Within 6 years we used our Betfair API to price up all our horse racing products with a human simply to oversee the process. I started working at a time when Betfair had just reached significant liquidity levels and could not possibly be ignored if only because of the ever increasing numbers of arbitrage bettors. Odds compilers were initially split on the prospects of Betfair and certainly on its uses with regards to compiling prices. I was fortunate enough to work with men who had watched thousands of hours of racing and could pick out the smallest of nuances about how a horse was ridden or the strategy of a given trainer however, I was also fortunate enough to work with people who were able to break down sports into their fundamental inputs and turn those inputs into probabilities both before and during events. Odds compiling has steadily become more and more about databases, statistics and mathematical models and less about personal experience, intuition and feel. It is with good reason that many fixed odds bettors take a look at the spread betting firms prices as a secondary check before placing their bets. This was true then and the sports spread betting industry still leads the way now either through employees who have gone on to devise the models of other bookmakers or through companies such as Sporting Solutions, a spin off from Sporting Index where they sell in-running prices to other bookmakers. While none of this makes me particularly good at odds compiling compared to another it does mean I was constantly at the forefront of technological advancements in the industry. It was also IG Index who first invented the dreaded close out button on the doomed to failure fixed odds betting product Extrabet. You could oppose an outcome in sports spread betting before you could lay on Betfair and you could bet in-running online on the spreads before any of the fixed odds bookmakers. For those of you unfamiliar with spread betting please go to Sporting Index’s website and go to their training section to get an idea of what is involved. My perspective on odds compiling comes from spread betting and this is important because the spread betting industry is responsible for every significant change in odds creation of the last 25 years. First I will look at odds compiling and how it has changed over the past fifteen years and also try to tackle the subject of bookmakers copying prices off each other, which seems to be a hot topic. In each of the following articles I hope to tackle the subjects from a past, present and future perspective. I am all for this if it is good natured but do please remember these are just my opinions and I happily respect those belonging to other people. I am seeing more and more articles by industry insiders not to mention television documentaries and they all seem to generate a lot of heated debate. When describing odds I will use decimal odds and when talking money it will be in UK pounds and pence just for my own ease. For accounts in another name used for putting on bets I rather like the term “Bowler” I assume this is an Australian phrase and I rather like it. These are very much Vegas words and will also be used to describe bookmakers which I may abbreviate to “Books” on occasion. To describe smart punters I use “Sharp” and “Square” for losing punters. When referring to a favourite I will use the word “Jolly” and “Rag” for underdog, these are very much UK phrases to my mind. Firstly I would like to go over some of the phrases I will use in my articles as the names for various things change from country to country and era to era. Steve has very kindly allowed me to use his blog to showcase some of my writing and I hope to do that in a series of articles from the perspective of someone who has worked in the betting industry. My name is Matthew Trenhaile and I worked as an odds compiler for six years at the UK Sport Spread Betting division of IG Index. You can follow Matthew on twitter and he also has his own blog. It is written by Matthew Trenhaile who has worked as an odds compiler for many years and is now out on his own taking on the bookies. ![]() ![]() This post originally appeared at and has been reposted here with the permission of Steve from the Daily25 blog. How Bookmakers Create their Odds, from a Former Odds Compiler
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