Favoured by bookmakers in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and also common in horse racing, fractional odds quote the net total that will be paid out to the bettor, should he win, relative to his stake. Odds of 4/1 ("four-to-one" or less commonly "four-to-one against") would imply that the bettor stands to make a £400 profit on a £100 stake. If the odds are 1/4 (read "one-to-four", or "four-to-one on"), the bettor will make £25 on a £100 stake. Should he win, the bettor always receives his original stake back, so if the odds are 4/1 you would actually receive a total of £500 in return (£400 plus the original £100). Odds of 1/1 are known as evens or even money. This would result in the bettor making £100 profit, and receiving back £200 in total, should he win.

Not all fractional odds are traditionally read using the lowest common denominator. Perhaps most unusual is that odds of 10/3 are read as "one-hundred-to-thirty".

Fractional odds are also known as British odds, UK odds or in that country, traditional odds.

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Fixed-odds betting is a form of wagering against odds offered by a bookmaker, an individual, or on a bet exchange.

Calculating fixed odds

It is customary with fixed-odds gambling to know the odds at the time of the placement of the wager (the "live price"), although this category also includes wagers whose price is determined only when the race or game starts (the "starting prices"). It is ideal for a bookmaker to price/mark up a book such that the net outcome will always be in his favour, i.e. the sum of the probabilities quoted for all possible outcomes will be in excess of 100%. The excess over 100% (or overround) represents profit to the bookmaker in the event of a balanced/even book. In the more usual case of an imbalanced book, the bookmaker may have to pay out more winnings than what is staked, or he may earn more than mathematically expected. An imbalanced book may arise since there is no way for a bookmaker either to know the true probabilities for the outcome of competitions left to human effort or to predict the bets that will be attracted from others by fixed odds compiled on the basis of his own personal view and knowledge.

With the advent of Internet and bet exchange betting, the possibility of fixed-odds arbitrage actions and Dutch books against bookmakers and exchanges has expanded significantly. Betting exchanges in particular act like a stock exchange, allowing the odds to be set in the course of trading between individual bettors, usually leading to quoted odds that are reasonably close to the "true odds."

In making a bet where your expected value is positive, you are said to be getting "the best of it". For example, if you were to bet $1 at 10 to 1 odds (you could win $10) on the outcome of a coin flip, you would be getting "the best of it" and you should always make the bet (assuming you are rational and risk-neutral with linear utility curves and have no susceptibility to such fallacies as loss aversion). However if someone offered you odds of 10 to 1 that a card chosen at random from a regular 52 card deck would be the ace of spades, then you would be getting "the worst of it" because the chance is only 1 in 52 that the ace will be chosen. It is mathematically disadvantageous to make a bet where you are getting "the worst of it."

When making a bet where you must put more at stake than you stand to win, you are laying the odds or laying the bet. So, for example, if you bet $1000 that it will rain tomorrow, and if you win you will only win $200 but if you lose you will lose your entire $1000, then you are laying a bet. It is possible that you could be getting "the best of it" or "the worst of it" when you lay a bet; the fact that you are laying a bet does not necessarily mean you are getting "the worst of it". A lay bet is a bet that something won't happen, so if you lay $50 on a horse then you are betting the horse won't win.

Providers for fixed odd betting would include ChoiceOdds, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, and William Hill plc.

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In gambling and economics, the favourite-longshot bias is an observed phenomenon where on average, bettors tend to overvalue "long shots" and undervalue favourites. That is, in a horse race where one horse is given odds of 2-to-1, and another 100-to-1, the true odds might for example be 1.5-to-1 and 300-to-1 respectively. Betting on the "long shot" is therefore a much worse proposition than betting on the favourite. Various theories exist to explain why people willingly bet on such losing propositions, such as risk-loving behavior, or simply inaccurate estimation as presented by Sobel and Raines.^[1]

References

1. ^ Russell S. Sobel & S. Travis Raines, 2003. "An examination of the empirical derivatives of the favourite-longshot bias in racetrack betting," Applied Economics, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 371-385, January

References

• http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Favorite_Longshot_Bias.pdf
• http://favourite-longshot-bias.behaviouralfinance.net/

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In gambling, Dutching is sharing the risk of losing across a number or runners by backing more than one selection in a race or event. The process calculates the correct stake to place on each selection so that the return is the same if any of them wins. This is not to be confused with what constitutes a Dutch book which is when a bookmaker goes overbroke (the opposite to overround).

