Chess betting odds in Great Britain — what they price and what they cost

Updated October 2026

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Current as of October 30, 2026 and checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register. Chess sits in a peculiar place inside the British sportsbook. It is not a stadium sport, it has no weekend fixtures, and most weeks the only event a UK-licensed bookmaker will price is a Candidates cycle match, a Superbet Rapid & Blitz leg, or a long-format duel streamed from somewhere with good hotel Wi-Fi. The board is small, the calendar is thinner than football’s, and a bettor looking for odds on it in 2026 finds them on the same slip as a Champions League accumulator — and that is the first thing to know about chess betting odds.

This page reads through what those prices actually contain, what they cost the punter who takes them, and which UK-licensed bookmakers take chess seriously enough to put a market up at all.

The chess betting landscape: a small sport on a British slip

A chess match is a contest between two players who sit on opposite sides of a board and move pieces alternately until one resigns, one runs out of time, or the position is dead. FIDE — the International Chess Federation — is the world governing body and publishes the rules of the game in its Handbook. The board has 64 squares in an 8×8 grid, each player starts with 16 pieces, and the result is recorded as 1–0 (White wins), 0–1 (Black wins) or ½–½ (draw). A game ends in a draw by stalemate, by agreement between the players, by a threefold repetition claim or under the fifty-move rule; since 2014, fivefold repetition and 75 moves without a pawn move or capture end the game automatically without a claim. The World Championship title, first claimed by Wilhelm Steinitz in 1886, has changed hands dozens of times since, with Gukesh Dommaraju the current holder after his 2024 win.

That is the sport the bookmakers price. Three results, only two of them decisive, no time limit other than the clock, no VAR fixed under a statute, and a calendar built around a handful of elite tournaments each year. The structure of the odds follows the structure of the game: a draw is not an embarrassment in chess the way it is in football, so the three-way line carries a genuine third option, and the price on each of the three players of a future championship cycle has to account for the chance of an eight-, ten- or fourteen-round match ending level.

What a UK-licensed operator offers under “chess” varies more than a reader might expect. The big houses carry chess through a single feed and price the next televised match or the next FIDE-rated tournament. The mid-tier houses carry chess when their data partner supplies a feed for it. A handful of British-licensed sportsbooks — and a longer list of overseas brands that have never sought a Commission licence — do not carry chess at all. The licence, not the menu, is what defines who is in scope on this page.

The legal frame for chess betting in Great Britain

A bookmaker serving customers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission licence, wherever it is based, under sections 33 and 36 of the Gambling Act 2005 as amended by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014. That licence covers remote general betting standard (real events); remote general betting standard (virtual events); remote general betting limited; remote pool betting; and remote betting intermediary (the licence that covers betting exchanges). No statute names which sports a bookmaker may offer — chess is permitted because no statute forbids it and because the operator’s licence category covers the event. The Commission’s public register, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, is the whole test of who holds one.

A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute for a GB licence when the customer is in Great Britain; offering gambling facilities here without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33, aimed at the operator, and a customer betting on an unlicensed site loses the protections a licence brings — no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and no obligation on the operator to honour the 10x bonus cap or the £150 vulnerability check threshold.

Three facts about Great Britain worth pinning down before looking at any single bookmaker’s terms:

• Minimum age 18, with name, address and date of birth verified before the first deposit or bet (in force since 7 May 2019), and that verification covers a free bet or bonus bet too — there is no anonymous play at a licensed site.
• Credit cards are banned for gambling in Great Britain (since 14 April 2020), including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet; debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered.
• Financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4, in force since 30 August 2024) applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days (since 28 February 2025). It is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments), not an income check.

General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15%; from 1 April 2027 a remote 25% rate applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15%. The punter pays no tax on winnings. None of this is tax advice; a professional gambler asks HMRC or an adviser.

Safer gambling on a chess slip

Chess is a low-volume sport on most books, and the protections that matter are the ones the licence brings, not the ones the sport adds.

