For years the majority of bets on UK horse racing have been settled at Starting Price (SP). These odds are determined by the on-course bookmakers and represent prices available in the betting ring at the time the race started.
Get Better Odds Than SP
One of the best ways to make your betting more profitable is to consistently achieve better odds for your selections than the returned SP. There are several ways in which this can be achieved, but they each have their disadvantages:
For many the best option may therefore be to bet at Betfair Starting Prices (BSP). You can place your bets as early as you like and wont need to be available just prior to the start of the race. There is no restriction on the size of your bet (although if you place really large bets, it may affect the Betfair SP odds). You are not guaranteed to beat the odds of the regular SP, but the BSP is determined by balancing bets from customers, who want to back a horse, with those who wish to lay the horse. Because there is no bookmakers edge built into the odds being offered, it is likely you'll achieve better odds than those returned at SP.
Laying Horses To Lose
Punters who lay horses to lose have always had the problem of knowing when best to lay their bets. Especially difficult for anyone having to work and not able to place their bets during the most active betting period, 10 minutes before the start of each race.
The choice when placing the bets early has always been, should you take the odds on offer at the time or should you ask for odds in the hope of getting your bets matched. When laying a horse early that gets well backed, you can often find the odds you got matched at are well above SP. Given the betting market support, these horses often go on to win the race and you find yourself losing more than you needed to.
Proofed Results Based On Betfair SP
BSP is now used in the proofing area to illustrate the tipsters results performance. For lay bets the BSP represents a definitive price that anyone could have received for their lay bets and therefore most accurately shows profits that could have been achieved following the tipsters selections.
For selections to back results performance is still shown based on SP, but in addition results are also shown based on BSP, to illustrate the additional profit that could have been achieved by getting the better prices.
The Introduction of Betfair SP
Betfair introduced SP prices for UK and Irish racing on the following dates:
13th December 2007 | UK Win Bets |
10th February 2008 | Irish Win Bets |
18th February 2008 | UK Place Bets |
28th February 2008 | Irish Place Bets |
It is from these dates that BSP odds are used for the proofed results. Prior to that odds of 15% above SP are assumed for the BSP comparison.