I was debating throwing a couple of hundred on him if i could have got something like evens… but 2/5 when you consider what could potentially go wrong in a race… that’s not a great bet at all !!!

The Brits are backing him like crazy!

I’ve gone Fab for the win at 8.5 and Taylor Phinney top three at 4.3

and, just to be a bit patriotic Pooley to win the Womens!

Well that’s the point – lots of people WOULD bet at evens and the betting companies would stand to lose lots. So they make the bet unattractive and less people will bet and they will lose less money/recoup it from bets the same people put on alternative bets.

It is how it works.

The odds don’t necesarily reflect the actual chances of victory so much as the amount of money likely to be bet on one competitor.

Bookies need a margin too.

But yes pretty crappy odds

There you go – Warton has already put an alternative bet on – Warton, would you have been inclined to back Wiggins at Evens?

that Phinney bet looks pretty good might have a piece of that

he has been training solely for this for the last few weeks, and he looked in pretty good shape during the road race, so a top 3 looks very possible

What odds on Froome FTW? Could it be payback time for him?

Is it on the radio?

14/1 for Froome.

I’m more tempted for a bet on Froome for top 3.

any odds for 2 british medals?

Being branded the favourite is the kiss of death for anyone English. FACT! 🙁

There you go – Warton has already put an alternative bet on – Warton, would you have been inclined to back Wiggins at Evens?

Probably not, I don’t have the spare money available to make it worth my while. If I lumped it on and he didn’t win I’d be screwed!

Well that’s the point – lots of people WOULD bet at evens and the betting companies would stand to lose lots. So they make the bet unattractive and less people will bet and they will lose less money/recoup it from bets the same people put on alternative bets.

It’s a lot more complicated than that
After an initial price has been set – Each event [as well as activity overall] will have liability limits set, the aim is to keep the liability within the limits, regardless of actual volume of bets. So they may also be trying to correct any shortfall from previous days or indeed offering better prices as they have a surplus. They also need to compete with other bookies so more parameters.
The big boys do this pretty much all via software these days with the medium and small outfits using a price provider, Super Soccer or Stan James etc.
Very little activity is manual these days

How do they account for form though? That must be manual. They must have experts looking at the general state of the sport.. although I’m sure that’s less important for some sports (ie cycling or olympics) where so many bets are placed for emotional reasons than it is for say horses.

binners – Member
Being branded the favourite is the kiss of death for anyone English. FACT!

It would seem that way, in fact I can see our medal haul being a lot lower than 4 years ago with the way we are just getting shaded out at the last minute??

How do they account for form though? That must be manual

The initial price setting for the TT would be manual as it’s not that popular, a lot of the horses and football is pretty much automatic now with very few manual adjustments

Oh poop…. i should have had TONNES on it.

@warton Some good tips, bet you made a killing 😉

Scuse the pun