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

Deposit limits are the customer’s own choice, not a state-set ceiling, and operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame under RTS 12 — the first changes applied on 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether that second phase is now live is not established in the public record.

When the gambling stops being fun, the help line is GamCare (the National Gambling Helpline), with GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics, and Gamblers Anonymous alongside it. A few of the books on this page link those services directly from their safer-gambling pages; a few do not, and that is one of the differences between them.

Chess on a handset: what an app actually adds

A chess game is a quiet event. There is no stadium roar to simulate through phone speakers, no in-play stream that demands bandwidth, and the betting decision is rarely a last-second one. A chess betting app, in practice, is a thin layer over a sportsbook that happens to include the sport — and the question is whether the layer is good enough to find a market, place a bet, and read a result without a desktop.

The British App Store descriptions for the apps in this comparison mention chess only obliquely. What the descriptions do say tells a reader how the app handles sports betting in general — the touch interface, the in-play layout, the bet builder, the live stream — and the chess market sits inside that.

Betfred Sports, Casino & Games is published by Done Brothers (Cash Betting) Ltd and covers 21 sports plus over 2,000 casino-style games, with the sportsbook the main event. Paddy Power Sports Betting, published by Paddy Power PLC, lists football, horse racing, boxing, rugby, tennis, golf, darts, snooker and F1. BetMGM, DragonBet, 10bet and NetBet cover the standard British sportsbook spine — football, horse racing, tennis, American football — with bet builder, cash out and live streaming on most. DragonBet’s app is published by dragonbet ltd and features Welsh football and rugby markets alongside racing, American football, in-play betting and bet builder. Midnite’s app cites the Commission’s 101839 licence, shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. Fitzwilliam Sports’ app sits behind a capped membership and instant deposits, fast withdrawals, timeouts and deposit limits.

For a chess punter, the practical question is whether the bookmaker’s app finds the chess tab quickly enough to be usable on a Saturday afternoon of FIDE action, and whether in-play odds refresh on the live page when a long-format game tips toward a decisive result. That is something only the live app reveals; the description does not.

Live chess betting and the cash-out problem

A long chess game is, in theory, an in-play dream: a position shifts slowly, the odds should shift with it, and the bettor who watches the live feed has more information than the one who took the early price. In practice, three things get in the way.

First, very few chess events are covered by enough cameras and analysts to support real-time in-play odds. A World Championship match does; a Thursday-night online rapid tournament rarely does. Second, where in-play odds are offered, the price band is wider than for football in-play, because the underlying feed updates less often and the house is guarding against a sudden resignation moving the line in a single tick. Third, the cash-out value on a chess bet, when offered, is set by the bookmaker on its own model — not by the live exchange of bets on the same outcome — and a punter wanting out on a position will often find the cash-out price meaningfully worse than the live back price at the same betting exchange, if a betting exchange even has the market.

A punter who wants to bet chess in play has three workable patterns. Bet on the next televised match the moment the move feed goes live and accept a wider price band. Skip in-play and back the ante-post market on the next tournament. Use the bookmaker’s cash out on a position taken earlier in the match, knowing that the offered value is the house’s value, not the market’s. None of them is a free option; each one trades something for something else.

Predictions, analysis and what they are worth

Chess is unusual among betting sports in that the prediction market is dense and largely free. Engine evaluations (Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero) are public. Engine evaluations are not secrets — they are open-source software. Tablebases for endgames with seven or fewer pieces are public. Tablebases are complete databases of perfect play in the endgame. Player ratings update on a list maintained by FIDE and visible to anyone. Player form, head-to-head and tournament history are bookable. A punter who wants an edge has, in principle, the same data the bookmaker’s trader has, and sometimes more of it, because the bookmaker is pricing a market the trader may not follow day to day.

That changes what a “tip” means. A tip on a Premier League match is information about an information edge; the bookmaker has the data, the public does not, and the tip is a sliver of that asymmetry. A tip on a chess match is more often an interpretation: the rating gap, the colour sequence, the time-control, the player’s recent form in this exact opening. A punter who acts on the interpretation is taking a position on the tipster’s model of the position, not on the tipster’s access to data.

