AI betting tips in 2026: how predictions work, where the margin sits, and what no model can promise

Updated October 2026

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A tip written by a person and a tip written by a model are not the same thing, and they are not opposites either. The search for “AI betting tips” usually wants a winner. There is no recipe for one. What there is, is a way to think about what a tip is, where its value comes from, and why every price on a betting site already contains a deduction the marketing does not advertise. This page is built around that working: how a tip becomes a number, what makes one number fairer than another, and how the bookmaker’s own margin shows up in every price a punter sees. The page is a guide. It does not name a horse, a team, or a banker, and nothing here should be read as one.

This page is current as of 30 October 2026 (checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register).

This page was checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register on 16 October 2026 and the descriptions of each operator’s UK site on the same date.

The Responsible Gambling Frame Around AI Predictions

A prediction is only useful to someone who has decided what to do with it. That decision is a betting decision, and the law that governs it in Great Britain is built around the player, not the model. Before the rest of the page goes into how tips work, it is worth setting out the frame the rest of the discussion sits inside — because every number below is a number a person might bet on, and every bet is a decision the law already constrains.

A UK-licensed remote bookmaker must verify a customer’s name, address and date of birth before that customer can deposit or place a bet, including with a free bet or a bonus. That has been the rule since 7 May 2019. It is the end of anonymous play. A punter who wants to follow AI tips on a licensed site will hand over identity documents first, and any model output they later place is logged against an identified person. Sites that ask for source-of-funds information at higher spend are running the Commission’s money-laundering rules, not adding friction of their own.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme. Every online operator with a Gambling Commission remote licence takes part. The minimum exclusion is six months, then one year, then five years, then five years with auto-renewal; after that minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps. Betting shops run a separate self-exclusion service. A punter who has self-excluded through GAMSTOP cannot open a new account at any licensed online bookmaker while the exclusion is live, no matter what tips they have queued up.

The safer-gambling tools that show up on every licensed site’s footer are not optional extras. Deposit limits are mandatory under the Commission’s Remote Technical Standards. The first changes applied from 31 October 2025 and a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026; whether that second phase is now live is not established. A customer can set their own limit, and operators are expected to honour it without argument. Beyond that, a financial vulnerability check applies once deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in a rolling 30 days: that check, in force since 28 February 2025 under LCCP condition 3.4.4, is a public-record check, not a credit reference check, and not an income check. Financial risk assessments were announced in a Commission article of 7 July 2026 with no start date — that is the staged plan the press has called affordability checks, and it should be written exactly that way, announced, staged, no start date.

Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet. Debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by that ban. Where a tipster pays for a tip service or pays in to a bookmaker, debit cards, bank transfers and a handful of e-wallets are the routes; credit cards are not.

A punter who has a problem has several routes. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and education. NHS gambling clinics operate in several regions. Gamblers Anonymous runs support meetings. These exist because the marketing of tips, like the marketing of odds, has been designed to convert attention into bets. The frame around AI predictions is that conversion can be slowed, paused, or stopped, and the law has decided it should be.

A final point that belongs here because it tends to be left out: betting winnings are not taxed in Great Britain on the player side. That is general information, not tax advice, and a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser. What it means for a follower of AI tips is that the only number the punter should be looking at is the number the bookmaker pays out, because nothing will be taken off the top afterwards.

The Mobile and App Layer Most AI Tip Followers Actually Use

Most people who look up AI betting tips are not sitting at a desktop. They are on a phone, in an app, often with the betting site open in one window and a tipster feed in another. The shape of the experience is the shape of the app, and the shape of the app has consequences for what a tip can be used for.

A licensed bookmaker’s app is a single, end-to-end product: the account, the deposit, the bet placement, the in-play market, the cash out, the live stream where one is offered, the safer-gambling tools, the withdrawals. Verification happens inside the app. GAMSTOP is honoured inside the app. Deposit limits are set inside the app. That is not a styling choice; it is the Commission’s remote technical standards at work. The same app is the only place a punter’s history lives. A tip placed through a website browser and a tip placed through the app are the same bet to the operator, but the app stores the bet in a form that the punter can review later, which is the kind of audit most bankroll advice eventually pushes a punter towards.

