Betting tips 1X2 today: reading value, margin and the three outcomes of every football match

Updated October 2026

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A punter looking for 1X2 tips today is not short of voices shouting them. The market itself is the simplest football betting has to offer: three possible results, ninety minutes of regulation time, one of three outcomes settles the slip. The harder question is what those tips are worth once the bookmaker’s margin is taken off, and what any “free” promotion actually costs the bettor paying for it. The shape of that question decides everything in the guide that follows. Snapshot current as of 27 October 2026, cross-checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register of remote operating licences.

Live betting and cash out: the same three outcomes, priced again while the match moves

Live betting on a 1X2 market is the in-running price of the three results as the match unfolds. The market does not change its name; only the prices move. A side 2-0 up after an hour has the away price drifting into long territory, the draw hovering near the price of a fresh coin-toss, and the home side shortened sharply. Punters often treat this as an opportunity to “back the draw at better odds” once the favourite looks comfortable, which it is — the price is better because the chance is smaller. The cost of trading live betting is that the bookmaker’s margin is baked into every refresh of the price.

Cash out is the bookmaker offering to settle the bet before the final whistle. A £10 stake at 3.50 on the draw looks tidy when the home side equalises in the 80th minute; cash out pays a slice of the prospective return now, in exchange for giving up the rest. The price on that cash-out button is set by the bookmaker using its own model, and it usually sits a few percentage points below what the open market would pay at the same minute. The shape of the offer is the bookmaker’s, not the punter’s. A bettor who cashes out ten times a month is paying for the privilege of locking in smaller wins instead of waiting for the bigger ones — and at the same time avoiding the bigger losses. Whether that is worth it depends on how the punter feels about watching the final minutes, not on any edge the cash-out price carries.

In-play betting is licensed and offered by every UK-licensed operator reviewed further down. There is no legal cap on what can be staked in-play, but the bookmaker can refuse or restrict a bet on its own terms, and a heavily-restricted account is the most common reason a punter finds the in-play market suddenly unavailable. Cash out is offered by most of the reviewed brands and missing from the rest; where it is missing, a punter either lets the bet run or lays it off on a betting exchange. The wider question of which bookmaker to bet with is taken up later, but the live-betting point stands alone: the three outcomes are the same, only the speed at which the prices change is different.

How a tip is built, and why no tip is ever certain

A tip is not a result; it is a probability dressed as a result. Every tip worth reading is built on the same handful of inputs: recent form, head-to-head record, expected line-ups, injuries and suspensions, the venue, the league position, and the price the bookmaker is offering. None of those inputs alone decides anything. Form can flatter a side that has scored against weak opponents; head-to-head record looks like signal until one team has changed manager; expected line-ups are guesses until the teamsheet drops an hour before kick-off. The number the tipster hands the punter — “back the home win at 2.10” — is a probability compressed into a price, and the work of reading it is making sure the probability the tipster claims is actually higher than the probability the bookmaker’s price implies.

A value bet is the name for that gap. A price is value when it is larger than the reciprocal of the true chance of the outcome. A 2.10 price implies a chance of about 48 % (1 ÷ 2.10). If the bettor’s own estimate of the chance is 55 %, the price is value: the punter is being paid 2.10 for something that ought to be priced at 1.82 (1 ÷ 0.55). The edge is small, and over a season it is the only edge that compounds. A tipster who calls every favourite and never loses is not giving tips: he is collecting followers, and the only certain outcome of following him is a smaller bankroll.

The most important thing a guide can say about a tip is that no tip is ever certain. A football match is ninety minutes of contested play by twenty-two professionals, and the final whistle can rewrite any probability. Bookmakers lose on individual results every week, because that is how the market works — they lose sometimes, win most of the time, and make their money on the margin built into every price, not on the outcome of any single match. A punter who treats tips as certainty is punting against the mechanics of the market itself. The honest framing is the opposite: a tip is a hypothesis that the punter is willing to back with money, sized so that losing it does not end the punter’s week.

