Why our odds look lower than other tipster sites
Short answer: we quote the lowest UK retail bookmaker price, not the highest exchange or sharp price. It costs us a few percent on the displayed odds, and it stops you reading numbers you can't actually take.
The problem with "best odds"
Open most tipster sites and you'll see a tip like "Arsenal v Spurs · BTTS Yes @ 1.95". Sounds great. Then you check Sky Bet and it's 1.72. The 1.95 came from Pinnacle, an exchange or a sharp continental book most UK punters don't have an account at. And even if you opened one, it's likely to limit or close winning customers fast.
Quoting an odds you can't take inflates the page's apparent value. It doesn't help anyone bet better.
What we do
For every market we tip, we look across all the bookmakers our odds feed tracks and pick the price using this priority order:
- William Hill if they price it (UK high street, accept all customers)
- UK retail fallback: Sky Bet, Bet365, Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, BetVictor, Unibet, BoyleSports, Betfred, 888sport, when WH doesn't
- Anything else as a last resort, only when no UK retail book prices the market
The probability the model uses for picking is computed from the lowest traditional bookmaker odds (excluding sharp exchanges like Betfair Exchange, Smarkets, Matchbook). That makes our probability estimates conservative. If a pick passes our threshold at the lowest price, it's genuinely strong.
Numbers: a real example
| Source | Sample BTTS Odds | Implied probability |
|---|---|---|
| Pinnacle | @1.92 | 52.1% |
| Betfair Exchange | @1.94 | 51.5% |
| Bet365 | @1.80 | 55.6% |
| William Hill | @1.75 | 57.1% |
| Sky Bet | @1.73 | 57.8% |
The 1.92 looks great. The 1.73 is the price you'll actually get. We display 1.73 because that's the truth.
What this means for your accas
Our 5-leg accumulators tend to land around @5.00–@8.00. A site quoting sharp prices for the same picks would show @8.00–@13.00 for the same legs. They're the same picks. The difference is the price column on the right.
If you want sharper prices, that's a fine personal choice: open a Pinnacle account, watch betting Twitter for arbitrage, accept being limited at retail books. But we won't pretend every reader has done that.
Where you can see the difference
Every match preview includes an "Odds Across Bookmakers" panel showing every bookmaker's price for the selected market. Click it open to compare. We'll never bury the higher prices, we just won't headline them.
Read more about the model itself on our methodology page, or download the full record at /track-record.