The features a punter will use most are the ones the app is built around. In-play betting — the ability to place a bet after the event has started — is now a standard offering at every licensed app, and the screen is designed for it: prices refresh quickly, markets move, the bet slip updates without the punter losing their place. A Bet Builder feature, also called a same-game multi, lets a punter combine several selections from one match into a single price; the app handles the multiplication of the odds and the calculation of the return in the slip itself. Cash out lets the punter settle a bet before the event has finished, at a price the bookmaker sets in real time; that price is never generous, but it exists. Live streaming is offered in many apps, and where it is, it usually requires either a funded account or a bet placed within the last 24 hours; that is the rule on William Hill’s WHTV, where live racing requires a bet of £1 or more on a qualifying race and Betting TV covers selected UK and US horse racing and UK greyhounds free of charge.

The browser version of a licensed site does the same job. The difference is that the browser version does not push notifications, does not let a punter use a fingerprint or face ID to confirm a stake, and does not usually keep a bet slip alive across sessions the way an app does. For a punter who follows AI tips and wants to act on them quickly, the app is the route most of them take.

What an app cannot do is change the math. A 1.91 price in the browser is a 1.91 price in the app. The margin is the same. The stake limit is the same. The minimum odds on a free bet are the same. The verification rules are the same. A tipster who tells a follower to bet on the app because the app offers better prices is telling a story that does not survive contact with the actual numbers.

Predictions, Strategy, and What a Value Bet Actually Is

The model that produces an AI tip and the bookmaker’s price are doing different jobs, and the difference is where value comes from. A model takes form, statistics, line-ups, head-to-heads, expected goals, expected shots, injury news, weather, and produces a probability. The bookmaker takes the same information plus the bookmaker’s own margin and produces a price. The gap between the model’s probability and the bookmaker’s implied probability, after the margin has been removed, is what a value bet is. If the model gives a 55% chance and the bookmaker’s price implies 50%, the bet has positive expected value at the model’s number. The bet may still lose. Value is a statement about a long run of bets at that gap, not a prediction of the next one.

The bookmaker’s overround is the sum of all implied probabilities on a market minus 100%. A two-way market at 1.91 / 1.91 has implied probabilities of 1 ÷ 1.91 on each side, which works out to roughly 52.4% per side and a combined 104.7%. That 4.7% is the overround; the margin is around 4.5%. The payout share — what is returned to bettors in the long run — is the inverse of the sum, which is roughly 95.5%. Of every pound bet on that market, the bookmaker expects to keep around 4.5p and pay back around 95.5p. The same market at 1.80 / 1.80 would imply 55.6% per side, a combined 111.1%, an overround of 11.1%, a margin of 10.0%, and a payout share around 90%. The 1.91 / 1.91 bookmaker is the cheaper of the two. A punter who wants value at any price is choosing the cheaper bookmaker before they choose the tip.

That is the calculation the rest of the strategy rests on. The model produces a probability. The bookmaker produces a price that already contains a margin. A bet is value only when the model’s probability exceeds the bookmaker’s implied probability, after the margin has been stripped out. Anything else, including a model that says “60% chance” against a price that implies 50%, is a value bet. A model that says “60% chance” against a price that implies 65% is a value bet the wrong way round — a bet the punter should walk away from, no matter how confident the model sounds.

What an AI Tip Adds That a Human Tip Does Not

A human tipster and a model are both forecasters. The difference is what they remember and how they update. A model can hold a hundred thousand league matches in memory and re-estimate a team’s attacking strength after every game, without forgetting one. A human cannot. A model can test its own forecast against actual outcomes and publish the error rate. A human can do that too, but rarely does. A model can be queried with constraints the tipster never thought of — “give me the probability of an away win when the home side has played a European fixture midweek” — and answer in seconds. A human can do that, eventually, after coffee.