It is thought the strategy behind Dutching was originally conceived and employed by Arthur Flegenheimer (aka Dutch Schultz) alongside various rackets he had running at the racetrack. The system has since taken his name.

The strategy can pay dividends when gamblers successfully reduce the potential winners of an event to a select few from the field or when information about runners not expected to perform well does not reach the market (so as to affect the odds) making backing the rest of the field profitable.

Dutching calculators that perform the mathematics behind the system are freely available on the internet.

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The concept of the daily fantasy sports game is relatively new. It takes the traditional fantasy sports model and compresses it into a daily, and sometimes weekly, game.

History

Daily fantasy sports is a new niche in the fantasy sports industry. Like traditional fantasy sports, players draft a team of real world athletes who then score fantasy points according to set scoring rules. However instead of being stuck with the same team through a whole season, daily fantasy sports contests last just one day (or in the case of NFL or NASCAR, one weekend). Daily fantasy sports is quicker and more numbers-driven. Daily fantasy sports websites do not compete for the same players as traditional sports games, but instead market themselves as complimenting traditional fantasy sports.^[1]

Legality

The legality of daily fantasy sports games is the same as that of season long fantasy sports. In most US states fantasy sports (including daily fantasy sports) is generally considered a game of skill and therefore not considered gambling. However, some states, such as Arizona, Maryland, Montana, Louisiana, Iowa and Vermont, either use a more restrictive test of whether a game is one of skill or have specific laws outlawing paid fantasy sports.

At a Federal level fantasy sports is defined and exempted by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). The bill specifically exempts fantasy sports games, educational games, or any online contest that "has an outcome that reflects the relative knowledge of the participants, or their skill at physical reaction or physical manipulation (but not chance), and, in the case of a fantasy or simulation sports game, has an outcome that is determined predominantly by accumulated statistical results of sporting events, including any non-participant's individual performances in such sporting events..."^[2]

However, all prizing must be determined in advance of the competition and can not be influenced by the fees or number of participants. To be compliant fantasy sports must follow the rule that: "prizes and awards offered to winning participants are established and made known to the participants in advance of the game or contest and their value is not determined by the number of participants or the amount of any fees paid by those participants." ^[3]

The formal definition of fantasy sports within UIGEA stipulates that the outcome of a fantasy game must be dependent on multiple sports events but explicitly does not define the period over which the game must be played. The enactment of UIGEA gave the first legal definition of fantasy sports with which operators could then develop games around. This resulted in the emergence of daily fantasy games which first appeared in late 2007.

References

1. ^ DiFino, Nando (2010-03-05). "Everyday Fantasies". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2010-11-22.
2. ^ Longley, Robert (2006-08-22). "Fantasy Sports Not Gambling, Bill Declares". About.com. Retrieved 2007-11-01.
3. ^ "H.R. 4954: Security and Accountability For Every Port Act of 2006’’". Retrieved 2010-06-03.

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A daily double is a wager offered by horse and dog racing tracks. Bettors wager on the winners of two races, pre-designated by the track for a particular race day. While the Daily Racing Form's glossary defines a Daily Double as two consecutive races, ^[1] this is a loose rule. Many tracks' Daily Doubles are not consecutive. Because of the increased difficulty of picking two straight winners, winning daily double bets often pay off at high odds. ^[2]

The daily double was the first so-called "exotic" wager offered by North American racetracks. Introduced in 1931 at Ottawa's Connaught Park Racetrack,^[3][4] the wager was typically offered only for the first two races of each day's program as an enticement for spectators to arrive early for the entire program. As with all other American racing wagers, the "double" is conducted in parimutuel fashion, but with the number of betting interests in the daily double pool equal to the product of the number of entries in each race. For example, if there are ten entries in the first race and eight in the second, there will be eighty betting interests, one for each combination of two potential winners. This results in higher payoffs than those found in straight betting for win, place, or show.

