from the early prices.
At the upper end, you find big-field handicaps with 20 or more runners, where each horse price can be inflated by a few ticks without any individual punter noticing the difference. The individual difference may be small — perhaps 5/1 versus 11/2 — but across hundreds of bets over a year, that cumulative margin is the difference between a profitable punter and a losing one. The take varies from state to state and the money is used to pay taxes, purse money for the horsemen, expenses at the track, and the track’s profit. If the exchange is at 7.0 and the bookmaker is at 6/1, the prices are closer, and after exchange commission the bookmaker might even be marginally better. Oddschecker is the most widely used in the UK and shows prices from all major bookmakers side by side, updated in near-real time.
Around major meetings — Cheltenham, the Grand National, Royal Ascot — bookmakers offer boosted prices on selected runners. If the exchange offers 6.0 and the bookmaker offers 5/1, the bookmaker is competitive after commission. Instead of setting odds and accepting bets against them, the exchange matches punters on opposite sides of a bet.
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Small-field races with well-fancied favourites tend to carry lower overrounds (closer to 110 per cent) because the market is more efficient and bookmakers compete harder on the headline price of the favourite. The difference between 5/1 and 6/1 on the same horse in the same race is a 20 per cent increase in profit — free money, essentially, for the 30 seconds it takes to check a second bookmaker. Odds expressed in decimals are meant to show the total payout the punter receives, which includes the winnings and the stake. In today’s day and age where automobiles have substituted the four legged animal, horses still retain importance.
