Ante post betting in Great Britain

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Ante post bets sit on the betting slip weeks or months before the race goes off. The longer the market has been open, the more can change — a horse pulled out, a trainer switches targets, the ground goes soft. Each of those events has a settled outcome under the bookmaker’s rules, and almost every one of them costs the punter. This page walks through how an ante post bet is built, where the price hides its margin, which GB-licensed bookmakers carry future-racing markets, and what to check before placing one. Currency is £ throughout; odds are decimal unless stated.

Current as of October 30, 2026 against the Gambling Commission’s public register for the licences cited below.

What ante post betting actually is

Ante post — sometimes written “antepost”, sometimes hyphenated, always two words — is the term for fixed-odds betting placed on a race or other event before the day of the race itself. A bet placed at 9 AM on the day, even on a horse in the same race, is no longer ante post; it counts as the regular fixed-odds market. The line Sky Bet draws in its horse-racing help pages is “at least a day before the race” — that is the working definition most GB bookmakers use, even where their own wording differs in the small print.

Most ante post markets are horse races, but the label covers any future event priced early. Grand National, Royal Ascot, Cheltenham Festival and the spring Classics all run with ante post boards open across the autumn and winter. Greyhound meetings run ante post too. Some bookmakers extend the term to outright markets in football, darts, golf and rugby — the winner of the Premier League in September, the World Darts Champion before Christmas. Mechanically those are the same kind of market: a price today, settled at a defined point in the future, with a settled answer when the event is over.

The reason the distinction matters is the rule book. In ordinary on-the-day betting, a horse that does not run usually makes the bet void and returns the stake. Ante post rules start from the opposite default: unless the bookmaker states otherwise, a selection that does not run loses its stake. The whole product is built to a different risk share between punter and bookmaker, and the difference shows up only when something goes wrong.

Where the licence frame sits around ante post

Betting on British horse racing — including ante post — is the GB bookmaker’s stock in trade, and any operator taking ante post bets from customers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission remote licence. The framework runs through the Gambling Act 2005 (covering Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales) and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, which put the test at the point of consumption: the licence sits with wherever the customer is, not wherever the company is registered. A Malta or Curaçao registration is not a substitute; the brand has to hold the GB licence if it wants to take bets from a customer in a British postcode. Northern Ireland sits under its own older law and is outside the Act, so the term “GB-licensed” is the right one to use.

There is no statutory list of markets that an ante post bookmaker can or cannot offer. The operator holds a licence for a category — for horse-racing ante post that is normally “remote general betting standard (real events)” — and runs its own markets under that licence. Categories include general betting on real events, general betting on virtual events, pool betting, and the betting-intermediary licence that covers exchanges. The Commission’s public register is searchable by trading name, domain or account number and is the definitive check on whether a brand holds a licence; never take a brand’s homepage word for it. The minimum age is 18, and licensed sites verify name, address and date of birth before the first deposit can be made or a bet placed — including with a free bet or bonus credit — under rules in force since 7 May 2019.

The offshore mirror-image is worth naming in plain words. A site without a GB licence can take bets from a GB customer in technical breach of section 33 of the 2005 Act, but the regulator’s enforcement runs at the operator, not the customer: cease-and-desist notices, payments and registrar disruption, and court-order DNS blocking powers the Commission has been given or is about to receive. The cost to the customer is loss of protection — no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and no claim under the new bonus rules or the £150 financial-vulnerability check. None of that is “safe” or “unsafe” in a slogan sense; it is a different deal, and it is one a reader is choosing knowingly when they sign up.

Safer gambling around ante post

Most ante post bets sit on a slip for weeks. The window for impulse is small; the window for chasing one horse, one bad run, one lost ante post wager into a fresh one is large. Three tools sit around that.

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion can be for six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; once the minimum period ends, the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; high-street bookmakers run a separate in-shop scheme.

Deposit limits are the customer’s first lever. Operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame (the Commission’s Remote Technical Standards, RTS 12) — the first changes applied on 31 October 2025, a second phase has been postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether that second phase is live should be checked directly. There is no state-set ceiling for betting; limits are a personal choice, not a regulator’s number.

A financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4, in force since 30 August 2024) applies to licensed remote betting once a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals go over £150 in a rolling 30 days (the threshold date is 28 February 2025). The check looks at public records such as bankruptcy and county court judgments; it is not a credit reference check and not an income check. Wider “financial risk assessments” (the affordability checks reported in the press) were announced by the Commission on 7 July 2026 in staged form with no start date — that is the current state of the rule, not a fait accompli.

Help outside the betting site: GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware funds treatment and education; the NHS runs a small network of gambling clinics; Gamblers Anonymous runs meetings. The numbers are listed at the foot of every licensed site’s safer-gambling page.

Tips, forecasts and the strategies that are not

A page on ante post draws a crowd looking for tips and forecasts the way rain draws slugs. Two honest readings sit behind that.

The first is that “tip” is editorial product, sold by newspapers, paid-tipsters and tipster platforms. Some have track records; many do not; the few that publish audited records to a recognised standard like the Association of Tennis Professionals model only cover certain sports. The punt before any tip is to read the record and ask what the record measures. A tipster whose picks are priced up so they settle at the bookmaker’s starting price is reporting SP performance; an each-way tipster with a 30% strike-rate stat is reporting winners-to-runners, which can flatter slow-grass specialists. The arithmetic that turns a winning strike-rate into a paying strike-rate assumes an average price and an average each-way place share, and that assumption is where many tips meet reality.

The second is that ante post strategy is bankroll management, not prediction. Few bettors can call a National Hunt novice hurdle winner at 25/1 with enough consistency to matter; many can run a ten-horse ante post portfolio at one per week for a Cheltenham meeting and outlay less than they would spend on a single multi-leg day-race accumulator. The maths is the standard Kelly-fraction thinking: divide each stake by the difference between your true odds estimate and the bookmaker’s, expressed as a fraction of that bookmaker price; stake accordingly. That is mechanical, not predictive.

What a strategy cannot do is bend the margin. Even the sharpest tipster has to back his or her view through a bookmaker’s price, and the price carries the bookmaker’s slice. For any market, the margin is built into every decimal odds shown, and a “best odds guaranteed” promotion does not erase the margin so much as nudge it on the winning side. The hard fact is that every strategy edge lives inside a price that already pays for the bookmaker and pays the tax.

A page that promises tips wins readers for one round and loses them for the next, because the next round is what an honest tip is built on. Read the form, place fewer bets than the form says, and treat price as closely as you treat selection. That is what a Cheltenham ante-post betting strategy that survives a season looks like; most of what is sold on the same subject is the upper-floor version of what every page stands on. The keenest conclusion of all is that the market for tips is a market like any other: the buyer of a tip pays the seller for it, and the trade is settled in punts, not pounds.

How prices, accas and Rule 4 work in ante post betting

Decimal and fractional odds

GB bookmakers default to fractional odds (5/1, 11/4, evens). A few run decimal by default or let the punter switch. Decimal odds of 6.00 mean that a £10 stake returns £60, of which £50 is profit; fractional 5/1 means £10 returns £60 the same way. The conversion is mechanical: divide the fractional numerator by the fractional denominator and add one (5/1 → 5 ÷ 1 + 1 = 6.00). Odds-on prices (shorter than evens) sit below 2.00 decimal and below 1/1 fractional. This page uses decimal odds throughout.

Singles, accumulators and each-way

A single is one selection. A double is two; a treble is three; an accumulator or “acca” is four or more. Each multiplies the legs into one price, so a treble at 3.00, 2.50 and 4.00 has combined odds of 30.00 — £10 pays £300, of which £290 is profit. Each-way is two bets of equal stake so the stake doubles; one half backs the horse to win, the other half backs the horse to be placed (terms vary by race type and number of runners, with handicaps getting lower place terms than small-field non-handicaps). Place-only, conditional and forecast bets are not accepted on ante post markets by the bookmakers that publish the rule.

Rule 4

Rule 4 is the deduction applied to winning bets when a horse is withdrawn from a race after the betting has started. The basic rate is a percentage taken from the gross winnings: 5p in the pound for the first withdrawal in a 5/1 or longer race, scaling up to 90p in the pound on a hot favourite. The deduction applies whether the winner is the favourite or the outsider. On a long-odds race the deduction can shave a tenth off a big-priced winner’s payout. Rule 4 is not unique to ante post, but it bites harder on early markets — the longer the book has been open, the more chance a horse has been rerouted, rerouted again, or balloted out.

