Why do BK odds look worse than the market on favourites?
I am still learning this stuff, and honestly I'm a bit nervous about jumping in. I keep hearing that the bookmakers baked a lot of margin into those favorite lines, and I just want to make sure I'm signing up somewhere fair before staking any NZ$ on a warm team. Does anyone have advice on a decent line to start with, or can anyone recommend a safe place for a punter to begin? 😅🙏
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✓Yeah I've noticed the same on the sportsbook, short-priced favourites are where the cut bites hardest, line barely moves and the price sits well under what you'd want. I just factor it into the ROI, on warm head-to-heads under say NZ$1.40 I mostly leave it alone and put that leg in a multi instead where the value stacks. Withdrawals have been sweet as for me though, no dramas there.Bankroll discipline wins.
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don't stress about the nerves, we've all been there. the short answer on the sportsbook favourites is yes, that's where the cut sits fattest, and the young lot who only ever bet online never saw the old days when you just took what the counter gave you and said thanks 😄 one thing from my own experience worth saying though. verification and withdrawals are the bit people forget when they're comparing prices. a slightly better line somewhere else means nothing if the payout process turns into a saga. these days the KYC checks, sending through ID and proof of address, that's just the norm everywhere, so expect it and don't let it put you off. i've had payouts from the TAB go through fine once the paperwork was sorted, no dramas since. so compare your prices, sure, but give equal weight to how a book treats you when you actually want your money back. ah well, we'll see how you get on 😉Watch as long as I have and you'll get it.
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RobReds has a point about stake caps, but my experience says the fat margin on short favourites is the bigger day-to-day leak. I keep a spreadsheet comparing bookmaker lines against the wider market each Mitre 10 Cup round, and the gap on favourites priced under about NZ$1.50 is consistently the worst. If you're learning, TrueBelieverLoyal, start tracking that gap yourself before you stake anything.Do the math before you argue.
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When you claim the cut is fattest on short-priced favorites, what specific metric are you using to define that margin, is it the implied probability deviation or something related to the movement of the opening line? The perceived value often depends entirely on the point in the betting cycle you're looking at. Are we discussing the initial market odds, or the point where the incoming liquidity actually shifts the line against the original expectation?
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The pressure outside the office today felt like a heavy southerly, kind of an unrelenting thing that makes you think about how everything settles into place, or where the weaknesses are. To address the metric question from GloryDays, I am using a direct calculation based on implied probability deviation when comparing the bookmaker's quoted odds against the prevailing prices found on alternative exchanges. It isn't just about a simple comparison of the numerical odds; you have to account for the implied probability themselves. What I’ve found most useful in my own analysis is looking at the cumulative margin percentage baked into those short-priced favorites. For instance, when a team is priced below, say, 1.35 on the favourite, the bookmaker is essentially pricing their required win probability at an inflated level to cover their risks across the entire market, not just on that specific outcome. I track this against the movement of the line throughout the betting window.Numbers > vibes.
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Sounds good but show me the numbers that back up where that gap actually exists.Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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It’s fascinating how clearly that fat margin on short-priced favorites becomes visible once you start tracking the line movements against the wider market consensus. I actually keep my own table for this exact purpose when I look at the local premiership rounds; it helps to realise that the bookmakers aren't just pricing based on raw odds but on the anticipated flow of money before the line is even fully established. While the implied probability deviation is certainly a primary metric for seeing where the cut is, the actual value sometimes shifts when you look at how rapidly the line moves in response to early public action. My experience shows that just because a book offers seemingly worse odds than another doesn't always mean the discrepancy is fixed, though the smallest sample size here isn't enough to draw any grand conclusions, of course. You have to check the whole ecosystem of the book compared to each other, not just one comparison.
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I just price-check a warm favourite against a couple of offshore books before staking. If the gap's fat, I skip it or take the line elsewhere. Simple rule to start with. 💸Bankroll discipline wins.