Talk:Bookmaker

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The bookmaker does not generally attempt to make money from the bets themselves, but rather profiting from the event regardless of the outcome.

This phrase implies the presences of a betting fee, similar to stock trading fees payed to stock brokers, but does not explicitly mention such a fee.

Being ignorant of gambling myself I am loath to touch the actual article text. Funkyj 17:57, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

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With a traditional bookmakers, there is no betting fee - by 'profiting from the event', what is meant is the profit arising from surplus remaining to the bookie from all the non-returned stakes on the losing horse/team/outcome, once all the winners have been paid their winnings and had their stakes returned.

To put it another way, the bookies are gambling against the punters, not on the event itself. The punter is betting on x to occur. The bookie is betting the punter is wrong - they're not betting on x itself, as such.

However, the online betting exchanges do take a commission. This is because of the 'service' they provide, in which they cut out the middleman, the bookie, by putting 'Backers' directly in touch with 'Layers' (q.v.). Consequently, they make no money from the event, but nor are they betting against the punter. Online, punters are betting directly against other punters. Online betting exchanges therefore make their money from the activity surrounding the event, rather than the event itself.

--Paulredfern1 12:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article mentions "Back and Lay bets". Since this is not explained anywhere, could this be expanded (or wikified, if I've missed the article)? 81.134.176.76 23:02, 12 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

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A 'Back' bet is what you, the punter, traditionally make. You back a horse to come in at 10/1. In UK or Ireland, what happens next is you hand your stake, say £1, over to your bookie for 'safekeeping' - because, as the article says, gambling debts were, historically, unenforceable under the provisions of 1845 & 1892 UK Gaming Acts, which also form the bases of gambling law in Ireland, Australia, NZ, Singapore and parts of Canada (esp. Ontario), Jamaica &, no doubt, other Commonwealth countries also. These provisions were repealed in the UK with the passage of the 2005 Gambling Act [1], which comes into force this year (2007 [2]), but I do not know what is the current position on the enforceability of gambling debts in these other countries.

The bookie records the event in his book and gives you a receipt (betting stub). If your horse does come in first, you present your stub to your bookie, who returns you your £1 stake, plus £10 of his 'own' money (in reality, £10 taken from the money staked by those who backed the losing horses). If the horse loses - and most do - the bookie adds your stake to the pile of all the other losers' stakes, and looks forward to a fat cigar at the end of the day's racing (we're ignoring each-way - place - betting here for ease of exposition).

What the bookie is doing is 'Laying', i.e., he is laying odds of 10/1 against the horse winning. In this traditional scenario, only the bookie 'lays'.

Now, however, many of the online betting exchanges mentioned in this fine article, offer the punter the opportunity effectively to act as bookies. In other words, when you 'Lay' bet online, you bet that the horse won't win: you put up your £1 stake together with the odds you are offering against the possibility that the horse will win (though of course your own odds will be governed by what all the other 'Layers' are offering - it is a market after all), and hope that someone will find your odds attractive enough to tempt them to match your stake, by putting up £1 of their own. If the horse doesn't win, you keep their stake (their £1). If it does win at, again, say, 10/1, you owe your opponent in the betting ring their £1 plus £10 of your own:

If I wanted to back a horse at odds of 4/1 and I wanted to put €43 on it, then I am risking losing my €43 for a potential gain of €172.

Now, for laying, think of being on the other side of the above transaction. Someone else is going to risk their €43 for a potential gain of €172 and we are going to accommodate them. That's what laying is. So I lay the horse at odds of 4/1 for a stake of €43, which means I have a potential gain of €43 but a risk of losing €172. The odds don't affect what I might gain by laying, only what I might lose.[3]

Now why would you want to enter into a bet where your potential gain is much less than your potential loss? Well, in placing a 'Lay' bet, essentially you've become a bookie, and there aren't many poor bookies in my experience! In a 10 horse race, only one is going to win. You just have to hope it's not the one you've laid against.

Is it worth it? Depends on the odds and the situation.

If you're dead certain 'Red Paul's Hope' is going to thrash the field of 10, despite its odds of 10/1 against, you'd be better off putting £1 on 'Red Paul's Hope' to win, rather than laying £1 against every other horse in the field. On the other hand, if everyone else is equally dead certain that 'Red Paul's Hope' is the one that will win, then the odds against its winning are going to tumble. If the odds on 'Red Paul's Hope' ended up at 1/10 (10 to 1 'on' in betting parlance) in the markets (so that you'd have to put up £10 to get £1 back), then laying against the other horses may make more sense - providing you can find anyone willing, as they say in the British Isles, to "oppose" 'Red Paul's Hope', by betting on some other horse to win the race.

