Can a bookmaker’s odds vary?

Before understanding how a bookmaker’s odds can vary, it’s important to know what actually an odd is. Many bettors that are starting now in the world of sports betting, still don’t know but they need to understand what an odd is – it’s the inverse of probability. That is, on a certain sport event, for example a football game, the higher is the probability of a team winning, the lower are going to be its odds.

Let’s see the following example:

If team A is considered to be the favourite team and plays against team B, which is considered the non-favourite, team A odd will be lower  (since its probability of winning is greater) than team B which, in this case, will present a higher odd (since its probability of winning is lower).  In the case Team B wins, the prize will be much higher than the prize if the stake was placed on team A (more probability to win, lower the prize).

The setting of the odds values are based in several situations:

• Statistic result of the sport event,
• History of the sport event;
• Line up (who plays in the event);
• Probability associated to the event;

Bookmakers’ odds can vary and that can happen in the following situations:

• When a certain event begins, the odds can vary from the initial ones depending on what happens throughout the game.
  For example: at any moment, a red card or a goal happens, in that exact second, bookmakers automatically suspend and reopen new odds for the event.
• Days before a certain event, bookmakers can obtain information that can change positively or negatively the odds. For example, if a player is injured, a team suffered a disciplinary sanction or even the most bizarre scenario, the players of a team were drinking heavily the previous night – in this situation the bookmakers will have to, immediately, raise the odds of that team winning (since the probability of that to happen will be lower).
• Technical errors (these are called bugs, incorrect odds by a mistake of the trader, usually for the correction of the mistake it is necessary a market suspension and the correction of the odd to the right value).