Staking and bankroll discipline are how a hypothesis is kept affordable. A common rule is to stake between one and three per cent of the bank on any single bet; a £500 bank means stakes of £5 to £15, no more. The point is not the size of the stake but the consistency of it. A punter who raises the stake after a win and chases losses after a defeat gives back every edge the price carried. The bankroll is the budget the punter has set aside for the season; once it is gone, the season is over. Free tips and “sure” picks sold by tipster services rarely tell the punter to stake less — they tell the punter to stake more, because the tipster is paid by subscription, not by result.

The 1X2 market itself: three outcomes, ninety minutes, one stake

The 1X2 market is the most basic football bet a bookmaker offers. 1 is the home win, X is the draw, 2 is the away win. The match goes to ninety minutes plus stoppage time, and that is it: extra time and penalties do not count for 1X2 in league play, and in knockout competitions most bookmakers offer a separate “to qualify” market that does. A punter on the home win at 2.50 with the score 1-1 after ninety minutes has lost the bet, even if the home side scores in extra time. The rules of football and the rules of the bet are the same ninety minutes.

Settling is mechanical: the bookmaker checks the official result, the bet is paid at the price taken at placement (or at SP if the bet was placed without a price), and the punter’s stake × odds is the return, with the stake returned on a win. A losing bet returns nothing. The three outcomes do not overlap, and exactly one of them settles the slip. A bookmaker cannot void a 1X2 bet for “controversial” refereeing decisions, because the result is the result. A postponed match is a different question: most bookmakers void the bet if the match is not played within a defined period, usually twenty-four to forty-eight hours; the stake is returned, and the bet is off.

Odds in Great Britain come in two forms. Fractional odds — 5/1, 11/4, evens — show the profit relative to the stake; decimal odds — 6.00, 3.75, 2.00 — show the total return including the stake. A £10 stake at 5/1 fractional returns £60 (£10 profit + £10 stake), the same as £10 × 6.00 decimal. The two formats describe the same price. Fractional is the older British convention; decimal has been standard on most UK-licensed sites for years, and the difference is purely a matter of what the punter reads faster. Odds-on means shorter than evens — a price below 2.00 decimal — and the favourite is usually odds-on. SP, or starting price, is the price the bookmaker sets at the off, and BOG — best odds guaranteed — means the punter gets the higher of the price taken and the SP, on horse racing.

The margin that sits inside every price is the single most important number a punter learns to read. A bookmaker cannot offer true odds on all three results and stay in business, because the three probabilities add to more than 100 % once the bookmaker’s take is added. Take a match priced at 2.10 / 3.40 / 3.50 (home / draw / away). The implied probabilities are about 47.6 %, 29.4 %, 28.6 % — and they sum to 105.6 %. That 5.6 % over 100 % is the margin, sometimes called the overround, and it is the bookmaker’s edge on every unit staked across the market. A lower margin means more of each pound returns to the punter in the long run; a higher margin means more stays with the bookmaker. The illustration further down walks through the arithmetic.

The ten UK-licensed bookmakers, and what each one brings to a 1X2 slip

A bookmaker serving customers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission licence, and the Commission’s public register is the whole test of who holds one. The ten reviewed below are all on that register at the time of writing, all hold a remote general betting standard (real events) licence, and all take part in GAMSTOP, the national self-exclusion scheme. None of them is “the only” licensed brand; there are many more on the register than any article can feature. A licence is not a recommendation, and the order below is not a ranking: it follows the Commission’s register, and what the brands bring to a 1X2 punter is what their own sites and apps state.

Paddy Power — the Bet Builder+ and Super Sub angle

Paddy Power’s UK remote licence sits with PPB Counterparty Services Limited (Commission account 39439), and its app and site combine a full football sportsbook with the kinds of markets punters ask for by name. Bet Builder+ lets a punter combine selections from a single match into one bet — a home win combined with over 1.5 goals, for instance — and Popular Bet Builders surfaces the builder bets other punters have been placing. Super Sub is the rule that rolls a player-based selection over to the replacement if the selected player is substituted before the bet settles, which is a small thing until a key striker is hooked at half-time. Expanded Win More markets and player and acca stats are part of the same pitch: a punter who wants to build a card with mainstream markets and a few niche touches will find the tools here. For a 1X2 punter, Paddy Power’s strength is the depth of the markets around the match; the 1X2 line itself is rarely the cheapest on the card.

