• REGISTER NOW!! Why? Because you can't do much without having been registered!

    At the moment you have limited access to view all discussions - and most importantly, you haven't joined our community. What are you waiting for? Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join Join Talking Horses here!

Is There Any Good Bookies These Days ?

must occasionally be manual intervention on price cuts. Had a bet on machines yesterday at 9/4 and after a 5 min walk to 2nd branch to top up was cut to 7/4. Sports not horses
Depends on which bookie u used, most ssbt's are operated by outside companies and not the bookie, therefore prices are different on machines to over the counter most of the time too.
 
Bookies vary obviously, but the average will allow a brand new customer to bet to a liability of £1000 if a price is taken on a weekday horse and twice that on Saturday and festival races.
Liabilities larger than that will require a "permission to lay" phone call to the traders.
The affordability/laundering checks come further down the line and obviously depend on the number and amount of said bets.
I wanted to prove I had balls once so had 500 pounds win on a 4/1 shot in a local Coral shop. The horse won. I got paid out in a brown envelope the next day. No questions asked. No answers given.

That was about 2009. Nowadays I'd probably be given a psychological evaluation not to mention a proper financial check.

I also had a couple monkey bets that went astray, one of them was actually pulled up, but I like to think merrily about the one I landed anyway. My stakes are a lot smaller these days, unless I've got winnings to play up that is.
Ry
 
I wanted to prove I had balls once so had 500 pounds win on a 4/1 shot in a local Coral shop. The horse won. I got paid out in a brown envelope the next day. No questions asked. No answers given.

That was about 2009. Nowadays I'd probably be given a psychological evaluation not to mention a proper financial check.

I also had a couple monkey bets that went astray, one of them was actually pulled up, but I like to think merrily about the one I landed anyway. My stakes are a lot smaller these days, unless I've got winnings to play up that is.
 
Last edited:
Very interesting to read a lot of ur posts, and agree with all of them in this thread.
I believe the bookies are goin the same way as the pubs, in that there will eventually just be one supersize bookie in each area pretty much, and it will be filled with as many ssbt terminals that they are allowed to have in and the max number of 4 (currently permitted) bgt's.
Over the counter business is dead nowadays and greyhound racing will very soon become a thing of the past, followed by horse racing within 50 years maximum I reckon.
I honestly dont know how it is gonna look in the future but i can safely say that the number of betting shops is gonna keep on dropping.
Go back 20, 30, 40 years ago and if a Tote monopoly had been mentioned i would have fought it as much as i could. But nowadays, bearing in mind that we have no REAL bookmakers around any more, it wouldnt bother me in the slightest although it probably wont happen in my lifetime.

But going back to price movements and the need to do it manually. i do remember quite a few occasions where i did lose it a bit with one or two people who just became so reliant on the bot that i really thought that there was no real need for them to be there at all. They are probably stacking shelves in Poundland now. I would shout over that they have just taken seven or eight bets in a row on a horse and they would reply "the bot isnt moving the price quick enough". My reply (minus the expletives) was "do it yourself then". They were just so reliant on the f**king thing. And thats just how it is these days. Everything is bot driven. No opinions, no going out on a limb, no taking one on. Nada !!!!!!
Boring !!!!!
 
And speaking of taking one on, something which may surprise a few people is that we would use Betfair to take a bit more money on an odds on chance that i/we didnt fancy.
I've heard people talk about how bookies just offload all the money they have taken on each horse in each race and have it all back on Betfair and i've read people on about it as well. That is the biggest load of nonsense i have ever read or heard and if anybody really thinks that is what happens then i think they need to give their head a shake.
But when you have a very short one that you dont fancy for whatever reason, you just sit there and wait for all the short price punters to pile in and hope there is plenty of them. But occasionally, if it is quiet or they are playing smaller or whatever, the liability on that horse is nowhere near where you would really like it. So, and i know at least two other firms who did this, we would use our company Betfair account and start laying the odds on chance for as much as we felt comfortable with and get that liability, and hopefully our profit, up. And that was just classed as Betfair having a bet on the odds on chance with us.
That, to me, was what it was all about. Going out on a limb. Having an opinion and taking one on. And thankfully, looking back, it came off far, far more times than it didnt.