What neither can do is know the future. A model is a function of past data and stated assumptions. When those assumptions break — a key player is suspended midweek, the manager rotates the squad, the weather turns — the model’s output is stale, and the price the bookmaker offers has usually moved first. The bookmaker has the same data the model has, and the bookmaker is paid to refresh faster. A punter following AI tips should treat the tip as the starting estimate, not the closing one.

Bankroll Discipline

A tip is not a bet. A bet is a tip times a stake times a price. The stake is what kills a bankroll, not the tip. A punter who follows AI tips should set a fixed unit — a percentage of the bank, often 1% to 2% — and bet that unit on every tip regardless of confidence. The model may say 60% or 80%; the stake is the same. The reasoning is that the model is usually wrong somewhere, and a flat stake keeps a losing streak survivable. A punter who bets more on the tips the model sounds surer about is doubling down on a confidence the model cannot justify.

A bankroll is not a deposit. A deposit is money moved into the bookmaker’s account. A bankroll is the amount the punter has decided to risk in total, often tracked in a separate spreadsheet. The two diverge when a punter withdraws winnings and keeps them out of the bankroll. Most bankroll advice treats any withdrawal as a way to lock in profit, not as more ammunition.

Why No Tip Is Ever Certain

Three things conspire against certainty. First, sport has a random component. Injuries, weather, refereeing decisions and plain variance sit on top of every model. Second, the bookmaker’s margin means every price is biased against the punter before the punter’s edge is added. Third, the information the model uses is the information the bookmaker has, and the bookmaker can refresh its price faster than the punter can place a bet. A 60% probability of a home win is not 60% certain; it is 60% expected across many matches played under the same conditions. The next match is one match, and one match can do anything.

The honest framing is the only honest framing. An AI tip is an estimate with an error bar. A value bet is an estimate that beats the price, before the bet is placed. A winning bet is what happens when the estimate is right. None of these is a promise.

The Top 10 Licensed UK Bookmakers and What Each One Carries

A bookmaker that serves customers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission remote licence, whatever its jurisdiction. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever the operator is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar business address is not a substitute; only the Commission’s public register decides who is licensed, and the register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Every operator below is on that register, holding a remote general betting standard (real events) licence. None of them is “the only” licensed brand — the register lists far more than the ten here.

The table below covers what a comparison of AI-friendly licensed bookmakers needs: the brand, the Gambling Commission account number and licence holder, and what the operator’s own UK site says about features relevant to a punter following AI tips. A licence is the entry condition; it is not a ranking. The feature column is what the operator itself publishes.

William Hill

William Hill is the longest-running high-street name on this list and one of the few that publishes a price-match feature for race-day odds in its own terms: from 8 AM on the day of the race, on UK and Irish horse racing, on both single and multiple bets. Ante-post, tote and pari-mutuel bets are excluded. The streaming service, WHTV, is the part of the app that matters most to a punter following AI tips on racing: live racing requires a bet of £1 or more on a qualifying race, Betting TV runs selected UK and US horse racing and UK greyhounds free, and a funded account or a bet in the last 24 hours covers the rest of the schedule. This feature matches odds but does not guarantee a win; the licence brings register connection, deposit-limit duties, supervision, and a local legal venue. For a punter who needs fast, AI-driven odds, the speed of the William Hill platform is a clear advantage.

Betfair

Betfair runs both a sportsbook and a betting exchange under the same licence holder. The sportsbook is the part that competes with this list on AI-relevant features: in-play betting, Bet Builder, free live streaming on UK and Irish racing and football, and a 90 Minute Payout market that settles winning football bets at the 90-minute mark regardless of extra time. The Betfair app is the primary tool for any punter who needs to act on AI-driven football insights the moment in-play odds become available.

Fitzdares

Fitzdares is a smaller name with a longer feature list than its size suggests: cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s, specials and antepost markets on horse racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf and American football, with in-play live odds across the lot. For a punter with a wide AI model that covers sports beyond football and racing, Fitzdares offers one of the most complete menus on the list.

London Bet

London Bet is a Thistle Bet Limited product combining a sportsbook with Pragmatic Play casino slots inside one app. The sportsbook covers football, tennis, horse racing, greyhounds, darts, golf, cricket, NFL, NBA, MLB and snooker, with live in-play betting. The app carries a 17+ App Store age rating. For a punter who wants a mix of sports and casino, London Bet is an option, though a racing-only model may find the casino distractions surplus to requirements.