10bet — Cash Out, Bet Builder and Live Streaming on football, tennis and racing

10bet’s UK remote licence is held by Blue Star Planet Limited (Commission account 43173), and the sportsbook covers football, tennis and horse racing. Cash Out, Bet Builder and Live Streaming are stated as features on the app, which means a 1X2 punter can place the bet, watch the match in-play on the app where a stream is available, and cash out before the final whistle if the bet looks safe or unsafe. That combination is the everyday workflow for many British punters, and 10bet ships all three pieces in one app. The cost of the offer is the ordinary cost of a mid-market bookmaker: the 1X2 prices are competitive on the bigger leagues and a touch wider on the lower divisions, and the in-play margin is the kind of margin most licensed brands carry.

Ladbrokes — Best Odds Guaranteed on horse racing, with Acca Boosts and in-play football

Ladbrokes’ UK remote licence sits with LC International Limited (Commission account 54743), the same licensee that runs Coral, and the brand is one of the longest-established names on the British high street. Odds boosts on horse and greyhound bets, Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse races, in-play betting and Acca Boosts are the headline features; for a 1X2 punter the football in-play and acca angles are the relevant ones. Best Odds Guaranteed does not apply to 1X2 football, but it is the rule that makes Ladbrokes a contender for the horse-racing side of an account. The 1X2 price on a Premier League match is in the same band as the rest of the reviewed set; the differentiator is the acca and in-play depth, not the 1X2 line itself.

888sport — BetFinder form tools, racing streams and daily boosted odds

888sport’s UK remote licence is held by 888 UK Limited (Commission account 39028), and the brand offers pre-match and in-play betting, Cash Out, Bet Builder, racing streams, BetFinder form tools, a live bet feed and daily boosted odds. The combination of racing streams and form tools is the unusual feature: a punter who watches horse racing on the app and reads form in the same window is doing something Ladbrokes and Paddy Power do not package quite this way. For a 1X2 punter the football in-play and cash out are the relevant pieces, and the daily boosted odds are worth a look when the boost lands on a 1X2 line. The risk of a boosted price is that the underlying margin is unchanged and the headline figure is the marketing — see the bonus section for what that costs.

Spreadex — fixed-odds and spread betting under one roof, with a £60 free-bet welcome

Spreadex is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for spread betting and by the Gambling Commission for fixed-odds betting (Commission account 8835), and the same account covers both products. The fixed-odds 1X2 line is offered alongside the spread-betting line on football, where the punters back or sell the number of goals in a match rather than the three outcomes; spread-betting losses can exceed the deposit, which is the rule that sets spread betting apart from fixed-odds betting and is the reason it carries its own FCA regulation. The fixed-odds welcome offer is £60 in free bets for a £10 fixed-odds bet, with the free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting, and the qualifying bet must be placed within 28 days of opening the account. For a 1X2 punter who has never tried spread betting, the offer is an entry into a different kind of risk; the rest of this guide covers fixed-odds 1X2 only.

Fitzdares — premium positioning, Lucky 15s, antepost markets and in-play on six sports

Fitzdares’ UK remote licence is held by Fitzdares Limited (Commission account 400), and the brand positions itself as a premium bookmaker rather than a mass-market one. The app offers cash out, accumulators, Lucky 15s (fifteen bets across four selections), specials and antepost markets on horse racing, football, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf and American football, with in-play live odds. A 1X2 punter who also bets on the horses or on antepost football will find the antepost markets useful; a punter who bets only on a Saturday afternoon 1X2 card will find the offering narrower than Paddy Power or 10bet at the same fixture. The price on the 1X2 line itself is competitive on the bigger matches.

Star Sports — the UK’s self-styled leading independent bookmaker

Star Sports’ UK remote licence is held by Star Racing Limited (Commission account 9177), and the brand describes itself as the UK’s leading independent bookmaker, with virtual sports, casino and live casino alongside the sportsbook. The claim of independence is the differentiator in a market dominated by a handful of large groups; the offer to a 1X2 punter is a full sportsbook with a mid-market margin on the football lines. The punter who wants to bet with a smaller, British-owned brand will find one here; the punter who wants the deepest in-play offering is better served elsewhere on the list.