The honest framing is that no system wins at chess betting, because no system can see the future of a position the way a strong player sees it. The honest framing is also that a punter who reads engine evaluations, follows the players’ recent games, and prices the draw correctly has a better chance than a punter who treats chess as a novelty market, knowing the figure is small in absolute terms. A reader who wants a strategy should treat chess odds the way a chess player treats the position: know what the move costs before making it, and accept that the opponent’s clock is also running.

The bet types and the prices

A chess betting slip in 2026 carries a smaller menu than a football one, and each line on it pays differently.

Outright winner. The price on the player who wins the tournament. Settlement is on the official result at the end of the event, with dead-heat rules applying if the format allows joint winners. Where the event has a knockout bracket, settlement depends on the final, and withdrawals before the start only complete a bet if the operator’s ante-post rules let them.

Match winner. Three-way line: White win, draw, Black win. The draw is not an afterthought; in long-format chess, a draw is the modal result of a roughly even matchup, and the odds on a draw are often shorter than the odds on either player. A punter looking at a White-win price of 2.10 and a draw price of 3.40 should know the draw is the most likely single outcome.

Handicap. The underdog starts the game with a synthetic lead of one or more points, expressed in points or in pieces; the favourite has to win by more than the spread for the title bet to win. In chess, handicap markets are rarer than in football and are mostly confined to longer-format events with a clear rating gap.

Total moves. Over/under on the number of moves in a game, usually set at a round number tied to the format. A rapid game has fewer moves; a classical game has more. The line is the bookmaker’s own and is rarely comparable across houses.

In-play move markets. A bet on which player colour has a turn advantage, or on the next decisive move, while the game is in progress. Offered on the most televised matches and rarely elsewhere.

Outright series. A bet on the aggregate score of a multi-game match, with the price on each player adjusted for the format. The punter pays in advance for a position that may move game by game.

The settlement rule that catches a punter out most often is the dead-heat rule on outright markets with multiple winners, and the non-runner rule on ante-post bets when a player withdraws before the start. Both are set in each operator’s own terms and are not uniform across the market.

The margin, worked through a chess-style example

The bookmaker’s margin is what sits inside every price on the slip, and it is the single number that decides what a long-run punter keeps. The arithmetic is simple; the consequence is anything but steady. Take an illustrative two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90 — a mirror line on a chess event that the house prices as a near coin-toss.

The payout share — the fraction of every unit bet that the book returns to customers across all outcomes if every outcome wins the same number of bets — is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), which is 1 ÷ 1.0526, or about 95.0%. The margin — the share of every unit bet that the book keeps — is 1 − 0.9500, or about 5.0%.

In a three-way chess line at, for argument’s sake, White 2.10 / Draw 3.40 / Black 2.60, the same arithmetic gives a payout share of 1 ÷ (1/2.10 + 1/3.40 + 1/2.60) = 1 ÷ 0.4762 + 0.2941 + 0.3846 = 1 ÷ 1.1549, or about 86.6%, and a margin of about 13.4%. That is the band chess markets sit in: tighter than a typical football 1X2 because the calendar is thin and the houses price for liquidity, looser than a typical Premier League match winner because the draw carries real weight and the line reflects it.

The punter’s reading of the margin is what changes the bet. A 5% margin means the book keeps 5p of every £1 bet across the market on average; a 13% margin means the book keeps 13p of every £1. A punter who bets on a single outcome sees the line price; a punter who prices the whole market sees the margin, and the second one is the one who picks the right house on the right event.

Chess tournaments the UK books price

The calendar that reaches the British sportsbook in 2026 is built around four or five anchor events and a longer tail of online and rapid formats that come and go with their sponsorships.

World Chess Championship. The classical-format title match between the reigning champion and the challenger from the most recent Candidates cycle. The 2024 match ended with Gukesh Dommaraju’s win over Ding Liren; the next full title cycle is the one the books are pricing now. Markets open weeks or months in advance, with outright winner, match winner, correct score and individual game winner lines on the most-watched games.