Betmaster

Betmaster is operated by BM Solutions GB Ltd, registered in Malta, and states it holds Gambling Commission account 65699. The licence is on the register; the feature list on the UK site, in current material, is limited. A punter considering Betmaster should treat the licence as the entry condition and check the live site for in-play, Bet Builder and live streaming before following an AI tip through to a stake.

Betfred

Betfred’s app is built around Bet Builder, Sub Switch (the ability to swap a player in a Builder), Extra Places on racing, Racing Post data inside the app, and a live casino and bingo section alongside the sportsbook. The Sub Switch feature is the one an AI tip follower will care about: a model can flag a team selection issue midweek, and Sub Switch lets the punter update the bet without rebuilding it.

Sky Bet

Sky Bet’s welcome offer is the headline feature: £30 in free bets, credited as three £10 tokens after a deposit of at least £5 and a first single or each-way bet of at least 5p at odds of 1/1 or greater. The free bet value sits inside the calculation rule — free bets do not return the stake on a win, so a £10 free bet at 4.00 returns £30 in profit, not £40. The 5p minimum qualifying bet is unusually low; the £5 deposit is ordinary. For a punter whose AI model identifies value in long-priced outsiders, the 1/1 minimum odds requirement acts as a filter that narrows the available selection.

Star Sports

Star Sports calls itself the UK’s leading independent bookmaker, with virtual sports, casino and live casino alongside the sportsbook. Independent is a positioning claim, not a feature on the page. For a punter who relies on AI-generated tips, the sportsbook is the core utility, while the virtuals and casino serve as secondary features.

BetUK

BetUK is a LeoVegas Gaming PLC brand, which makes it part of a larger group than its name suggests. The free bets exclude virtual sports, esports and non-UK/IE horse racing, and minimum odds apply. A punter following an AI model that includes esports should note the exclusion before claiming; for one focused strictly on UK and Irish racing, the restriction is irrelevant.

Fafabet

Fafabet pays Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing from 9 AM on race days. The rule is the same as the larger bookmakers’, with one specific detail in the operator’s own terms: if the starting price is bigger than the price taken when the bet was placed, the bigger odds are paid. The 9 AM kick-off is an hour later than William Hill’s. For a punter acting on morning racing models, the difference is marginal; for one placing overnight bets, the 9 AM start time becomes a significant consideration.

Verdict Across the Ten

Three of the ten — William Hill, Fafabet and Coral (adjacent but not in the ten) — publish a Best Odds Guaranteed window on UK and Irish racing, and the windows are not identical. William Hill’s is from 8 AM; Fafabet’s from 9 AM; the rule is the same in spirit and different by an hour. A punter whose AI tips arrive overnight should know which operator will pay the SP upgrade on a 9 AM bet. Two of the ten — Betfair and Betfred — publish a same-game multi feature (Bet Builder) and a Sub Switch feature respectively; these are the operators a punter following football AI tips will end up at. One is Sky Bet, whose welcome offer is a £30 free-bet package gated by a 5p qualifying bet at minimum odds 1/1; that is the lowest qualifying bet on the list. BetUK is the only operator on the list whose free bets exclude esports — a filter, not a recommendation against, and a filter an esports tip follower will hit on day one.

The Landscape Around AI Betting Tips

The word “landscape” is used here in the editorial sense — what the field looks like from a step back, and which pieces are missing if a punter only sees the marketing. The pieces are not complicated, and the field is smaller than the marketing makes it sound.

There are four kinds of “AI tip” the punter will meet. The first is a model the punter runs themselves — a Python notebook, a spreadsheet with expected goals, a closed-form probability from a published rating system. The second is a model someone else runs and publishes, often as a paid subscription, sometimes for free. The third is a model a bookmaker runs internally and uses to set prices; the punter sees only the output, which is the price. The fourth is a model a tipster runs and dresses up as “AI” in the marketing, where the actual work is a human looking at form. All four kinds arrive at a probability; what differs is the path.