Best Odds Guaranteed

Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) — a price upgrade on UK and Irish racing — is the bookmaker paying out the higher of the price taken and the starting price on the day. William Hill pays BOG on UK and Irish racing from 8 AM on the day of the race, on both single and multiple bets; the brand is explicit that BOG does not apply to ante-post, tote or pari-mutuel bets. Copybet pays BOG all day on all UK and Irish racing and pays first-past-the-post on horse racing even when the winner is later disqualified. Other brands accept the standard exception: BOG and ante post are largely separate products. A bettor who wants BOG protection on a race should wait until the day; a bettor who wants the longer ante-post price and the chance the runner remains competitive pays the ante-post price with no BOG parachute.

Cash out, bet builders and live odds

Cash out settles a bet before the event is over — at the live price the bookmaker is showing, less a margin. The cash-out price is built from the same model that sets the live odds, and the price the bettor sees is rarely the price a fresh bettor would see on the same outcome at that minute. Bet builders, the same-game multi, combine markets from one match into a single price. Bet365’s Bet Builder+, for instance, combines pre-match and in-play markets from the same fixture; 10bet runs Bet Builder alongside Cash Out and Live Streaming. Neither is unique to ante post; both are widely available and both sit on a margin the live odds already carry.

A walkthrough: placing and settling an ante post bet

The mechanical shape of an ante post bet is the same on every GB-licensed app; only the bookmaker’s house rules and market depth change.

1. Open an account and verify identity. A GB-licensed operator checks name, address and date of birth before the first deposit. The punter uploads a passport or driving licence, sometimes a proof of address, and the operator runs a PEP and sanctions check. Until that completes, no deposit clears, no free bet credits, no wagering.

1. Pick a market. On a horse-racing app the ante-post tab opens to a list of meetings in the weeks ahead: Royal Ascot, the Cheltenham Festival, the Grand National meeting at Aintree, the spring Classics. Selections are listed alphabetically with a decimal or fractional price next to each. Long-odds names carry the heftier prices; field size and course distance cut into the depth of the market.

1. Add a selection to the bet slip. The slip shows the selection, the price at that moment, the unit stake and a return-on-win figure. Adding a second selection switches the slip to multiple mode, multiplying the two prices into one; adding more selections multiplies further. Each-way ticks double the stake and split it into win and place halves; place terms show on the slip when the race type and runner count have settled. Place-only, conditional and forecast stake structures are flagged as not accepted on ante-post.

1. Place the bet. The slip confirms the price taken; settle and the bet shows in the open-bets section at the price taken, not the current price. That detail — “settled at the price when placed” — is the rule most ante-post disputes turn on later.

1. Wait. Some weeks, some months. BOG does not apply. A horse is rerouted or pulled out, a trainer changes the target, the ground shifts; each move has a rule applied. In an ante-post accumulator, a leg that is balloted out or eliminated does not void the whole bet; the multi-leg bet runs on the remaining legs at their original prices. A treble becomes a double; a double becomes a single. If one of the remaining legs has a Rule 4 deduction when it wins, the deduction applies to the gross return.

1. Settle. The race goes off. The bet pays out at the price taken (less Rule 4 if applicable) on the winner, or pays nothing on the losers. In a non-runner scenario the standing rule bites: a single ante-post bet on a non-runner is a loser unless the bookmaker has stated otherwise; a non-runner in an accumulative ante-post bet is struck off the multi-leg and the multi runs at the reduced size. If the race is abandoned or moved to a different course, the bet is void and the stake returns.

That walkthrough is the common path. Bookmakers print small differences — some accept each-way on ante-post accumulators, some do not; some will void the bet when a horse is rerouted to a different race at the same meeting, others treat that as a loser — and the brand’s own rule page is the version that pays at settlement.

Where the bookmaker’s margin sits in the price

The bookmaker’s margin (also known as overround or “vig”) is the sum built into every set of prices across one market. It is what pays the bookmaker and what the punter pays for the privilege of placing a bet. The cleanest illustration is a two-way market — a tennis match priced at 1.90 / 1.90 decimal (each runner 9/10).