Happy days. :)
 
I've a bookie friend who regularly lays off on Betfair.
Yeah, plenty will lay off on Betfair reet, but what i am talking about is laying on Betfair to get our liability up. For example, lets just say we wanted the 2/5 fav to be a minimum £30k loser and there were only a few minutes to the off and it was only a £22k loser, we would look to lay £20k on Betfair to lose £8k and take the liability up to £30k.
 
@Nfehily19 Actually starting to go the other way with shops been brought in house. WH mirrors on line with a few twists on horse racing prices, Betfred moving in house in the majority of shops with new software and SSBT’s. Lads/Coral are also using Entain odds. Times are changing
 

Bet365 profits crash 44 per cent to £349m as majority shareholder Denise Coates takes £280m in dividends and pay​


Profits slumped by 44 per cent at bet365 for the year ending March 30, even as turnover soared past £4 billion for the first time at the gambling giant.

Despite the drop in pre-tax profits to £349 million from £627m, founder and majority shareholder Denise Coates received at least £280m in dividends and pay, according to the company’s accounts published on Tuesday.

Bet365’s accounts are the first set published since reports emerged in April that Coates, and her brother John, had spoken to Wall Street banks and advisers about the full or partial sale of the company at a value as high as £9bn.

Revenue for bet365 increased by nine per cent to £4.036bn with the bookmaker stating it was driven by a five per cent increase in sports and 25 per cent in gaming revenue.

Restructuring at bet365 resulted in increased expenses for the company of £324.7m, including a “one-off restructuring and reorganisation” cost of £59.2m which bet365 said came as the result of “our exit from certain markets”.

In March, bet365 announced they would stop taking bets from China-based customers adding at the time that they continually reviewed and assessed markets to which they offered their services.

Bet365 have continued to push into the US, where they have launched in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kansas and Maryland.

The company also contributed £130m to the Denise Coates Foundation, a charity funding projects in Britain and abroad.

In a note, analysts Regulus Partners said bet365 would likely be a “material net beneficiary” from rising gambling duties next year as the company was more sport-focused, although it added that the firm’s “absolute position” would be worse.

Regulus added: “Another year has gone by, and a lot has changed, but the underlying problems caused by a lack of in-play driven growth and growing market complexity in terms of product, competition, and regulation, remain stubbornly the same, in our view.”
 

William Hill owner Evoke considers sale or break-up of business following budget tax hikes​


The owner of William Hill is considering a sale or break-up of the business having launched a strategic review following last month's budget.

Evoke, which also runs the 888 and Mr Green brands, had warned after the budget that the tax hikes announced by chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves would result in an annual hit of around £125-135 million, before mitigation, once fully implemented from April 2027.

The company said on Wednesday that it had "decided to undertake a review of the company's strategic options, which will include the consideration of a range of potential alternatives to maximise shareholder value, including, but not limited to a potential sale of the group, or some of the company's assets and/or business units".

Bankers from Morgan Stanley and Rothschild have been appointed as joint financial advisers in connection with the review.

Evoke, formerly known as 888 Holdings, completed the £2 billion acquisition of William Hill in 2022.

Shares in the company, whose net debt stood at £1.82 billion at the end of June, have plummeted from a high of 77.8p this year but were nearly 8.5 per cent higher on the back of the news at 23.7p on Wednesday afternoon.

Reeves increased remote gaming duty to 40 per cent from 21 per cent from April next year in the budget, while a new online sports betting duty of 25 per cent, excluding horseracing, will replace the existing general betting duty of 15 per cent 12 months later.

In response Evoke's chief executive Per Widerstrom said its mitigation plans would "involve a significant reduction in investment into the UK, and, very regrettably, the likely need for thousands of jobs to be cut up and down the country".

It was subsequently reported by Sky News that Evoke was considering selling off its Italian operation.

The company told shareholders on Wednesday there was "no certainty" that any transaction would arise and that further announcements would be made "when and if appropriate".
 

Recent Blog Posts

Back
Top