For many years the daily double was the only exotic wager offered. Later the exacta was also offered on select races during each program. The wagers were offered only a few times each day largely because of the limitations of electro-mechanical totalisator systems. When computer technology took over, more exotic wagers were introduced, such as the trifecta, superfecta and pick 6. The higher payouts for these wagers tended to diminish interest in the "old fashioned" daily double, but it is still offered at all tracks, sometimes more than once during a program. A "late double" is frequently offered on the day's final two races; some tracks offer a "rolling double" - a daily double starting on each race on the program except the last race.

The "Pick 3" and "Pick 4" wagers are derived from the daily double. These wagers require bettors to pick the winners of three or four consecutive races. These are also often offered on a rolling basis — a rolling pick 3 on races one through three, another on races two through four, and so on throughout the day.

Occasional doubles are offered on important races contested on separate days. The most prominent example is the "Oaks-Derby Double" offered by Churchill Downs, where bettors pick the winners of the Kentucky Oaks and the Kentucky Derby. The Oaks is run the day before the Derby, which is always run on the first Saturday of May.

Notes

1. ^ Daily Racing Form Glossary of Terms
2. ^ Saratoga Racetrack Horse Racing Glossary
3. ^ Snider, Steve (December 30, 1979). "If You Think This Decade is Something, Try ...". The Palm Beach Daily Post: p. E7.
4. ^ "Innovation for 'Double' Tickets". Montreal Gazette: p. 19. May 20, 1932.

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A betting pool, sports lottery, sweep or office pool if done at work, is a form of gambling, specifically a variant of parimutuel betting influenced by lotteries, where gamblers pay a fixed price into a pool (from which taxes and a house "take" or "vig" are removed), and then make a selection on some outcome, usually related to sport. In an informal game, the vig is usually quite small or non-existent. The pool is evenly divided between those that have made the correct selection. There are no odds involved; each winner's payoff depends simply on the number of gamblers and the number of winners. (True parimutuel betting, which was historically referred to as pool betting, involves both odds calculations and variable wager amounts.)

Contestants predict the outcome of sporting events that take place at a later time. The concept was introduced in 1923 by Littlewoods Pools where it was known as toto and based on football (soccer) matches. Today in England, sports lotteries are more commonly referred to as football pools. American sports lotteries often do not require contestants to purchase a lottery ticket or make an initial wager. Hockey pools are common in North America, and footy tipping in Australia.

A death pool is a betting pool concerning the death of someone.

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An automatic totalisator is a device to add up the bets in a pari-mutuel betting system. The whole of the pot (the stakes on all competitors) is divided pro-rata to the stakes placed on the winning competitor and those tickets are paid out.

Essentially it implements a system of starting price (SP) betting.

In particular it refers to the invention of George Alfred Julius, the English-born, New Zealand educated, Australian inventor, engineer and businessman, a leader of Australian engineering in the first half of the twentieth century.

The term automatic refers to the face that the bets were automatically summed and a ticket issued when a bet was registered on the issuing machines, and it provided a safe and virtually fraud free method of betting, replacing the earlier jam-pot totes, which used either paper transactions or some method of counting bets like steel ball bearings. The machine did not actually calculate the payout.

It is a nice example of the gradually automation of calculation before the computer industry which owed nothing to Julius' invention got going.

The method was widely used in the Australian, New Zealand and American horse-racing industries and for greyhound racing in the UK, though there were other installations in countries as diverse as France, Venezuela and Singapore.

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An Asian Handicap (named so simply because of its Eastern origins) is a gambling term used to describe spread betting in soccer that has gained popularity over the years. The handicaps typically range from one quarter goal to several goals and can be described in terms of half or even quarter goals.

Most importantly, Asian Handicap betting reduces the possible number of outcomes from three (in traditional 1X2 wagering) to two by eliminating the draw outcome. This simplification delivers two betting options that each have a near 50% chance of success.

Asian Handicaps are both good and bad for bookmakers. On one hand, they help bookmakers minimize risk by facilitating trading with parity or balancing the amount of wagering on each side of the match. This enables bookmakers to take larger positions on major matches. On the other hand, Asian Handicap markets are typically low margin offerings that do not contribute as significantly to the gross win as other, higher vigorish betting options like 1X2^[1].