Take a 1.90 / 1.90 decimal line. The implied probabilities are 1/1.90 on each side, which is just over 52.6%. That sums to roughly 105.3%, not 100%. The 5.3-percentage-point gap is the margin. For a balanced book the payout share sits at 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) = roughly 95.0%, leaving a margin of roughly 5.0%. State the result as a band, not a single figure: for a two-way line in this shape the margin usually sits between roughly 4.5% and 6.0% across the standard bookmaker set, depending on how the firm prices its top markets and how competitive the line is.

The wider the gap between the implied probabilities and 100%, the more the bookmaker keeps, and the harder the punter has to work to overcome that margin in his or her favour. Markets with three or more runners — the 1X2 of a football match or a 20-runner Grand National — sum implied probabilities well above 100% before the race is even priced: a typical Grand National book at SP holds 130% or more. An ante post market priced a year out sits deeper still, because information is thin and bookmakers hedge cautiously.

The margin is invisible in any single price but unavoidable in the line as a whole. The cost of an accumulator across multiple events is the sum of every leg’s margin, which is why a five-leg acca with 5% margin on each leg carries roughly a 23% margin on the combined price. Smaller-margin books are not always the better bettor — depth, prices on outsiders and BOG coverage matter too — but the margin is the one number that resets the comparison to a common scale.

A practical reading: if the price looks generous, ask what the rest of the market looks like. A stand-alone price on a Cheltenham outsider can feel generous in isolation and still sit inside a market that takes a tenth off every winning slip. The margin is the price the punter pays on top of the bet’s risk; it does not show on the slip and never returns.

Ten GB-licensed bookmakers for ante post betting

The ten brands below hold a Gambling Commission remote licence for general betting on real events, the category under which ante-post horse-racing markets run. Brands listed under the same parent company operate as part of that company and are not separate operators; the table lists each Commission account once. Several of these brands are best known for on-the-day racing but carry the same future-race boards as their established rivals.

Each brand is presented with the published detail of its licence, the operating company and what its own terms say about ante-post, future-racing or outright markets. Where a brand publishes a non-runner rule or a price-promotion caveat in its help pages, that text is reflected here. The account number is the field to use on the Commission’s public register.

Fitzdares

Fitzdares runs a premium betting proposition under its own licence and licensee. The licence confirms a remote general betting standard (real events) category, which is the category for ante-post horse racing. The app lists ante-post markets on horse racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf and American football, with cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s, specials, in-play live odds and — implicit in a brand with this depth — Best Odds Guaranteed on its racing coverage. For a punter who wants ante-post on race meetings but also wants outright bets on Premier League, golf majors or the Grand Slam in tennis on the same book, Fitzdares covers that range. The smaller operator footprint is the trade: fewer markets on lower-tier football, less depth on US racing than the largest books. Suite for the bettor who wants a single place for top-class sport across codes.

Tote

Tote is the GB pool-betting brand now held by TDCO Limited under licence account 54779. Tote’s core product is pool betting — customers bet into a pool with a dividend declared after the race — and the Tote brand runs fixed-odds horse racing alongside the pools. Ante-post horse racing markets appear on Tote’s sportsbook and are settled under the brand’s sportsbook rules; pool products are separate and settled on the pool dividend. For a punter who likes the pools (placepot, scoop6-style products) and wants a single book for both pools and ante-post, Tote is the cleanest fit; those who prioritise a deep fixed-odds book or Bet Builder functionality will find more variety elsewhere.

Geoff Banks

GB Sports Advisors Limited operates Geoff Banks under their standard remote betting licence (account 54095). The Geoff Banks app states live in-play prices and ante-post prices on future events. As an independent racing-led bookmaker, Geoff Banks offers a focused alternative; the trade-off is that they carry fewer markets on the lower tiers compared to market leaders.

Lottoland

EU Lotto Limited operates Lottoland under their standard remote betting licence (account 38991). Lottoland is best known for lottery betting — backing the outcome of overseas lottery draws — and the UK app combines that product with casino and scratchcards alongside a sportsbook. The sportsbook on the Lottoland app carries ante-post markets on major sport and racing, though with less breadth than a sport-first operator. It serves customers interested in lottery betting who want access to sports ante-post, but pure sports bettors will find more depth elsewhere.

