Bookies! Do they know somthing we don't?

[SuffolkWhite]

Apoligies if this has been mentioned already, I dip in and out on here...

We are 22-1 to win the Championship and 7-1 to get Promoted with William Hill?

How can that be when we have not signed anyone yet other than Madl and we have released players.

Do the Bookies Know we are going to spend because the squad we have as it stands are not going anywhere near the play offs let alone promotion.

Any thoughts?

[dannyboi-ffc]

Is there a significant drop in odds to the 'bottom half' of the table? If the majority are there or there abouts maybe the bookies are guessing and not giving anything away just yet.

If Fulham are ranked as one of the top few then I think the bookies must have some knowledge about our intentions

[Sgt Fulham]

Probably to trick gullible people into taking a £10 bet in hope.

[SuffolkWhite]

English Championship - Promotion
Promotion
4/6
Newcastle
   
2/1
Aston Villa
5/2
Norwich
   
10/3
Derby
7/2
Brighton
   
4/1
Sheff Wed
7/1
Cardiff
   
7/1
Fulham
8/1
Nottingham Forest
   
8/1
QPR
8/1
Wigan
   
9/1
Ipswich
9/1
Reading
   
10/1
Brentford
10/1
Bristol City
   
10/1
Leeds
11/1
Birmingham
   
11/1
Preston
12/1
Huddersfield
   
12/1
Wolves
14/1
Blackburn
   
20/1
Barnsley
33/1
Burton
   
33/1
Rotherham

[Carborundum]

When bookies offer longer odds than I might expect it's sometimes because they know something I don't.  A team or horse isn't going to win.  Shortening the odds is a bit more difficult to interpret.

To the question, there are lots of things that they and we know.  Fulham have cleared out some deadwood, have a rich owner and a manager who has got out of the Championship before.  So no edge there.  Maybe we are just unduly pessimistic. 

If they know something I don't, it might be the following.  They might know that there are really talented footballers realising that shining the bench or missing out on matchday at a premier league club is no fun at all and be willing to move to the Fulham "project".  I have no way of assessing this and they just might.  That would shorten up the odds.

[Tonywa]

Were we not second favourites for promotion immediately after relegation even with Magath in situ? That says something about thee bookies and their inside knowledge.

[westcliff white]

I believe 188bet have us at 11/2 to be releagted

[filham]

The bookies are possibly assuming we have a transfer budget of £10m which will be boosted to £25m by the sale of Ross and think this should be enough to buy a top six team.

They have not taken account of our history in the transfer market.

[HatterDon]

What the bookies know is how to manipulate odds enough to get folks to spend their hard earned.

Leicester City's amazing season is going to mean HUGE income for them for the next few years.

[davew]

I believe 188bet have us at 11/2 to be releagted

That is a great bet!!!

[toshes mate]

Odds are designed so that, overall, the bookies cannot lose.  Perhaps a gifted statistician could explain to us just how it is done....

[Oakeshott]

"Odds are designed so that, overall, the bookies cannot lose.  Perhaps a gifted statistician could explain to us just how it is done...."

Arithmetically it is straightforward. Let's say there are two possible outcomes, red or black and the real odds (for example if we are talking about different coloured sides of a coin) are evens, the bookies offer a little less than evens so that, for every £100 they take in bets they only have to pay out say £90. In this case they might offer 10/11 for both options, so that if I place £100 on black and it wins, I make a profit of £90.90, paid for by £100 that someone else placed on red and lost.

The art of bookmaking is adjusting the odds in the light of bets actually placed. So in the red/black example if people in aggregate place more money on red, the bookies will reduce the odds to, say, 4/5, and increase the odds on black to try to attract bets and thus continue to make a profit whatever the result.

In the coin case there are of course true odds - a properly balanced coin will, if properly tossed, in the long run come down 50% of the time red, and 50% of the time black. But in football and horse race betting, for example, there are no true odds, and bookies start by offering odds based on the judgements of expert odds compilers (which in the trade are known as tissues) and then adjust those odds as actual money is placed.

[domprague]

What are our relegation odds?

[cmg]

What are our relegation odds?