BetMGM — four £10 free bets as a sports welcome, with acca and multiple conditions

BetMGM’s UK remote licence sits with LeoVegas Gaming PLC (Commission account 39198), and the sports welcome offer for new UK customers who deposit £10 or more and place a sports bet within 7 days is four £10 free bets (two football accumulators of 4+ selections and two sports multiples of 2+), valid for 7 days with minimum odds and opt-in required. For a 1X2 punter, two of the four free bets cannot be used as single 1X2 stakes — they are tied to accumulators or multiples — and the seven-day window is short. The cost of the offer is the kind of cost the bonus section covers below; the headline number is the headline number, not what lands in the account.

Swifty Sports — Best Odds Guaranteed, Cash Out, price boosts and live streaming, with Bet Builder coming soon

Swifty Sports’ UK remote licence is held by Swifty Global (UK) Ltd (Commission account 58957), and the brand offers Best Odds Guaranteed, Cash Out on markets including horse racing and football, daily price boosts, live streaming and in-play betting. Bet Builder is listed as coming soon. A 1X2 punter who wants live streaming on the football card will find it on the app; the punters who want Bet Builder on a single match will not find it yet, which is the constraint that puts Swifty below 10bet or Paddy Power on the builder question.

Midnite — £25 in free bets plus 50 free spins for a £5+ qualifying bet, with a 14-day window

Midnite’s UK remote licence is held by Midnite Limited (Commission account 101839), and the brand’s site cites that licence on its home page, alongside in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. The sports welcome offer is £25 in free bets and 50 free spins for new customers who bet £5 or more on pre-match odds of EVS (2.0) or greater within 14 days of sign-up, valid for 7 days. A 1X2 punter who finds a price above evens — most away wins and most draws qualify — will trigger the offer with a small qualifying stake; the free bet itself can be used on the football card, but the seven-day validity is short.

The licence table: who is on the register, and what each operator’s terms say about the subject

The table below sets out the Gambling Commission remote licence number and licence holder for each reviewed brand, alongside what that operator’s own terms state on the subject of 1X2 football betting. The licence entries are from the Commission’s public register at the snapshot date; the operator-terms column reflects what each operator’s own site or app states, and a punter is wise to re-check before staking.

The shape of a 1X2 price: working through the bookmaker’s margin

Understanding how a bookmaker sets a price is the first step in reading value. The arithmetic of the margin itself is worth doing once, so the rest of the guide has a concrete number behind it. The odds research gives for the example are decimal odds of 1.90 / 1.90 — an even-money line on the two-way version of the same calculation, useful for showing how the margin works without bringing three outcomes into the same sentence. The same logic extends to 1X2 in three lines further down.

For a two-way market priced at 1.90 on each side, the implied probabilities are 1 ÷ 1.90 = 0.5263 on each side, or 52.63 % per outcome. Add the two together and the sum is 105.26 % — five-point-something per cent over the 100 % that fair odds would imply. The margin is that excess: 5.26 %, which is the slice of every unit staked across the market that the bookmaker keeps on average. The payout share is the rest: 1 − 0.0526 = 0.9474, or 94.74 %, returned to punters across both outcomes in the long run. State the result as a band: a 1.90 / 1.90 line carries a margin of roughly 5 %, with the exact figure at 5.26 %. A 1.95 / 1.95 line would carry a tighter margin of around 2.5 %; a 1.85 / 1.85 line a wider one of around 8 %.

For a three-way 1X2 market at, say, 2.10 / 3.40 / 3.50, the implied probabilities are 47.6 %, 29.4 %, 28.6 % — summing to 105.6 % — meaning an overround of 5.6 % and a margin of 5.3 %. A 2.20 / 3.60 / 3.60 line would sum to about 102.6 %, a margin of around 2.6 %; a 2.00 / 3.20 / 3.30 line would sum to about 109.4 %, a margin closer to 9.4 %. The wider the margin, the more of every pound stays with the bookmaker across the long run. The narrower the margin, the more comes back. The margin is the same number read from two sides: a 95 % payout share is a 5 % margin, and vice versa.