So that's the principle. Now I should say that extending to the punter the ability to bet on a horse - or on any other event - to lose, rather than to win, has provoked a lot of disquiet; as the Kieron Fallon case demonstrates (the then UK Champion jockey Kieron Fallon, along with jockeys Fergal Lynch and Darren Williams, was arrested and charged in September 2004, over allegations of race-fixing and plotting to defraud Betfair customers by ensuring that horses lost races between December 2002 and September 2004 Kieren_Fallon#Allegations_of_Race_Fixing [4]).

Even in one-on-one contests such as a football or a boxing match, betting on x to win is not the same as betting on y to lose: even if the inevitable result of x winning is that y loses, the odds that y wins are generally not the inverse of x losing. Odds of 6/4 x to win vs 9/5 y to win are fairly typical in football betting [5]. So, in outlining the bases for this disquiet, I do not think that it is an unacceptable POV to state that it is a widely held belief that to enter into a bet that x loses is inevitably to introduce a greater temptation to dishonesty than it is to bet on on y to win (cf. Bet_exchange#Controversy). It is a widely held opinion with the racing world that punters' - and stables' in particular - ability to make 'lay bets' is responsible for the scandal surrounding Mr Fallon [6].

Bookies, who are betting on horses/teams/athletes to lose, generally are honest: as the article says, they are essentially actuaries (if with more exciting lives), which means that they know that the odds are with them so that they're going to make (a lot) more money than they lose over the course of a race meeting or season. But they are also kept honest by stringent regulations and the sanction of losing their licences (which means their livelihoods) if they are associated with anything less than honesty.

Punters on the betting exchanges are subject to no comparable degree of scrutiny and sanction and may only ever be seeking to land a one-off 'coup' . Horses, in particular, are inherently unpredictable creatures, do lose for all sorts of inexplicable reasons and sins of omission (such as not trying quite hard enough to win) are a lot easier to disguise than sins of commission. The exchanges do monitor 'unusual' activity and can, and do, notify the relevant authorities of this, withdraw betting privileges etc. (cf. Bet_exchange#Controversy for a wikified discussion of this), but clearly they cannot exercise anything like the scrutiny and sanction that the Horserace Betting Levy Board (or its Irish equivalent, the Irish Horseracing Authority) can exercise over UK or Irish bookmakers, and an illegal 'coup' may only be discovered long after the miscreants have made off with their ill-gotten gains[7]. Even then, as the Kieron Fallon case, which is dragging on into its 3rd year, confirms, it is very hard to prove wrongdoing [8]. It should go without saying that Mr Fallon remains innocent until he should ever be proven guilty. Nonetheless, it is the Fallon case in particular which is immediate source of the disquiet surrounding the availability of 'Lay' bets to the punter via the betting exchanges.

'Honest' Paul --Paulredfern1 11:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

i think a quicker explanation is that a 'back' bet is putting money on an event to happen, ie a horse to win; while a 'lay' bet is on an outcome NOT to happen, ie a horse losing a race. if you walk into a bookies and back a horse to win a race, in effect the bookmaker is laying a bet on that horse not to win. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.71.208.181 (talk) 13:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I remember watching a BBC documentary on the history of UK gambling law and it stated that when bookmakers were first allowed they were regulated with some unusual requirements: They were not allowed to provide padded seats, could not make the place 'welcoming' and I think they were not allowed customer toilets. This was, according to the documentary, all part of regulation's plan to make bookmakers a place that someone would go to make a bet, but not stay for the afternoon. Obviously these laws have since been relaxed. If people think this is worthy of addition I may try and track down a source to back up my memory. ny156uk 09:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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That was the Betting & Gaming Act of 1961, which legalised off-track betting in the UK[9]. The Treasury got a cut of the profits (9%), but left it up to the punter to decide whether to have the tax placed on the stake, or on the winnings (no tax was liable on on-course betting). This laid a trap for the novice punter: by asking for the tax to be paid out of the winnings (i.e., only if the horse won, in order no doubt to try to avoid paying the tax at all), effectively you were stating you didn't believe your horse could win - so why place the bet at all?!! The current Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, abolished the betting tax in 1999.
I think it was the Lotteries Act of 1975 that relaxed the restrictions on provision of food and drink, and toilets, but even so, food and drinks provision remain limited to snack and (non-alchoholic) beverage dispensers. The 2005 Act, which is yet to be fully implemented [10], will further relax these provisions. The 2005 Act also repeals the 1710 Act, aspects of which, apparently, are still in force!
As a matter of interest, it has traditionally been the racecourse owners and on-track bookies who have opposed these relaxations, thus finding themselves in odd alliances with many churches, who view gambling, and alchohol, as a sin. However the formers' (the racecourse owners' and on-track bookies') objections have been based on the fear that improving off-track betting facilities, in addition to the removal of the off-track betting tax, will lead to a decline in attendances at the track.

