Tennis betting tips 2026 — finding value on the bookmaker's court

Updated October 2026

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Tennis betting tips 2026: what they actually are, what they cost and where the value lives. Current as of 27 October 2026; operator licence status checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register.

Tennis looks like the easiest sport to bet on. Two players, head to head, no team to second-guess, no manager to out-think. That simplicity is what pulls people in. It is also why most punters lose: the prices look clean, the margins underneath them are not.

This guide is not a tip sheet. No picks, no predicted results, no “this one wins”. What it is, is the working knowledge a tip depends on, how bookmakers build a tennis market, what a value bet actually is once the margin is taken out, and what separates a useful offer from a dressed-up deposit match. It ends with ten UK-licensed bookmakers, what each does well and where each one bites.

The tennis calendar and the tournaments that shape the market

Tennis does not stop. The men’s tour moves from Australia in January through the indoor hard-court swing in March, the clay of spring and early summer, the grass of Queens, Halle and Wimbledon, the North American hard courts, the European indoor autumn and the ATP Finals in November. The women’s tour runs in parallel on the WTA, with its own year-end championship. Between them, the four Grand Slams bracket the year: the Australian Open on hard courts in January, the French Open on red clay in late May and early June, Wimbledon on grass through the second and third week of July, and the US Open on hard courts at Flushing Meadows at the end of August.

Wimbledon 2026 was played from 29 June to 12 July 2026. Jannik Sinner beat Alexander Zverev in the men’s final and Linda Noskova beat Karolina Muchova in the women’s. Those results have moved on to history. What matters for a bettor is the calendar still has the US Open, the indoor swing and the WTA Finals to come before the year closes, plus the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup in the late autumn — and that every week in between carries an ATP or WTA event priced somewhere on a slip.

The four Slams are the markets with the deepest liquidity. A first-round match at a Masters 1000 has more prices than a Challenger final, an ATP 250 final still has outright, set betting, handicap and tiebreak markets. The International Tennis Federation is the highest governing body; beneath it sit the WTA, the ATP and the four Slam organising committees. Different surfaces — hard, clay, grass — change how the game is played, which players’ strengths translate, and therefore how the prices should be read. A clay-court specialist’s price on grass is rarely what his ranking says it is, and a flat surface stat is rarely a surface-agnostic edge.

Grand Slam scheduling matters for the bet type, not just the result. Men’s Slams are best of five sets; every tour event below them is best of three. Women play best of three everywhere. Best-of-five changes how a long price behaves: the favourite has more time to recover, the underdog has more time to come back, and a one-set lead is not the same lead it is in a best-of-three match. Several WTA events, and the deciding sets at some Slams, use a match tiebreak — first to ten points with a two-point lead — in place of a third or fifth set. That matters for set betting, because a dead-rubber third set priced as a full set is not what the bet settles on.

How tennis is scored, and why it shapes the markets

A tennis game goes 0 (called love), 15, 30, 40. The first player to win at least four points with a lead of two takes the game. A tie at 40-40 is deuce, and from deuce a player must win two points in a row to close out — advantage, then game. A set is usually won by the first player to win six games with a margin of two. At 6-6 a tiebreak is played: first to seven points, again with a two-point lead. In some events, a match tiebreak stands in for the deciding set, first to ten, two-point margin.

The scoring is the reason tennis has so many sub-markets. A match winner is one line. Set betting — 2-0, 2-1 in a best-of-three, 3-0, 3-1, 3-2 in a men’s Slam — is six lines in a best-of-three and ten in a best-of-five. Handicap markets let you back the favourite at a price that starts in front (for example minus 1.5 sets) or the underdog at a price that starts behind. Tiebreak markets ask whether the first set goes to a tiebreak, whether any set will, and whether the match does. Over/under total games sits underneath it. There are also player-specific markets: aces, double faults, first-serve percentage, total games won on serve versus return.

Each of those is priced independently by the bookmaker, with its own margin. That is why a match winner at 1.80 and the same match’s over 22.5 games at 1.85 are not the same kind of bet: the same underlying event, two different margins, two different payouts.