The illustration uses an example price, not a quoted one: a 1.90 / 1.90 line is a teaching price, not a price pulled from a fixture today. Punters comparing real prices on real fixtures do the same arithmetic with the three prices offered, add the implied probabilities, and read the excess over 100 % as the margin. The arithmetic is the arithmetic the rest of the guide rests on.

What the law actually says about betting tips and licensed bookmakers in Great Britain

Betting in Great Britain is licensed under the Gambling Act 2005, which covers England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland sits outside the Act and runs its own older law, so a “GB licence” regulates betting in Great Britain and not in Northern Ireland. The regulator (the UKGC) is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and its public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The register is the whole test of who holds a licence, and a brand that does not appear on it is not licensed to serve customers in Great Britain — whatever its marketing says.

Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence is not a substitute for a GB licence at the point of consumption, and a brand whose site is registered in Malta but takes a stake from a customer in Manchester is offering its services in Great Britain and needs a GB licence. There is no state monopoly and no cap on the number of licences. A punter can hold accounts with any number of licensed brands; a punter who uses a brand without a GB licence gives up the protections a licence brings.

Minimum age is 18. Name, address and date of birth are verified before a customer can deposit or gamble at a licensed site, including with a free bet or bonus. The verification rules have been in force since 7 May 2019, and a licensed site that lets a new customer place a free bet without those checks is in breach of its licence conditions. Anonymous play is not on offer at a UK-licensed site, and the brand that advertises “no verification” is either not licensed in Great Britain or describing a different market.

What may be bet on is a question for the operator, not the statute. No statutory list of permitted bets or markets exists; an operator holds a licence for a category and offers markets under its own rules and the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice. In-play betting on football is licensed and offered. Esports are treated like any other event. Bets on politics, novelty markets and TV shows are offered by GB bookmakers, and no statutory prohibition was found. Betting exchanges run under a separate betting intermediary licence. Financial spread betting that is not a financial product is inside General Betting Duty and runs alongside the fixed-odds licence.

The player’s tax position is straightforward: the player pays no tax on betting winnings in Great Britain, with the caveat that a professional gambler should ask HMRC or an adviser. General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits, currently 15 %; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25 % applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, self-service betting-terminal bets, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15 %. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15 %. Whether operators pass duty on through odds is not established; never write that the player is charged duty. The Commission’s statutory levy is a separate charge and not a tax.

Safer gambling: what every UK-licensed bookmaker offers, and where the help is

Every reviewed brand is on GAMSTOP, the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme that has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal; after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate service, and a punter who self-excludes online and walks into a shop is not covered. The scheme is the single most effective tool a punter with a gambling problem can use, because it blocks every licensed site in one registration.

Deposit limits are a customer-set tool, not a state-set ceiling. Every UK-licensed remote operator must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame under RTS 12; the first changes have applied since 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether it is live is not established at the time of writing. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting: limits are the customer’s choice. The financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4, in force since 30 August 2024) applies to licensed remote betting when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, since 28 February 2025. It is a public-record check (bankruptcy or county court judgments, for example), not an income check and not a credit reference check. Financial risk assessments — the “affordability checks” of the press — are announced in a staged plan, with no start date; never write them as “in force”.

Help is available outside the operator. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware funds treatment and advice; the NHS runs gambling clinics in parts of England; Gambling Therapy and Gamblers Anonymous run support groups. A punter who feels the betting is no longer fun, who is chasing losses, who is lying to family about the account, or who is borrowing to bet, should stop and use one of those routes before adding another bookmaker. The reviewed brands carry links to BeGambleAware, GamCare, GAMSTOP, Gambling Therapy and the BGC, and most carry safer-gambling tools on the account page: deposit limits, time-out, product restrictions, self-exclusion. The tools are real and they work; the punter who uses them is the punter who keeps the hobby a hobby.

Bonuses and free bets: what the marketing word actually buys a 1X2 punter

A welcome offer is a marketing expense, and the marketing word is rarely the same as the bankroll effect. A free bet is a stake the bookmaker gives the customer that is not paid back with a win; a £10 free bet at 3.00 returns £30 (£20 profit + £0 stake), not £30 (£20 profit + £10 stake). The difference matters at every odds level, and it matters most on the long-odds bets the marketing tends to push. A “risk-free” bet refunded as a free bet is not a refund in money; it is a chance to bet again with the bookmaker’s money, and the average value of that chance is well below the headline refund.