The pricing kind — the bookmaker’s own model — is the one the punter bets against. The Commission does not require bookmakers to publish their models, and most do not. What the punter sees is the price, and the price is the bookmaker’s view of the probability plus an additional deduction. A model the punter runs themselves or pays for is competing with that price, not replacing it.

There is no statutory cap on stakes in sports betting in Great Britain. Operators set their own maximum stakes and may restrict customers. A model that produces confident tips on long-priced outsiders will run into stake limits at the bookmaker before it runs out of edge. The bookmaker is paid to manage the punter’s edge, and one of the ways it does that is by capping what the punter can stake.

There is also no state-set deposit or loss ceiling. Limits are the customer’s choice, and the customer can set them through the safer-gambling tools described earlier. The punter’s discipline is the punter’s.

The Legal Frame in Great Britain

The market is licensed under the Gambling Act 2005, which covers England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is outside the Act and runs on older law. A punter in Northern Ireland reading “GB-licensed” is reading a phrase that does not apply to them.

The Commission licenses the whole commercial market. There is no state monopoly and no cap on the number of licences. The licence categories that matter for sports betting are remote general betting standard (real events), remote general betting standard (virtual events), remote general betting limited, remote pool betting and remote betting intermediary. Betting exchanges run under the betting intermediary licence. The Commission’s public register is the whole test of who holds a licence, and the register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. Every operator in the comparison table is on that register; none of them is “the only” licensed one.

The marketing of tips sits under the CAP Code (non-broadcast) and BCAP Code (broadcast), enforced by the ASA, alongside the Commission’s LCCP marketing conditions. CAP Code section 16 makes marketing socially responsible and bars strong appeal to under-18s; no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling, with an exception for marketing placed where a bet can be made directly. Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x — a £10 bonus at 50x needed £500 of bets; under the cap no more than £100 of turnover is required — and ban mixed-product promotions that require gambling on two or more product types. The “whistle-to-whistle” rule keeps betting advertisements off UK TV from five minutes before a live sporting event to five minutes after it, before the 9pm watershed, with horse and greyhound racing excluded. The Premier League clubs’ withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of matchday shirts from 2026/27 is voluntary, not law.

Tax sits on the operator side. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%. From 1 April 2027 a remote betting rate of 25% applies within it for remote bets, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate is 15%. Whether operators pass duty through the odds is not established; the punter should never be charged duty by a bookmaker on a winning bet.

Financial spread betting is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission. Spread betting losses can exceed deposits. A punter reading “spread” and “betting” in the same sentence should check which regulator is named before placing the bet.

The offshore situation is straightforward. A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005, aimed at the operator. There is no offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site, and the page should not say “legal to use”. What the customer loses is the protection: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, no 10x bonus cap, no £150 vulnerability check. Enforcement is disruption — cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers — and the Commission has been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers, though ISP blocking is not yet in operation.

Why No Operator Above Is “The Safe Choice”

Every operator on the comparison table is licensed. Every one is verified, capped at the 10x bonus rule where bonuses apply, and joined to GAMSTOP. The licensed frame is the frame the law built, and it is the frame a punter should be in. The licensed frame also means identity verification before the first deposit, no anonymous play, and source-of-funds questions at higher spend. A punter who wants no verification is asking for an unlicensed site, and an unlicensed site is the choice that comes with no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaints route, and no British redress if the operator keeps the funds.

The honest framing is honest on both sides. Licensed means checks, limits, GAMSTOP, the bonus cap, and verification before the first bet. Unlicensed means none of those protections and possible loss of funds. Neither is “the safe choice” by default; the licensed one is the choice with the safety net the law provides.

The Calculation That Decides Everything Else

Every price on a licensed UK bookmaker contains a margin, and the margin is the only number that decides whether two bookmakers are offering the same bet at different value. The arithmetic is short, and the page states it once.