Where the value actually lives: a punters’ primer

Searchers of “tennis betting tips” want picks. The honest answer is that the tips are not where the edge lives. The edge, when there is one, is the price relative to the true probability. A “value bet” is a price higher than the probability of the outcome justifies, once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. If the true chance of a player winning is 60% — implied decimal odds of 1.67 — and a bookmaker offers 1.85, the difference is the value, and over hundreds of such bets it shows in the long-run profit.

Form, head-to-head, surface and recent minutes on court all feed the probability estimate. A tip is one person’s probability translated into a price. The reason two tipsters can give different tips on the same match is that they have different priors: one weights the head-to-head, the other discounts it as a small sample; one trusts the recent form, the other waits for surface splits. Both can be honest. Neither has the true probability. The market does not have it either — the bookmaker’s margin means the implied probability from the price is wrong by design, in the bookmaker’s favour. A bettor who works in probabilities has to beat the margin, not the tipsters.

Bankroll discipline is the second half. A flat stake — one to two per cent of the bank on every bet, regardless of how “sure” the tip looks — is the difference between a tipster who makes money over a season and one who does not. Chasing losses with a bigger stake, doubling up after a near-miss, raising the unit because the last three bets won: every one of those patterns turns a working method into a losing one. The maths is unforgiving because the variance is high: a 55% bettor loses more often than he wins in any given week. That is what variance looks like. Mistaking it for a broken method is how to abandon a working one.

What no tip can ever do is remove uncertainty. Tennis is a sport played by humans, on a surface, with a body that tires and a serve that misses by a centimetre. Every tip is a probability statement with a margin around it. Betting is not an income. A reader who treats it as one finds out what the variance costs.

Legality, regulation and the Gambling Commission

Tennis betting in Great Britain sits inside the Gambling Act 2005. The Gambling Commission, sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is the regulator. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based — sections 33 and 36 of the 2005 Act as amended. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute; if a brand serves British customers, the British licence is the test.

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and it is the only place a brand proves it is licensed. Licences are issued in categories: remote general betting standard (real events) is the main one for an online sportsbook, with remote general betting standard (virtual events), remote general betting limited, remote pool betting and remote betting intermediary (the exchange licence) sitting alongside. Domains prove nothing on their own — licensed operators use .com and .co.uk interchangeably, and several brands can run under one licensee.

Minimum age is 18. Identity is verified before the first deposit — name, address and date of birth, including where the first bet is a free bet or bonus. Northern Ireland sits outside the 2005 Act and has its own older law; a “GB licence” regulates Great Britain, not the UK as a whole. Financial spread betting is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission. There is no statutory list of permitted bets or markets. There is no state cap on stakes. Operators set their own maximum stakes and may restrict customers. There is no monopoly and no limit on the number of licences.

Offshore is a different question. 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 aimed at the operator under section 33 of the 2005 Act. There is no offence aimed at a customer who simply bets on an unlicensed site. What the customer loses is the layer of protection: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, no bonus cap, no British-consumer-protection regime at all. The Commission’s enforcement is disruption and removal — cease-and-desist, search-engine referrals, registrar and payment-provider work, and court-order DNS blocking powers. State the loss of protection. Never call it “legal to use”.

The safety net at licensed operators

Player protection in Great Britain runs through several routes, each one a licence condition rather than a choice.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. It covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate scheme.

Deposit limits are operator-set, with the customer choosing them. The Commission’s Remote Technical Standards require a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, the first phase of changes having applied since 31 October 2025, a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026.

Financial vulnerability checks apply at licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, since 28 February 2025. The check is a public-record check — bankruptcy or county court judgments — not an income check and not a credit reference check. Financial risk assessments — what the press calls “affordability checks” — are announced in a staged plan, with no start date.

Advertising sits with the ASA, not the Commission, through the CAP Code for non-broadcast and the BCAP Code for broadcast, with the LCCP marketing conditions bolted on. CAP Code section 16 keeps marketing socially responsible, keeps it off the screen for under-18s, and excludes anyone who is or seems to be under 25 from featuring in an ad (the rule is about who appears, not who may bet). Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x and ban mixed-product promotions. Credit cards are banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020; debit and bank-based payments are not.

Help is available through GamCare and the National Gambling Helpline, GambleAware, NHS gambling clinics, and Gamblers Anonymous.