Betmaster

Betmaster holds a remote general betting standard (real events) licence (account 65699) held by BM Solutions GB Ltd. The site confirms the licence on its home page and runs a sportsbook and casino together. Sportsbook ante-post markets on football and horse racing are typical of the brand. Betmaster suits users seeking a combined sportsbook and casino on one clean licence, though dedicated racing punters may prefer the deeper boards at the specialists.

10bet

Blue Star Planet Limited operates 10bet under their standard remote betting licence (account 43173). The 10bet app carries football, tennis and horse racing, with Cash Out, Bet Builder and Live Streaming. Ante-post horse racing sits on the horse-racing tab; the football ante-post offering covers outrights. It is a feature-rich sportsbook suitable for football and racing, though users should compare margins against lean-priced alternatives.

bet365

Hillside (UK Sports) ENC operates bet365 under the company’s remote general betting standard (real events) licence (account 55148). bet365’s product set is the deepest in the GB market: Bet Builder+ (combining markets from one event into a single bet, available pre-match and in-play), Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, daily Bet Boosts, full in-play and Live Streaming across major sport. Ante-post horse racing and football are present with the brand’s own non-runner rules. It is the natural choice for the serious ante-post bettor, with only the occasional specialist book offering a thinner margin on a specific market.

Copybet

Copybet UK Limited operates Copybet under their remote general betting standard (real events) licence (account 53774). The Copybet app pays Best Odds Guaranteed all day, every day on UK and Irish racing — a step wider than the bookmakers that pay BOG only from mid-morning — and pays first past the post on horse racing even when the winner is later disqualified. Ante-post markets are listed under horse racing. Copybet is a strong option for punters valuing the BOG window and first-past-the-post policy, while bet365 maintains a wider overall product set.

London Bet

Thistle Bet Limited operates London Bet under the company’s remote general betting standard (real events) licence (account 66162). The app carries a sportsbook with ante-post horse racing and football outrights. London Bet fits those seeking a local-facing brand with full GB licensing discipline; users requiring greater depth across sports should consider larger sportsbooks.

BetMGM

LeoVegas Gaming PLC operates BetMGM under their standard remote betting licence (account 39198). The BetMGM UK app carries casino and a sportsbook with ante-post markets on horse racing and football. The app store listing details a new-customer sports welcome promotion, which is described here as one example of how BetMGM packages its sign-up offer for the UK market — promotions change, conditions apply, and the brand’s own terms page is the live version. It is a suitable option for those seeking casino products alongside a sportsbook, though ante-post racing specialists might prefer dedicated racing brands.

Picking the right ante post bookmaker

Three tests sit across the comparison.

Test one: licence status. Every name in the table above holds a Gambling Commission remote licence; the account number on the public register settles the question. A brand on a betting page that does not appear on the register should be treated as not licensed and the page’s other content set aside accordingly.

Test two: market depth. The racing-first operators (bet365, Fitzdares, Tote, Copybet) carry the deepest horse racing boards; the larger sportsbooks (bet365, 10bet) carry the deepest outrights across football, tennis and golf. A bettor who wants Premier League winner and Champion Hurdle on the same slip should look at the larger sportsbooks; a bettor who wants five ante-post bets on a single Cheltenham meeting has many more options.

Test three: margin and promotions. Margin is invisible in any single price; shop three books on the same race at the same time and the overround varies. Best Odds Guaranteed narrows the gap on the day of the race, but excludes ante post on most books. Other promotion-led products (enhanced odds, acca insurance, Bet Builder Boosts) carry their own conditions. The rule is to compare the price on each leg, not the headline, and to read the terms on anything that sounds generous. Where the headline reads “free bet” or “guaranteed”, the headline is doing work the small print undoes.

What a Cheltenham ante post strategy actually looks like

Cheltenham Festival is the largest National Hunt meeting of the GB calendar and the meeting that draws the largest ante-post books across the autumn and winter. A practical strategy for Festival ante post is short:

• Set a stake per runner and stick to it. Pick a unit stake (say 0.5% of bank) and apply it across all ante-post bets in the campaign. The dispersion in ante-post betting is high; consistency in stake is what keeps a bank alive through the no-go weeks.
• Bet the number of runners, not the number of races. A 28-race meeting offers 28 ante-post chances; even one runner per race with a £5 stake is £140 across the meeting, against a bank that should be hundreds of pounds deep.
• Avoid each-way on long-odds outsiders. Each-way halves the win bet and pays 1/4 or 1/5 of the win odds on the place. The place terms on long-odds outsiders are thin and the win terms are generous — straight win on the outlay usually pays better.
• Read the non-runner rule on each bookmaker. A brand whose non-runner rule moves the bet to SP on the day is a different bet from a brand that voids. Sky Bet’s standard rule is that a non-runner in an ante-post single makes the bet a loser; its multi-leg rule strikes the leg out and runs the multi at reduced size. Different books do it differently.
• Watch Rule 4 carefully in the final fortnight. When a horse is withdrawn close to the Festival, Rule 4 applies and any winning bet loses a percentage of the gross return. Heavy favourites cause bigger Rule 4 deductions.
• Don’t chase. The single largest source of ante-post losses is increasing the stake on a horse the bookmaker has lengthened. Lengthened prices reflect informed money on the betting exchange (and on rival books); chasing lengthening odds is a known pattern of bad bets.

That strategy does not promise winners. Nothing on this page can promise winners; that is the one promise every tipster page makes and none of them keeps. The strategy keeps the punter in the market through losing weeks and concentrates the staking on moments where his edge is real.

Responsible gambling, in plain words

A book on ante post is the longest-running product in the sport-betting market, and the long horizon is what makes it dangerous. A punter who can stop after the bad week at Exeter in February and come back for the Champion Hurdle in March is a different punter from one who cannot. Set a deposit limit before the campaign starts, use a calendar reminder to check bankroll mid-season, and stop the slip at the limit. GAMSTOP is the lever for the customer who wants the bookmaker’s site to stop offering bets for a set period; GamCare’s National Gambling Helpline is the next stop after that.

The page will not run a tip on a winner of any race. The tip market sells a product the buyer thinks he or she is buying; the seller knows he or she cannot deliver. The honest answer to “who will win the Gold Cup” is “I do not know and neither does anyone else”, and the second-most-honest answer is “the price the bookmaker is offering reflects every informed view already in the market, plus the margin”.

Frequently asked questions

What is an ante post bet?

An ante post bet is a fixed-odds bet placed at least a day before the race or event runs. Most ante-post markets in GB betting are horse races — Cheltenham, Royal Ascot, the Grand National — and the market is priced up weeks or months ahead. The defining mechanic is the non-runner rule: under most GB bookmakers’ standing rules an ante-post single on a horse that does not run is a losing bet, while in the day-of-race market the same selection would usually make the bet void with the stake returned.

What is ante post betting?

Ante post betting is the practice of placing those bets — placing fixed-odds wagers on future events through a licensed bookmaker, settling at a price taken when the bet is placed. The product covers horse racing, greyhound racing and outright markets on other sports; the same Commonwealth spelling “antepost” is widely used in GB and Irish bookmakers’ rule pages. An ante post bet is settled at the price taken, less Rule 4 if a non-runner triggers a deduction; an ante-post accumulator with one leg balloted out runs at reduced size rather than voiding.

Does Rule 4 apply to ante post bets?

Rule 4 can apply to ante-post bets when a horse is withdrawn from a race after the ante-post market has been priced and the bet is still open. Rule 4 is a deduction from gross winnings on winning bets and runs from around 5p in the pound for the first withdrawal to 90p in the pound for a hot favourite. Rule 4 typically does not apply when the field is reduced for an ante-post bet that has already been struck because the bet has been taken at a specific price; the deduction is more usual in the day-of-race market.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

Every licensed GB bookmaker is on the Commission’s public register, which can be searched by trading name, domain or account number. The register entry shows the licence number, the categories the licence covers (for ante-post this is “remote general betting standard (real events)”) and the licence holder. A page that claims a GB licence but does not appear on the register should be treated as unlicensed regardless of what its homepage says. Checking is quick — a single search by trading name resolves it.

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

For a single bet, return = stake × decimal odds, and net profit = stake × (decimal odds − 1). So a £10 bet at decimal odds 6.00 returns £60, of which £50 is profit. For a combination bet (accumulator), the odds multiply across the legs: a treble at 3.00, 2.50 and 4.00 has combined odds of 30.00, and a £10 stake returns £300. The bet settles at the price taken when the bet was struck, not the current price; that detail is the source of most accumulator disputes.

Content created by the «Lowdepositbetting.com» team