A two-way market priced at 1.90 / 1.90 (decimal; fractional 9/10) is the example the calculation rests on, not a quoted price. The implied probability per side is 1 ÷ 1.90, which works out to 52.63%. The combined implied probability is 105.26%. The margin is the excess over 100% — 5.26% on this example. The book’s payout share is 1 ÷ 1.0526, which is around 95.0% of every pound bet on this market in the long run. The bookmaker keeps around 5.0p of every pound; bettors share the rest.

Stated as a band: at 1.90 / 1.90 the margin sits around 5.0% to 5.3%, depending on how the rounding is read. The payout share is correspondingly around 95.0% to 94.7%. That is the cost of betting on this market before the punter’s edge is added. A model that gives a 55% probability on one side, against an implied 52.6%, is offering value at the model’s number. The same model at 50%, against an implied 52.6%, is offering no value.

This is the calculation that decides whether the rest of the strategy works. The price minus the margin is the true price. The model’s probability is the punter’s estimate of the true probability. A bet is value when the punter’s estimate exceeds the true price. A bet is a loss when the punter’s estimate is below it. The strategy is the discipline of only betting on the first kind, and the discipline of staking the same unit on each one.

Putting It Together: What an AI Tip Follower Actually Does

The picture the page has been drawing is not the picture the marketing draws. The marketing draws a tip, a price, a stake, a win. The picture here is a model with a margin in front of it, a verification step before the bet, a deposit limit, a stake limit, a free bet that does not return its stake, a margin that takes 5% off the top of every market, and a bookmaker who refreshes prices faster than the punter can place the bet. The punter who follows AI tips well is the punter who sees all of that and acts on the parts that matter.

The verification step is mandatory. The deposit limit is the punter’s. The stake limit is the bookmaker’s. The free bet’s non-returning stake is the cost of the free bet. The margin is the cost of every bet. The model’s edge is whatever survives all of those costs.

What does not change is the fact that the punter is the one placing the bet. The model can give a probability. The bookmaker can give a price. Neither can give a win.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can AI help with betting?

AI can help in one specific way: producing a probability for an outcome from form, statistics, line-ups and other data, faster and across more matches than a person can. It cannot help in the way the marketing sometimes suggests, which is to promise a winner. A probability is an estimate. The bet on that estimate either wins or loses. AI helps the punter who treats the output as a probability and shops it against the bookmaker’s price.

Can AI help with sports betting?

The same answer, applied to sports: AI helps build probabilities for sporting outcomes, including football, horse racing, tennis, basketball and the rest of the major calendars. It does not help predict the next injury, the next sending-off, or the next refereeing decision. The parts of sport that are not in the data are not in the model, and the punter should know where the model’s blind spots are before staking.

Can AI predict sports betting?

AI cannot predict a sporting outcome with certainty, and no model or tipster can. What it can do is estimate a probability and update that probability as new information arrives. The punter who understands the difference between a prediction and a probability is the punter who will not be sold a 60% tip as a certainty, and will not stake more on a “confident” tip than on a routine one.

What is a value bet and why is no tip ever certain?

A value bet is a bet whose price, after the bookmaker’s margin has been removed, is taken to be larger than the model’s probability implies. The bet has positive expected value at the model’s number. It may still lose. The bet is one of many at similar gaps; over a long run the edge shows up, over a short run it does not. No tip is certain because sport has a random component, the bookmaker’s margin biases every price against the punter, and the bookmaker can refresh prices faster than the punter can place a bet.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The overround is the sum of implied probabilities on a market minus 100%. A two-way market priced at 1.90 / 1.90 has an implied probability of 52.63% per side, a combined 105.26%, and an overround of 5.26%. The margin is 5.0%. The book’s payout share is around 95%. Every market has a margin; the cheaper bookmaker is the one with the smaller margin. A punter who shops across bookmakers before staking is choosing the cheaper market first and the tip second.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

For a single bet, the return on a win is stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 stake at decimal odds 4.00 returns £40. The profit is £30, because the stake is returned with the winnings. A free bet works differently: the stake is not returned with the winnings, so a £10 free bet at decimal odds 4.00 returns £30 in profit, not £40. For a combination bet, the odds of the legs multiply into one price, and the stake is multiplied by that combined price. The arithmetic is the same; the legs multiply.

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