Hi and welcome to our Betting Surgery.

Session 1 - Value and odds.

The only way to make money in betting is to find value in the price, or odds, that are given, such that the chance of winning is better than the odds on offer. A horses chances in a race are all about probability theory, scary stuff about maths, but I'm going to try and put it nice and simply.

If I looked up the next race I could pick out a horse “Gonnawin” who is the 2/1 favourite, and an outsider “Nochance” at 33/1, but what do those odds really mean ?

To convert a horses odds into it's chance of winning, we simply turn the numbers upside down, add the numbers together and put that on the bottom. We turn that into a percentage chance by multiplying that by 100.

For example, with the 2/1 favourite, we turn the numbers upside down which gives 1/2, then add both numbers together and put that on the bottom, which gives us 1/3. So our horses chances of winning are 1 in 3, or multiply by 100 to get the percentage chance of 33%.

So what the bookies are offering you is, every time this horse runs at the same course, in the same conditions, same jockey, against the same other horses, the bookie thinks it will win 1 race in every 3 runnings. For the 33/1 outsider, the bookies are offering you that the horse will win 1 race in 34, or just under a 3% chance of winning.

What you need to find is the value odds. If you think that “Gonnawin” has a better chance than 33%, due to the fact he has won 2 out of 3 races on this course under today's ground conditions, then you have found value in the bet.

By continuously finding value in bets, you are guaranteed to make a profit. If I bet 10 horses in different races at 2/1 putting £10 on each, and we have found value such that 4 out of 10 (40%) win, rather than the expected 33%, then we make a profit. That profit is 4 x £10 x 2/1 = £80, less the 6 x £10 on losing horses, gives us a profit of £20 for an investment of £100. A tidy 20% return on investment, much better than any bank account can offer :-)

In the next session we will be talking about how to use a betting bank to withstand losing sequences.

That's all for now and good luck,

Betting Surgery