--Paulredfern1 13:18, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of this is POV.

This article seems decidedly UK-focused. A more generic discussion of bookmaking would be more appropriate.

I was interested to read what's said about Betterbet. Does that mean that Betterbet don't run any owned shops, that they're in fact running a franchise? I'm interested to learn more about the company. Can anyone help? hjuk 23:55, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

i am very much willing to be corrected regarding my input to this point in the general topic, however i feel it necessary to point out that canadas state-controlled gaming industry is run by a number of regional commissions.

they are actually known as:

   * Atlantic Lottery Corporation
   * British Columbia Lottery Corporation
   * Loto-Québec
   * Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation
   * Western Canada Lottery Corporation

sport select, and its various incarnations are simply products offered by these local regulatory bodies, in addition to more generic regional and national lotteries, plus 'scratch-and-win' style lottery tickets.

no ??

66.222.236.219 (talk) 19:25, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

oops !!

i guess one can always be more thorough in their researching a point, which is a lesson fully in effect re: all my additions to this discussion page, even after this addendum (sheepish ...).

in listing the aforementioned provincial entities, i neglected to include their parent figure in canada, namely:

   * Interprovincial Lottery Corporation

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery#Lottery_in_Canada

go on, tear me to shreds. maybe i'll learn something new !! ;^)

66.222.236.219 (talk) 23:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article is lacking citations, I don't really think you can claim something as substantial as "gambling debts in the uk are unenforceable" without a citation. Comrinec (talk) 00:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Plus this article would suggest otherwise. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2674683/Billionaire-gambler-Fat-Man-wins-2m-Aspinalls-case.html Comrinec (talk) 04:43, 4 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I understand "bookie" being redirected to this article but "booky" should be redirected to My Booky Wook. It's clear that this is the intended destination of the search term. The lack of betting Google Adword ads is also telling. Hazir (talk) 07:41, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This section needs lots of work.

Most bookmakers in the United States bet merely on college and professional sports, though in the United Kingdom they offer a wider range of bets, including each-way betting on golf, football and tennis, and especially horse racing and greyhound events. They also specialize in novelty events such as betting the probability that it will snow on Christmas Day, the outcome of political elections and reality television contests such as I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, Big Brother and The X Factor, or that aliens will be found on Mars.[citation needed]

• There's no such thing as 'bookmakers in the United States'. There are only Casino-based Nevada sportsbooks.

• Sportsbooks do not 'bet merely on [US] college and professional sports' and UK bookmakers do not offer a 'wider range of bets'.

I'm going to have a try at rewriting this section but just wanted to inform other WP members of my rationale. Hazir (talk) 03:47, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Betting exchanges are universally disliked by the traditional bookmaker." Patently not true, at least not anymore. Most bookmakers now incorporate Betfair and other exchanges into their activities and use it as an online outlet for thier activities. If opinion-based statements like this appear in an article then at the least a citation should be required. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.22.83.74 (talk) 06:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed it to "Betting exchanges compete with traditional bookmakers" and moved the para up, since the one following suggests in more details the way traditional bookmakers use them and so are not, at least in that sense, disliked by them. Si Trew (talk) 13:29, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Australian TABs (Totalizer Agency Boards) are not one singular authority. They are state based and a mixture of government and privatised agencies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.22.83.74 (talk) 07:01, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've pluralised it and changed it to "state-run agencies". I suppose that's not true if they're privatised, "state-governed agencies" might be better. Si Trew (talk) 13:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a citation for legal decision from the Western Australian challenge of Betfair's operation in that state (if it's needed)

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2008/11.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.22.83.75 (talk) 06:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am removing the statement

Bets are also taken via phones, using email and SMS text messages,^[1] though poker and other sports are more suited to other media. As technology moves on, the gambling world ensures it is a major player in new technology operations.

In theory, discussion of mobile betting via SMS or email would be a relevant addition to this page but this statement isn't it. The "citation" is an attempt at advertising and the rest of the statement is uncited. "Poker and other sports are more suited to other media", according to whom? In what way? "As technology moves on" is a filler expression, and the rest of the claim is vague: who is "the gambling world"? What are "new technology operations"? SMS and email are unlikely to be considered new. How are they "ensuring" anything and what does it mean to be a "major player"? &c. &c. I'm only noting it here because IPs keep reverting edits to this section. - Procyonidae (talk) 17:44, 8 November 2022 (UTC) Procyonidae (talk) 17:44, 8 November 2022 (UTC) [reply]