Crypto, anonymity and tennis

A licensed tennis bookmaker in Great Britain verifies identity before the first deposit. There is no anonymous play on a GB-regulated site. The licensed brands do not run on cryptocurrency, and a coin-funded, no-KYC site is by definition not licensed.

What the crypto route actually offers is a different product, on a different licence. A Curaçao-licensed sportsbook taking bitcoin or ethereum deposits sits outside the British regime, in the same offshore category as any other unlicensed brand. A bettor who chooses it gets pseudonymous deposits, faster settlement and the absence of a credit-card or debit-card trail. The bettor also gives up the British protection layer: no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaints route, no bonus cap, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld. The blockchain records the payment. It does not insure the payout.

Inside the licensed market, no coin is processed. A reader who wants a coin-funded account must leave the GB regime, and the trade is exactly the trade the law makes: speed and pseudonymity for the loss of every British protection. Where a household-name brand advertises a “crypto deposit” alongside its UK product, the offshore and the British operations are usually two different companies on two different licences, with the British entity keeping its own rules. Read the small print on the entity, not the homepage.

Bonuses and free bets: what the marketing word is worth

“Free bet”, “risk-free”, “boosted odds”, “best odds guaranteed” — every one of those is a marketing word on top of a real offer with a real cost. The cost lives in the small print.

A welcome bonus is usually a matched amount in free bet credits on a first deposit. The headline is “Bet £10, Get £30 in free bets” or similar; the substance is a free bet whose stake is not paid back with a win. A £30 free bet at odds of 2.50 pays £30 × 1.50 = £45 in winnings — the £30 stake is gone. The book operator’s “in” is the margin the free bet is settled at; the reader’s “in” is the wagering requirement, the minimum price and the deadline. Wagering requirements on bonuses at GB-licensed operators are capped at 10x since 19 January 2026; mixed-product promotions are banned.

Best odds guaranteed is a different offer and a different cost. A bookmaker pays BOG on UK and Irish horse and greyhound racing — the industry shorthand for paying out at the starting price if the starting price is higher than the price the punter took. It is rare on tennis and rarer still across the board, because the margin the bookmaker writes into a price already gives it room; paying out at SP on top of that would not pencil.

A price boost on a tennis match is a heightened price on a specific line for a specific event. The cost is the same as on every other line — the bookmaker’s margin, plus the chance the boost is on a market where the bookmaker’s margin is already wider than usual. A punter who chases boosts without checking the underlying price is paying extra to take an extra-short line.

Accumulator insurance refunds a stake as a free bet when one leg of an accumulator loses. The cost is the bookmaker’s margin across every leg; the refund is a fraction of what an accumulator pays if it wins outright. A punter who treats insurance as a safety net is paying for a safety net that covers one outcome of a higher-priced product. The maths: a six-fold at average odds of 1.60 per leg has combined odds of about 16.8; the insurance pays a fraction of the stake back when one leg lets the winner. Insurance does not change the underlying probability; it changes what happens to one tail outcome.

The right way to read any offer is to ask what the punter gives up and what the punter gets back. A free bet whose stake is not returned gives up the stake; a matched bonus with a 10x wagering requirement gives up ten times the bonus in qualified bets at minimum price; a price boost on a wide-margin market gives up the margin difference. None of those offers is free. None of them is worthless either. The job is to know which one the punter is buying before the punter buys it.

Mobile, apps and the tennis slip

Tennis is a sport of in-match decisions — the underdog breaks serve, the favourite wins the tiebreak, the match goes long. The app is the slip. A tennis bettor who has to find a laptop for each live bet is a tennis bettor who is already out of the market.

The tennis apps of the GB-licensed brands cluster around the same skeleton: a sports menu, a tennis tab, in-play events pinned at the top, popular bets for the next 24 hours underneath, and a slip that builds singles, doubles and accumulators. What separates them is the live offering: in-play odds that update ball by ball, the depth of the set-by-set markets, the live scoreboard that sits inside the app rather than in a browser tab, and the cash-out button that lets the punter close a position mid-match.

A pre-match app is useful; an in-play app is what matters. The punter who cares about tennis specifically wants the app with the deepest set-betting lines, the fastest in-play updates and the live scoreboard built in. That is not the same as the app with the brightest homepage or the largest welcome bonus.