The cost of an offer to the punter is the wagering requirement (or the lack of one), the minimum odds on the qualifying bet, the window in which the offer must be used, and the cap on what the offer can return. The wagering cap introduced in Great Britain from 19 January 2026 limits the wagering requirement on a bonus to 10x the bonus amount: a £10 bonus with a 10x cap requires £100 of qualifying bets; a £10 bonus with a 50x cap (the kind of cap that used to be standard) required £500 of qualifying bets. The cap is on the wagering, not on the headline value of the bonus, and it does not change the fact that the bonus is paid in free bets rather than cash. Mixed-product offers — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types, betting plus casino for example — are banned under the same rules.

The offers the reviewed brands advertise to a UK-licensed customer follow. Spreadex: £60 in free bets for a £10 fixed-odds bet, free bets usable across fixed odds and spread betting, 28-day qualifying window. BetMGM: four £10 free bets (two football accumulators of 4+ selections and two sports multiples of 2+), valid 7 days, minimum odds, opt-in required. Midnite: £25 in free bets and 50 free spins for £5+ pre-match bet at EVS (2.0) or greater within 14 days, valid 7 days. None of the three offers is a qualifying bet alone — every one requires an additional stake, a minimum price, or a window — and every one pays out in free bets or spins rather than cash. A punter who reads the small print before claiming finds the offer is smaller than the headline; a punter who claims without reading finds the small print later.

The price boost is a different animal, and it is worth a word of its own. A price boost takes a 1X2 line from, say, 2.50 to 3.00, and the headline reads as a free upgrade. The arithmetic is that the boosted price is the headline and the underlying margin is unchanged: the bookmaker has offered to pay the punter more, but only on the selections the bookmaker wants the punter to take. A punter who chases boosted prices is, over time, paying the same margin on a smaller sample of bets. The boost is a marketing tool, not an edge.

Frequently asked questions

What does 1X2 mean in betting?

A 1X2 market is the most basic football bet a bookmaker offers. 1 is the home win, X is the draw, 2 is the away win, and the result is settled after ninety minutes plus stoppage time; extra time and penalties do not count. Exactly one of the three outcomes settles the slip. The price the punter takes at placement is the price the bookmaker pays out at if the bet wins.

What is 1X2 in betting?

1X2 is the shorthand for the three-outcome market on a football match. The “1” is the home win, the “X” the draw, the “2” the away win. It is the line on the betting slip under “Match Result”, “Full-Time Result” or “1X2” depending on the bookmaker, and the same three selections are offered on almost every football match at almost every licensed bookmaker.

How do I win a 1X2 bet?

A 1X2 bet wins when the selected outcome is the full-time result after ninety minutes plus stoppage time. There is no skill to winning beyond picking the right outcome, and no system changes the underlying chance of the result. The work of winning over a season is finding prices whose implied probability is lower than the punter’s own estimate of the true probability — the value bet, in other words.

What is a value bet and why is no tip ever certain?

A value bet is a price whose implied probability is lower than the punter’s own estimate of the true chance of the outcome. A 2.10 price implies a 47.6 % chance; if the punter’s own estimate is 55 %, the price is value. No tip is ever certain because a football match is ninety minutes of contested play, and the work of reading a tip is asking whether the tipster’s probability is higher than the bookmaker’s.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The margin is the slice of every unit staked across a market that the bookmaker keeps on average. For a 1X2 market at 2.10 / 3.40 / 3.50, the implied probabilities are 47.6 %, 29.4 %, 28.6 % — summing to 105.6 % — and the 5.6 % excess over 100 % is the margin. A lower margin means more of every pound returns to the punter in the long run; a higher margin means more stays with the bookmaker.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return is stake × odds, with the stake returned on a win. A £10 stake at 3.50 returns £35 (£25 profit + £10 stake). For an accumulator the odds of the legs multiply into one price, and the return is stake × combined odds. The punter’s net profit on a win is stake × (odds − 1); the punter’s net result on a loss is the loss of the stake.

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