2. Betting to Win on Exchanges

For simplicity we are going to use a horse race as an example.  However any other event would work in the same way, except instead of being horse, the possible options might be golfers, football teams, win/lose/draw for many sporting matches, etc.

Once you've navigated the menu to get to the race you are interested in you will be presented with a screen something like that below.

Taking Prices

The two main odds columns to focus on are the blue and pink columns in the middle, the blue being the odds at which you can back each horse the pink the odds at which you can lay it.

So in this example Contraband is the favourite and is available at odds of 1.73 which means that your return to a £1 stake would be £1.73.

However you now have to remember that you are betting with and against other people so there is only a limited amount of money available to match with you at that price.  This is what the £20 underneath the 1.73 is telling you.

So if you only want to bet £10, then you can take the odds of 1.73.  However if you wanted to bet more than £20 this is where the other columns come in.  To the left of the blue square you can see that there is another £46 offering odds of 1.71, followed by £70 at 1.7, and more still off screen that would appear if this was all taken.

In practice the numbers are changing all the time, as people are making bets and offering bets in real time.

So what happens if say you want to bet £50 on Contraband but you want odds of 1.73 and aren't prepared to go any lower.  At the moment the only way to bet £50 on contraband would be to have £20 at 1.73 and £30 (of the £46 available) at 1.71, giving you average odds of.......well, under 1.73.

Next:  Setting Your Own Odds