Anyone serious about making a profit and maximising the return from their betting understands the importance of getting the best prices they can. You mustn’t underestimate the impact if you don’t get the best betting prices.
That principle applies regardless of how you are betting whether it’s through Matched Betting, Trading or straight win bets.
Imagine you have a system backing horses for £5 at Evens and you win 6 bets out of every 11. Your net profit is £5 for every 11 bets (+£30 for 6 wins x £5, less £25 for the 5 losers). Alternatively your £5 profit from a total of £55 bet (11 bets at £5 each) is a YIELD of 9.09%
Let’s say instead of backing at Evens (2.0) you can back all the horses at 6/5 (or 2.2 Decimal odds). With the same 6 wins from 11 bets your profit will be £11. Your YIELD here would be 20%
But if you can only back your 11 horses at odds of 1.8 then you’ll lose £1 after 11 bets. A negative yield here, -1.8%
Not the most sophisticated example but you can see the effect of relatively small differences in the average odds achieved. A change in average odds from 1.8 to 2.2 gives a difference in total returns of £12 and a 21.8% change in YIELD. Think of YIELD as the interest rate achieved on the amount invested (£55). If you were looking to invest some money in a savings account and one was offering an interest rate 21.8% higher than the other you’d sign up like a shot!
Betting and making a profit is not easy – if it was there wouldn’t be any bookies. So you need to ensure you take the effort to get the odds on your side…
Getting best odds
There any several ways to ensure you back at the best odds you can.
- You can’t shop around if you only have an account with one bookie. Even if that bookie tends to offer competitive prices they will not and cannot offer best prices all the time. This doesn’t mean you should open accounts with 20 online bookies. You should at the very least consider several bookies who are typically shown on odds comparison sites. Find out more about Bookies HERE
- Use Betting Exchanges. The prices available on Betting Exchanges are generally higher than the ones offered by bookies. Surely, if that’s the case why would anyone still bet with the bookies? I think many people are put off by betting exchanges appearing confusing. I’ve tried to demystify how they work and some of their Pros & Cons. There are some reasons why betting exchanges might not offer best odds. In particular, you being able to place a bet on the exchange depends on someone being prepared to lay your bet (or act as a bookie) and there must be enough competition between backers and layers to create competitive odds prices and liquidity. For most events this isn’t a problem at all. But say you want to back a team to win a football match at a lower level and you want to get your bet on a few days before the match. The price with the bookies will likely be higher than on exchanges until potential a few hours before kick off.
- When betting with a bookie, check if there are any offers available. If betting on a UK or Irish horse race, you may be able to bet with a Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) offer. If the price when the race starts (Starting Price / SP) is higher and the horse wins, you’ll be paid out at the higher price. This ‘insurance’ can make quite a difference to your returns. I have a post HERE which explains BOG and some points to check when placing horse bets with different bookies.
- Some bookies have Regular Offers where you can choose to Boost prices on some of your selections. For example, Unibet give you 3 bets a day with this option.