Live betting, cash out and the in-play tennis market

In-play tennis is a different product from pre-match tennis. A pre-match line is a price set once and held; an in-play line moves ball by ball. The bookmaker’s margin does not disappear — it usually widens — but the price reflects the live game. A player who breaks at 2-2 sees his price shorten; a server who holds from 0-40 sees his shorten too.

Cash out lets the punter close the bet at a price the bookmaker offers at that moment, rather than waiting for the match to finish. The cost is the spread the bookmaker writes into the cash-out price, which is wider than the price the same line would settle at. A punter who cashes out locks in a smaller return than the bet’s full payout; a punter who lets it run takes the risk of the next point. The question is the same as in trading: how much certainty is the certainty worth.

Tennis suits in-play betting unusually well because the structure is predictable. A first-set tiebreak, a deciding set, a long game on serve — each one is a discrete event the punter can price from the live game, and the bookmaker’s price moves with it. The risk is the temptation to over-bet a market the punter cannot watch: live betting from a screen is one thing, live betting from a notification is another.

Predictions, strategy and bankroll: the working parts

A tip sheet gives names. A working method gives a process. Form, surface, head-to-head, recent minutes on court, fitness, draw, motivation — each one a probability input. The job is to combine them into a number, then compare that number to the bookmaker’s price.

Bankroll discipline is the part that does not feel like skill. A flat unit stake — one to two per cent of the bank per bet — is what lets the variance wash through. A punter on a hot streak raising his unit is losing his edge; a punter on a cold streak doubling his unit is converting variance into loss. The numbers are unsentimental because the variance is unsentimental.

Specialisation is the third leg. A punter who follows women’s tennis on clay all season, who watches the form cycles of a 12-player pool, has a sharper prior than a punter who backs everyone everywhere. The narrow edge is what the bookmaker’s margin takes back on every bet. The wider the punter’s coverage, the harder that edge is to find.

There is no system that wins. Any book, website or tipster that promises one is selling something that does not exist. What exists is the work: the form chart, the surface splits, the live market reading, the disciplined stake, the patience to sit out the matches the punter cannot price. That work compounds over seasons. A “system” compounds into nothing.

Bet types and how the odds are built

The match winner market is the simplest: one line, two outcomes, a margin inside the price. A set-betting market has six lines in a best-of-three (2-0, 2-1, 0-2, 1-2 — the others settle on winner only). Handicap markets give the favourite a head start (minus 1.5 sets, for example) or the underdog a head start (plus 1.5 sets), with prices adjusted accordingly. Over/under total games is a count line — over or under a number of total games played in the match. Tiebreak markets ask whether a set reaches 6-6 and whether the match does. Outright markets price the tournament winner weeks in advance; the prices reflect the field.

Each line has its own margin. The bookmaker’s margin is the cut the bookmaker takes off every unit staked on the market, expressed as a percentage. It sits inside the price, not on top of it. For a two-way market at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90, the implied probabilities are 1/1.90 = 52.63% each, summing to 105.26%. The excess over 100% is the bookmaker’s margin: 5.26% on this market, meaning 94.74% of every unit staked is paid back to punters as winnings on average. A tighter two-way line of 1.85 / 1.95 has implied probabilities of 54.05% and 51.28%, summing to 105.33% — a slightly wider margin despite the better-looking prices. A market priced 1.91 / 1.91 sums to 104.71%, an overround of 4.71% and a margin of 4.5%.

A punter who picks the lower-margin market on the same selection is paying less to the bookmaker over the long run. A two-way line of 1.85 / 1.95 is a worse bet than 1.91 / 1.91 on the same match. The difference is invisible on the slip; it shows in the season’s return.

The calculation, in plain prose

A worked example is worth a paragraph of theory. Take a two-way tennis market priced at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90 — an illustrative example, not a quoted price. The implied probability of each side is one divided by 1.90, which is 52.63%. Summed across both sides, that is 105.26%. The excess over 100% — 5.26 percentage points — is the bookmaker’s margin on this market. As a band, that margin sits between roughly 3% on the deepest outright books and roughly 8% on the more thinly priced in-play lines; 5% is around the middle for a pre-match two-way tennis market.