Candidates Tournament. The eight-player knockout-format (now round-robin, depending on cycle) event that decides who challenges for the title. Prices are offered on outright winner, each round, and the head-to-head matches as the event runs.

Norway Chess, Wijk aan Zee (Tata Steel), Grand Chess Tour events. The annual elite round-robins. Norway Chess carries classical, blitz and rapid legs and has been the most consistently covered by British books.

FIDE Grand Prix, FIDE World Cup. The qualifying chain. Markets are thinner; outright winner is the most common line, with individual matchups priced on the later rounds.

Online events (Titled Tuesday, Speed Chess Championship, Champions Chess Tour). The rapid and blitz events that dominate the weekly calendar. Most British books offer minimal coverage; a handful of offshore books carry them more fully. The British punter who wants in-play odds on a Tuesday-night titled tournament will find them on a non-GB site and lose the protections a GB licence brings.

A non-elite tournament that lands a UK-licensed feed one week may not have a feed the next. The punter who follows a specific tournament is the punter who checks the betting slip each morning, not the punter who bets the long-term market and walks off.

The ten UK-licensed bookmakers, and what each one is

Each one is on the Gambling Commission’s public register against a licensee holding a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, and each one is reviewed below on what its own terms say on chess, on promotions, and on the safer-gambling provisions. The order is not a recommendation; it is the order this site covers them.

Betfred

Betfred sits at the top of the British high-street sportsbook tree, with a long-running app and a sportsbook covering 21 sports on its own description. The Commission’s register lists the licence under Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, and the Done Brothers operating brand is what the App Store description carries. For a chess punter, Betfred is the kind of house where the chess tab is buried four levels deep under A-Z and where a televised match gets a market but a Tuesday-night online event does not. The verdict here is that Betfred is the right pick for the punter who values a familiar British name with a long betting history and is happy to take chess only when the calendar forces it.

BetMGM

BetMGM’s UK offering, run under LeoVegas Gaming PLC, is built for the casino crossover punter who occasionally strays onto the sportsbook. The welcome structure rewards four £10 free bets (two football accumulators and two sports multiples) for a £10 deposit and a first bet within 7 days, with minimum odds and a 7-day validity on each free bet. The chess market, where it exists, sits inside the standard sportsbook feed. The verdict is that BetMGM is worth considering for the punter who already wants the casino product and wants the sports welcome as a side benefit, not as the main reason for joining.

Bet600

Bet600 carries the Best Odds Guaranteed concession on horse racing — if the starting price is bigger than the early or show price taken, the bet is paid at the SP — and that concession is the clearest statement on the page about how the bookmaker wants to be read. Tyche Tech Limited is the licence holder, and the brand carries a sportsbook that knows what a racing punter wants. For chess, Bet600 is the kind of house that will price the next televised match and not much else. The verdict is that Bet600 suits the punter whose main sport is racing and who wants a chess bet on the side during a championship cycle.

10bet

10bet’s sportsbook covers football, tennis and horse racing, with Cash out, Bet Builder and Live Streaming as the three features the App Store description names. Blue Star Planet Limited holds the licence. For chess, 10bet is a feed play: the book carries whatever its data partner sends, and the punter who finds a chess market here is the punter who finds it everywhere. The verdict is that 10bet suits the punter whose betting market is football or racing and who treats chess as a side bet during a tournament.

DragonBet

DragonBet is published by DragonBet Ltd and is the brand that grew out of Welsh football and rugby sponsorships. The app features racing, American football, in-play betting and bet builder alongside the Welsh sports. For chess, DragonBet is a niche house that will price the sport through its feed only when the calendar demands it. The verdict is that DragonBet is for the punter whose betting week is built around Welsh sport and who wants a chess market only at peak championship moments.

