By BEN HUNT
Being a bookmaker is no easy task, there’s a lot of work to put in and a lot of variables which you need to take into consideration, not to mention all the math. But even so, if you want to use a betting exchange regularly and become your own bookmaker, then keep reading this article and you will get access to some pretty solid information that should help you along the way.
Focus on a Sport :
The first step in the journey of becoming a bookmaker is sticking to a sport you like and it’s also recommended to start with a simpler sport. Of course, what makes a sport easy or hard is a very subjective matter but to put it simply, choose a sport with two outcomes like win or lose. One good example of a sport like that is football, compared to horse racing, for example, where you have a multitude of outcomes. Sure, if you’re not into football, there are a lot of other sports that have only two outcomes: tennis, snooker, rugby, etc.
Select the Favorites :
Just like the big online bookmakers, in order to assign odds for the match, you first need to know which is the underdog and which is the favorite. For example, if Real Madrid is facing Leganes, it’s clear that based on previous results, team value, and recent results of each team, you will pick Real Madrid as the favorite and Leganes as the underdog.
Pricing the Favorite :
Another trick that bookmakers use is trying to get the exact probability of the favorite winning and then turning that into the odds. Of course, the probability is usually higher than the actual odds so there’s room for some extra profit. Of course, the underdog will get higher odds and just like the ones for the favorite, they usually are a little shorter so you have to pay less in case the underdog wins.
Pricing the Outsider :
This is the equivalent of issuing odds for Real Madrid not to win, just like we mentioned above. There is a compensation system that dictates the odds of the underdog have to be attractive enough for punters to go for it even though the chances of something like that actually happening are very slim. What bookmakers also do when pricing the underdog is they try to find some strong points of that respective team and then lower the odds a bit on those specific events so that they seem attractive enough.
Balancing the Books :
Since you always want to pay out less than the revenue you get from the losing bets, it would be great if there was a mathematical formula to find out how much money is staked on each player. Unfortunately, there is no such thing but if you keep a close track of how much money was staked on each outcome, you can balance the odds in such a way that you still get a nice profit.
So, there you go, just a couple of theory points that should help you take the first steps towards bookmaking. It’s a lot more complicated than that and the real truth is that you will only master this art by constant trial and error because that’s the most effective way of identifying where you were wrong and what needs to be changed.