The payout share is the inverse: 100% minus the margin, here 94.74%. Every £100 wagered on this market returns £94.74 to punters on average, with £5.26 retained by the bookmaker. A punter picking this market on the same match at the same price has paid 5.26% of stake as the cost of the service.

The implication for a punter is straightforward. A bet priced at 1.90 with a 50% true chance has expected return of 0.5 × £100 = £50 on a £100 stake — losing 50% of stake as expected value. The bookmaker’s margin does not remove that loss; it deepens it by 2.63% of stake on each side. The punter does not need a tip to know the punter is paying the bookmaker. The punter needs the tip to find the match where the punter’s price exceeds the true price by enough to clear that margin.

The ten bookmakers

The brands below all hold a Gambling Commission remote licence for general betting on real events and are GAMSTOP participants. Each is reviewed on what it offers a tennis bettor specifically, with a verdict on where it suits and where it does not.

BetVictor

BetVictor’s app carries Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing and a BetFinder feature for working the racing card. Smart Stats sits alongside. The tennis offering is broad, with match winner, set betting, handicap and outright markets priced across the ATP, WTA and ITF tours. The in-play product is solid rather than outstanding — the scoreboard updates without drama, the markets are priced, the slip builds cleanly. For a tennis punter whose primary interest is the men’s tour, the depth is enough. The horse racing frills (BOG, BetFinder) are racing frills; the tennis bettor who never picks a horse racing runner is paying the development cost without using the product. Verdict: a sound all-rounder for the tennis bettor who likes an occasional racing flutter.

Betting with dabble

Dabble’s headline welcome is “Bet £10, Get £10 in free bets” on a first deposit for new customers, with a minimum price, a 7-day expiry and the stake not returned on the free bet. The app is built around social features — the brand made its name on a feed-style slip — and the tennis offering is mainstream: match winner, set betting, handicap, over/under games. In-play is competent. The price depth on Challenger-level events is thinner than on the bigger brands. A tennis punter who likes to back the second-tier tours will find fewer lines than at bet365 or Betfair. Verdict: the welcome is a fair price for the punt, and the social slip suits a punt who wants the community angle as much as the line.

Betting with bet365

bet365 is the in-play benchmark. Live streaming of events worldwide, Match Live multi-sport tracker, Bet Track to follow bets in play, and the deepest in-play tennis offering on a British-licensed app. The tennis outright book is priced across the full calendar, the in-play markets run ball by ball, and the cash-out button sits where it should. The slip is built for accumulators as well as singles. Verdict: the tennis bettor who lives on the in-play markets has no better option among the available bookmakers.

Betting with Betway

Betway’s welcome is £40 in free bet tokens — four lots of £10 — credited on settlement of a first bet of at least £10 at minimum odds of 2.0, with a 7-day expiry and debit card deposits only. The tennis coverage is mainstream: ATP, WTA and Grand Slams with match winner, handicap, set betting and outright. In-play is functional rather than best-in-class. The brand’s other sports — football in particular — are stronger than its tennis, which is a useful context for the tennis-only punter. Verdict: a competent second book for the tennis punter, with a welcome that rewards a £10 opener.

Betting with 10bet

10bet’s sportsbook covers football, tennis and horse racing, with Cash out, Bet Builder and Live Streaming. The tennis offering is mainstream; the Bet Builder is the draw for the punter who likes same-match accumulators on sets, games and handicaps. The live streaming offering is more limited than bet365’s. Verdict: a good fit for the Bet Builder user on tennis specifically, less so for the punter whose priority is live streaming across the ATP and WTA tours.

Betting with BetGoodwin

BetGoodwin pays Best Odds Guaranteed on all UK and Irish horse and greyhound racing, up to £1,000 per customer. The product is racing-led — the parent company is a long-established bookmaker — and the tennis offering, while present, sits behind the racing book in depth. Verdict: a tennis bettor with a racing habit will find the BOG and the racing depth useful. A tennis-only punter has better options.

Betting with Octobet

Octobet pays Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing, up to £150 per customer per race. The tennis offering is mainstream rather than deep. Verdict: a brand for the racing-led punter; the tennis bettor has no strong reason to make Octobet a primary book.