Fitzwilliam Sports

Fitzwilliam Sports describes itself as a Dublin bookmaker with capped membership, and the welcome is a “High Stakes Welcome” subject to compliance criteria — a structure that exists to filter the customer base, not to advertise a headline bonus. SBKI Limited holds the licence. The app offers instant deposits, fast withdrawals, timeouts and deposit limits, with links to GambleAware, GamStop and Gamblers Anonymous on the safer-gambling page, which is a stronger safer-gambling surface than most of the brands on this list. For chess, Fitzwilliam is the high-stakes punter’s book, and a chess market, when offered, is offered with a minimum stake higher than the average house. The verdict is that Fitzwilliam suits the higher-stake punter who values the safer-gambling surface and accepts that the menu is narrower than the mass-market houses.

Bar One Racing

Bar One Racing has rebranded as BAR 1 Betting and is an Irish independent bookmaker with shops across Ireland and horse racing sponsorships at Dundalk, Fairyhouse, Navan, The Curragh, Curraheen Park and Cork. Bar-One Racing Limited holds the Commission licence. The brand is built around horse racing, and a chess market here is the kind of market that appears during a championship cycle and disappears the week after. The verdict is that Bar One is for the punter whose racing interests are Irish and whose chess interest is episodic.

Midnite

Midnite’s UK site cites the Commission’s 101839 licence and runs a sports welcome of £25 in free bets and 50 free spins for a £5+ pre-match bet at EVS or greater within 14 days of sign-up, with the free bets valid for 7 days. The site shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits, and Midnite Limited holds the licence. The verdict is that Midnite is worth a look for the punter who likes an acca-style product and wants a free-bet welcome that turns a small stake into a multi-line position.

Paddy Power

Paddy Power is the mass-market heritage name that most British punters know from its shops and its TV ads. PPB Counterparty Services Limited holds the Commission licence, and the Paddy Power Sports Betting app covers football, horse racing, boxing, rugby, tennis, golf, darts, snooker and F1 — a list that says where the brand’s weight sits and what the chess coverage will look like by extension. For chess, Paddy Power is the house that will price the next televised event with full match-winner, correct-score and outright markets, and will not price a Tuesday-night online event. The verdict is that Paddy Power is the right pick for the punter who wants a familiar British brand with a full sportsbook and is happy to take chess only at peak moments.

NetBet

NetBet runs Daily Boosts, Profit Boosts and free bet offers on its sportsbook, with a Bet Builder that shows instant dynamic odds and sports stats for the major leagues. Netbet Enterprises Limited holds the Commission licence. The verdict is that NetBet is for the punter who wants the boost-style product and accepts that the chess coverage, like most of the houses on this list, is calendar-driven rather than continuous.

A few notes on the brands you will see

Two operators on the wider market, not on this ranking, are worth a one-line mention because a punter reading about chess odds in 2026 will meet them.

Lottoland UK runs casino, lottery betting, sports betting and scratchcards under one app and states it is licensed by the Commission for customers in Great Britain. The brand’s main product is lottery, not sport, and a chess market is not its centre of gravity; a punter who already has a Lottoland account for the lottery will find the sports tab there as a side product.

Spreadex is regulated by the FCA for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting, and its terms state that spread betting losses can exceed the deposit — a one-way risk that is the defining feature of the spread-betting product. A chess market at Spreadex, where it exists, is a spread-betting line, not a fixed-odds line, and the punter treats it as a financial product rather than a sports bet.

The brand that does not appear here and that a punter will meet in advertising is bet365 — the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League, described in the App Store as the most downloaded sports betting app in the UK, offering Bet Builder+, Super Boosts, Winnings Boosts on Bet Builders and selected singles, daily Bet Boosts, in-play betting and live streaming of events worldwide, plus Bet Track, Match Live and a Live Golf Tracker. bet365 is one of the houses on this list’s wider market and a brand most British punters have an account with. A punter who has a bet365 account will find the chess market there the moment the next televised match goes live.

How to read the numbers on a chess slip

A punter reading chess odds for the first time sees three prices on a three-way line and one number each on a totals or handicap line, and the question is what those numbers contain. The answer is the margin, and the margin is what the house keeps on average across the market.

The arithmetic is the one above. Take the price on each outcome, invert it (1/price), sum the inverses, and the reciprocal of the sum is the payout share — the share of every pound bet that the book returns to customers if every outcome wins the same number of bets. Subtract the payout share from 1, and the difference is the margin — the share of every pound bet that the book keeps.

