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Bookmakers in the United Kingdom (and Ireland) usually quote prices using fractional odds (i.e. 5/1, 1/2, etc). How much do you really know about Fractional odds? Fractional odds show how much the bettor can profit, relative to their stake, IF their bet wins. In this article ‘Fractional Odds explained in detail’ we explain everything you will need to know about fractional odds.

• Fractional odds show the payoff:stake ratio. The left hand number of the fractional odds is the amount of profit you will make IF your bet wins (PAYOFF), and the right hand number is the amount you will have to gamble (STAKE). IF your bet loses, you forfeit the stake. If your bet wins, you get your stake back AND the payoff.
• 5/1 odds mean that if you bet £1, you will make £5 profit if your bet wins (i.e. if your bet wins the bookmaker will return you original stake of £1 AND pay you £5 profit). Remember, the odds just show a ratio – you don’t have to bet exactly £1. If you bet £2, you make £10 profit if your bet wins. If you bet £60, you make £300 profit if your bet wins.

When you place a bet on a horse race, instead of taking the fixed odds price on offer you might be able to place a bet at an unspecified Starting Price. Sometimes for future races, which haven’t been priced up by your selected bookmaker, you can only place a bet at the Starting Price (SP).

When you place a bet at the SP, you do not know in advance what odds you are getting! So, why on earth would you want to take this option? Odds on horses can fluctuate, in the build up to the race. When the race start time comes closer, it is clearer what the conditions will be like (e.g. is the ground heavy or soft, will it be raining or really hot at the time of the race), if any other horses have withdrawn, and if the horse has any issues etc. Odds can thus fluctuate for many reasons, including the amount being bet on a horse. So, with lots of money coming in, the price is likely to go down and vice-versa. In the UK, a panel decides the starting price (it should be the same regardless of which bookmaker you use), based on how they view the fluctuations of prices.… Read the rest

The most standard bet you could make is a win bet. You will only make a profit if your selection wins. So, if you make a £5 bet at 7/1 at your favourite bookmaker you will make a £35 profit if your selection wins (and get your £5 stake back, if you win). Another common bet, is an Each-Way Bet. If you place an each-way bet on a single event, you are effectively making two separate bets. One bet is on a win only basis, and one is on a place basis.

• A place bet, allows you to make a profit if your selection finishes not just first, but also in a certain number of other places (e.g. 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. depending on what the bookmaker is offering). Usually, you will receive a proportion of the win odds.
• So, if you have £5 to bet with in total on an Each-Way Bet, you could place a £2.50 each-way bet – this means £2.50 goes on the Win part, and £2.50 goes on the each-way part. Let’s say you bet on an outcome offering 7/1 odds if its wins, and 1/3 the win odds (in this case 7/3) if it places in the top 2.

If you keep placing bets on outcomes of events, just because you fancy teams/players to win (Gut Instinct), without considering the odds fully then you will likely be losing money in the long run. Value betting involves independently considering if the odds offered are better than the true probability of the outcome happening, and only placing bets if that is the case. Let’s start our Why is Value Betting superior to using Gut Instinct? article off with an example:

Let’s say you are considering placing a bet in an event in which there are two outcomes only, e.g. the final of a competition where either team/player A wins, or team/player B wins (no draws possible). You need to calculate the true probabilities of the outcomes. This requires taking into account a lot of factors (prior results, injuries, officials, form etc. – variables will depend on what event you are betting on), and coming up with a statistical model (which may require, amongst other things weighting the factors).

Let’s say you calculate A wins two-thirds of the time, and B wins one-third of the time:
Two-thirds of the time is the same as odds of 1/2*, i.e. for every 1 time they don’t win, they will win 2 times.… Read the rest

Diligent sports betting bankroll management can be the difference between winning sports bettors, and those who are destined to lose all their money.

Here’s an example:

• Let’s say that you have £1,000 to gamble with in total in your sports betting account with a bookmaker, but cannot replenish this money if you lose.
• Let’s say you were betting on an event with only two possible outcomes, and the bookmaker was offering 6/5 on outcome 1, and 1/2 on outcome 2 (this is a made up example).
• Let’s say according to your value bet calculations, you thought the true odds of each outcome was 1/1 – i.e. there is a 50% chance of outcome 1, and a 50% chance of outcome 2.
• Of course you would want to bet on outcome 1, as you are getting better odds than required. You would never bet on outcome 2, as you are getting worse odds than required.
• If you bet £1,000 on outcome 1, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the bet in terms of value. After all, you will be making £1,200 profit if outcome 1 happens!
• However, what if outcome 2 happens? 50% of the time it will, and you will lose your stake of £1,000.

There are many variations of this scam. Hopefully you will fully understand this betting tip scam explanation, and so will be able to avoid such scams. If you didn’t spot this betting tip scam, you were a victim of survival bias (you were only thinking of the people who made it through a selection process, and ignored those that didn’t). Don’t worry, here’s the betting tip scam explanation:

• What has happened here is the ‘tipster’ sent say 10,000s of e-mails – some of which backed all the possible outcomes in the first event. You just happened to be in the group that the correct tip was sent to the first time.
• The second time, the ‘tipster’ e-mails only the group that he had previously sent the 1st winning tip to, and divides them into new groups backing each of the outcomes in the 2nd event.
• Again and again, this process is repeated.
• Provided the ‘tipster’ started out with a sufficiently large number of recipients to begin with, to a certain number of people it will look like the ‘tipster’ got a large number of tips in a row correct from the start.
• The people who received a wrong tip at any time were no longer e-mailed, and they probably didn’t think much of it.

Although there are many tipsters who attempt to provide genuine tips, there are some scams out there you need to avoid! Can you spot this well known betting tip scam – variations of which still catch people out?

• Let’s say you are sent an e-mail purporting to contain a betting tip that’s certain to come in on an event tonight? You don’t pay much attention to the e-mail, as it seems like a piece of spam. Later when you are watching TV you catch the end of the event the tipster predicted. In the back of your head you seem to remember the outcome might have been the same as the tip. You go back and check your e-mail, and the tipster got it right, but you don’t think much of it.
• The same day the following week, again you get an e-mail from the same sender with another betting tip. You still don’t think much of it, but this time decide to remember the tip to check it later. You check the result later, and the tip came in. He just got lucky, you say!
• The following week, another e-mail with another betting tip drops in your inbox – this time you are intrigued, and decide to tune in to the event the tipster bet on, and it wins!

When placing a bet with your bookmaker on a horse race, you may see each horse’s form indicated. You can also see horse racing form in newspapers which carry race cards. What do the letters, numbers, and other characters mean?

They tell you how each horse has performed in their most recent races. This may help you decide how each horse will perform in the current race that you are thinking of betting on. The important thing to remember is that the rightmost entry is the most recent race, the 2nd entry from the right is the 2nd most recent race, etc.

A number from 1 to 9, means that the horse finished in that position (a limitation of the form guide, is that it does not tell you how many horses ran in that race). If the horse finished outside of the top 9, the number 0 is shown. If the horse did not finish the race, you will see the reason indicated by one of the following letters: B,F,P,R,S,U which respectively stand for Brought down, Fell, Pulled up, Refused, Slipped up, and Unseated rider. You might also see the following characters: – is used to separate years, and / is used to separate racing seasons.… Read the rest