Not much activity in this market. These are NetBet's odds which seem a bit more generous than the few others published.

Burton Albion
4/5
Barnsley
5/2
Rotherham
5/2
Blackburn
7/2
Leeds
15/4
Preston
9/2
Birmingham
6/1
Huddersfield
6/1
Bristol City
6/1
Wigan
7/1
Cardiff
7/1
Brentford
7/1
Wolverhampton
7/1
Reading
7/1
Ipswich
10/1
Nottingham Forest
10/1
QPR
14/1
Fulham
14/1
Aston Villa
20/1
Brighton
25/1
Sheff Wed
33/1
Derby
40/1
Norwich
50/1
Newcastle
150/1

[Logicalman]

"Odds are designed so that, overall, the bookies cannot lose.  Perhaps a gifted statistician could explain to us just how it is done...."

Arithmetically it is straightforward. Let's say there are two possible outcomes, red or black and the real odds (for example if we are talking about different coloured sides of a coin) are evens, the bookies offer a little less than evens so that, for every £100 they take in bets they only have to pay out say £90. In this case they might offer 10/11 for both options, so that if I place £100 on black and it wins, I make a profit of £90.90, paid for by £100 that someone else placed on red and lost.

The art of bookmaking is adjusting the odds in the light of bets actually placed. So in the red/black example if people in aggregate place more money on red, the bookies will reduce the odds to, say, 4/5, and increase the odds on black to try to attract bets and thus continue to make a profit whatever the result.

In the coin case there are of course true odds - a properly balanced coin will, if properly tossed, in the long run come down 50% of the time red, and 50% of the time black. But in football and horse race betting, for example, there are no true odds, and bookies start by offering odds based on the judgements of expert odds compilers (which in the trade are known as tissues) and then adjust those odds as actual money is placed.

Thanks for the info, all good stuff, and makes sense as well.

[Oakeshott]

Logicalman

Cheers. It is perhaps worth adding, to address the question in the thread heading, that sometimes bookies know something and sometimes they don't.

For example, the firm which Victor Chandler heads is reported to have made a major investment in the stables of one leading trainer, and as a consequence is sometimes privy to news of that stable's horses (I do not know whether that is true, but it is widely believed among race analysts). Similarly, many horse owners bet and have accounts with bookies. If one is sitting in the trading room of, say William Hill, and an owner with an account rings up to place £5000 on their horse to win it would be reasonable to think it was "expected", so the bookie would reduce the price of the horse in question so that ordinary members of the public took their business on that horse to other firms to get the better price.

But in things like the referendum, or for that matter the England match tonight, the bookies know no more than the rest of us, in the sense of having worthwhile "inside information". They do of course have their own experts, studying the relevant "form", which means they may have better-founded opinions than the average man in the street. But equally individual punters like me, who specialise in a relatively narrow field (in my case class 2 and above handicaps, excluding those only for 3yos, run in the UK over shorter distances) can, if we put in the work, be at least the equal of the bookies' experts. (From a practical perspective, there might be 40 races on a Saturday for which the bookies' odds compliers have to work out tissues. I might only be interested in one race, and can put in more time, and I hope at least equal experience and ability, in analysing that one race.)

For what it is worth, I believe the main UK bookies to be absolutely honest, offer fair prices in a very competitive market, and I have no problem with them. That said, I place all my bets on Betfair where the prices, even after 4-5% commission, are almost always a bit better - particularly in the kind of major handicaps in which I bet. 

[Chesh]

What are our relegation odds?

I have placed a Monkey on that.

:005:

[Jem]

Can someone explain why odds are sometimes quoted as say, 100/30 instead of 10/3? Are they not the same thing?

[Oakeshott]

100/30 and 10/3 are the same in terms of odds.

Betting on horse races used to be primarily in cash on course (ie long before betting shops, let alone on-line bookies) and it was common for odds to be quoted in what now seem strange numbers, eg 100/8, 100/30, 15/2 rather than decimals, because that was in a pre decimal currency age. While there were odds like 7/4, 9/4 etc, 100/30 was traditional rather than 10/3, and I am not sure why.

Nowadays most on line bookies' sites enable one to choose whether to view odds in traditional or decimal form.