For a 1.90 / 1.90 line, the margin is about 5.0%. For a 2.10 / 3.40 / 2.60 line, the margin is about 13.4%. For a tighter chess line at 1.70 / 4.50 / 2.20 — a heavy favourite, a long draw, a moderate underdog — the margin comes out at about 1 ÷ (1/1.70 + 1/4.50 + 1/2.20) = 1 ÷ (0.5882 + 0.2222 + 0.4545) = 1 ÷ 1.2649, or about 79.1%, and the margin is about 20.9%. That is a wider margin than the typical three-way line, and it tells the punter something the prices alone do not: the house sees a heavy favourite in this matchup, and the prices are built around that view, with the draw and the underdog carrying more vig to keep the book balanced.

A punter who prices the whole market before placing a single bet sees the margin, and the margin is the number that decides which house gets the bet on the event. A punter who reads only the favourite’s price is reading the market blind; a punter who reads the three prices together is reading the bookmaker’s view of the match.

The promotional frame

The promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x — a £10 bonus at 50x needed £500 of bets; under the cap no more than £100 of turnover is required to clear a £10 bonus. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, such as a sports bet to unlock free spins — are banned. The cap applies to bonuses, and whether it applies to free bets with no wagering condition is not established in the public record; the punter who takes a free bet reads the small print on the operator’s site before treating the offer as cash.

No promotional code is printed anywhere on this page. The promotional codes, where they exist, sit on each operator’s own promotion page, and the offer’s headline is what the punter carries away from this comparison — the structure, the minimum odds, the validity, the cap on winnings from a free bet. A reader who wants the code visits the operator’s site directly.

Frequently asked questions about chess betting odds

Where can chess be bet on in Great Britain?

At any UK-licensed bookmaker that carries chess on its sportsbook feed. The brands on this comparison are the ten the page covers; a longer list sits on the Gambling Commission’s public register, and a punter who wants every option searches the register by business name, trading name, domain or account number. No single brand is the only licensed option; the market has more than ten licensed operators carrying chess at any one time.

Is betting on chess legal in Great Britain?

Yes, at any operator holding a Gambling Commission remote general betting standard (real events) licence. The bookmaker needs the licence wherever it is based under sections 33 and 36 of the Gambling Act 2005 as amended by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014; a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute when the customer is in Great Britain. The punter pays no tax on winnings.

How does a punter place a chess bet?

Open an account with a UK-licensed bookmaker, verify name, address and date of birth before the first deposit (a Commission condition in force since 7 May 2019), deposit by debit card or bank-based payment (credit cards are banned for gambling), find the chess tab under the sportsbook A-Z, and place the bet at the displayed price. Settlement follows the official FIDE result of the event. In-play bets are placed the same way during a televised match.

How does a punter check a bookmaker’s Commission licence?

Open the Commission’s public register, search by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and confirm a remote general betting standard (real events) licence is in force. The register is the whole test of who holds a licence; a brand stating it is licensed is not the test. A punter who cannot find the brand on the register should not deposit.

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

Return = stake × odds; net profit = stake × (odds − 1). A £10 bet at decimal odds 2.60 returns £26 (£10 × 2.60), for a net profit of £16. For an accumulator, the legs multiply into one combined price: a double at 2.10 and 1.90 has a combined price of 3.99, and a £10 stake returns £39.90. Decimal odds convert from fractional as price = a ÷ b + 1, so 5/1 is 6.00 and 11/4 is 3.75.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how does it show in the odds?

The margin is the share of every pound bet that the book keeps on average across all outcomes of a market. For a two-way line at 1.90 / 1.90, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), about 95.0%, and the margin is about 5.0%. For a three-way chess line at 2.10 / 3.40 / 2.60, the payout share is about 86.6% and the margin is about 13.4%. The wider the margin, the more the house keeps, and the punter who prices the whole market before placing a single bet sees the margin as the single number that distinguishes one bookmaker from another on the same event.

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