The term Asian Handicap was applied to this method of betting by a journalist, Joe Saumarez Smith, in November 1998. He was asked by an Indonesia bookmaker, Joe Phan, to provide a translation of the betting method that was termed 'hang cheng betting' by bookmakers in Asia.^[2].

Description

Football (soccer) is one of the few sports in the world where a tie is a fairly common outcome. With traditional fixed odds, ties are treated as an additional outcome to the game. In other words, bettors lose when they place a wager on either team to win and the game ties. With Asian Handicaps, however, the chance for a tie is eliminated by use of a handicap that forces a winner. This creates a situation where each team has a 50-50 chance of winning; similar to the odds for a basketball or baseball game where a tie is impossible.

This system works in a straight-forward manner. The bookmakers's goal is to create a handicap or "line" that will make the chance of either team winning (considering the handicap) as close to 50% as possible. Since the odds are as close to 50% as possible, bookmakers offer payouts close to even money, or 1.90 to 2.00. Asian Handicaps start at a quarter goal and can go as high as 2.5 or 3 goals in matches with a huge disparity in ability. What makes Asian Handicaps most interesting is the use of quarter goals to get the "line" as close as possible. Taken in conjunction with the posted total for the game, the handicap essentially predicts the game's final score.

Quarter Goal or Two Way Handicaps

Subsequently, many matches are handicapped in ½ and ¼ intervals; both of which eliminate the possibility of a push since no one can score a half-goal. Quarter (¼) handicaps split the bet between the two next closest ¼ intervals. For instance, a $1000 bet with a handicap of 1 ¾ is the same as betting $500 at 1 ½ and $500 at 2. With ¼ handicap bets, you can win and tie (win ½ of wager) or lose and tie (lose ½ wager). The ¼-goal handicap may be expressed by some bookmakers as "0 and ½", or (especially for bookmakers whose systems are designed for sports like American football and basketball (where bets have a handicap that is designed to make the odds as close to even as possible)) as "pk (for "pick-em") and ½".

Match: Everton vs. Newcastle United

Handicap: 0 : +1.0, +1.5

Explained: This handicap states that half of your bet goes on Newcastle winning, or losing by less than 1 goal, and half on Newcastle winning, or losing by less than 1.5 goals.

If the final score is Everton 1-0 Newcastle, half your bet would be refunded due to draw (Everton 1 - +1 Newcastle, i.e: Newcastle lost by exactly one goal). The second half would win (Everton 1 - +1.5 Newcastle, i.e: Newcastle lost by less than 1.5 goals).

Whole Handicaps and Draws

In the event that a whole number is used for the handicap, the handicap adjusted final score could result in a draw. This situation is not a draw, but a push. With a push, all bettors have their original wagers returned as there is no winner.

Outcomes

References

Links

• Asian Handicap Betting Explained
• How to Bet Asian Handicap and Split Handicap
• Origins of Asian Handicap

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The American Totalisator Company, formally known today as AmTote International and often referred to simply as AmTote, is a company which specializes in totalisator equipment used to control parimutuel betting at horse racing , greyhound racing and jai-alai facilities.

The company was founded by Harry L. Straus, whose interest in a fairer system of calculating and displaying odds and payouts on parimutuel betting came after an incident in 1927 at a Maryland racetrack, when a horse listed at 12:1 odds won, but only paid off at 4:1. Straus' new company installed its first equipment at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, which displayed odds and payouts on illuminated boards, now known as tote boards. In 1933, American Totalisator installed its first electro-mechanical tote system at Arlington Park in Chicago, Illinois.

Since then, AmTote has installed tote systems throughout the world in more than 800 locations. The original electro-mechanical devices have given way to fully-computerized systems where bettors place and collect bets at the same window, self-service betting terminals, Internet- and telephone-based wagering, and "hub" systems to facilitate simulcast wagering.

AmTote's numeric displays were often seen on television game shows in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably the original version of The Price is Right. The company was also an investor in the manufacturer of the original UNIVAC computer system.

The company is based in Hunt Valley, Maryland. It was once owned by General Instrument, later sold to a division of Motorola. Today, AmTote International is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MI Developments Inc. (MID), corporate parent of several race tracks, including Pimlico.

Links

• AmTote International web site
• MI Developments, Inc., AmTote's parent company

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