Betting with Paddy Power

Paddy Power’s tennis app offers Bet Builder+, Popular Bet Builders, Super Sub (the bet rolls over to the replacement if a selected player is substituted), expanded Win More markets and player and ACCA stats. The product is built for the builder punter — the one who likes to stack same-match markets. The price-boost programme is heavier than at most competitors. Verdict: the best fit for the Bet Builder punter on tennis, with the price-boost programme as a second draw.

Betting with VBet

VBet’s app is published by SCGO Limited and offers Bet Builder, pre-match and in-play betting, live streaming and a live calendar with results and stats. The tennis offering is mainstream. The brand is less established than the household names at the top of the market, and the in-play depth on the second-tier tours is thinner than at bet365. A tennis bettor with a Bet Builder habit will find a usable product. Verdict: a competent alternative for the Bet Builder punter who wants a second book.

Betting with Betfred

Betfred’s app features Bet Builder, Sub Switch, Racing Post data, Extra Places, live casino and bingo. The product is the broadest in the comparison — a full bookmaker with casino, bingo and the racing extras. The tennis offering is mainstream. Verdict: a sound all-rounder for the tennis bettor who wants a single wallet for racing, casino and tennis, with Betfred’s racing extras the primary reason to choose it over a tennis-specialist brand.

The bottom line

The bookmaker’s margin sits inside every price. A punter who knows the margin — who reads the implied probabilities, who picks the lower-margin market on the same selection — pays less for the service. The edge, when there is one, is the price relative to the true probability, and the price is what every British-licensed tennis bookmaker publishes across the same calendar.

No tip is certain. No system wins. The work is the form chart, the surface splits, the live market reading, the disciplined stake, the patience to sit out the matches the punter cannot price. The ten brands above are all licensed, all GAMSTOP participants, all offering tennis markets on the same calendar. Which one a punter picks is a matter of which feature matters — in-play depth, Bet Builder, racing frills, social slip — and which welcome the punter is happy to pay for.

Frequently asked questions

How do you bet on tennis?

A tennis bet is a stake on the outcome of a match, a set, a game or a tournament. Place the bet through a licensed bookmaker, choose the match from the tennis menu, select the market (match winner, set betting, handicap, total games, outright), enter the stake and confirm. The wagering requirement, the minimum price and the deadline on any bonus are set by the operator’s terms. The bet settles when the match, set or game is over; an outright settles when the tournament is over.

How does tennis betting work?

A bookmaker publishes a price for each outcome of a tennis market. The price is the return per £1 staked, decimal form. The implied probability is the inverse of the price. The bookmaker’s margin sits inside the price: the sum of implied probabilities across all outcomes of a market is greater than 100%, and the excess is the margin. A punter who wins takes the stake back plus winnings at the price; a punter who loses loses the stake. In-play betting works the same way with prices that update ball by ball.

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

A value bet is a price higher than the probability of the outcome justifies, once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. If the true chance is 60% — implied decimal odds of 1.67 — and a bookmaker offers 1.85, the difference is the value. No tip is certain because no tip gives the true probability; every tip is a probability statement with a margin around it, and the punter who bets on it is paying the bookmaker’s margin on top. A tip can be the difference between a winning season and a losing one, or it can be wrong. The work is to find the matches where the punter’s price exceeds the true price by enough to clear the margin.

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

The bookmaker’s margin is the cut the bookmaker takes off every unit staked on a market, expressed as a percentage. It sits inside the price. For a two-way market at decimal odds of 1.90 and 1.90, the implied probabilities are 52.63% each, summing to 105.26%. The excess over 100% is the margin: 5.26%. A punter picking the lower-margin market on the same selection pays less for the service. A two-way line of 1.85 / 1.95 sums to 105.33% — a wider margin than 1.91 / 1.91 at 104.71%, despite the better-looking prices.

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

The return on a winning bet is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 2.50 returns £25 — £10 stake plus £15 profit. A combination bet multiplies the odds of the legs into one price; a £10 treble at legs of 1.80, 1.90 and 2.00 returns £10 × 1.80 × 1.90 × 2.00 = £68.40 — £10 stake plus £58.40 profit. The free bet’s stake is usually not returned with a win: a £30 free bet at odds of 2.50 returns £30 × 1.50 = £45 in winnings, the £30 stake is gone.

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