Betting for value is a trait that belongs to the most experienced and successful horse betting online participants. Whilst many people are quite happy to bet at whatever odds happen to be available, those who bet for value only place a bet if the odds on offer match or exceed their own estimation of what the betting odds should be.

For example, if a value bettor has decided that a particular horse has an even money (1/1) chance of winning a race, he would be happy to bet at odds of 1/1 or greater, because in that situation he would be getting value for money. However, if he could only get odds of less than 1/1, he would avoid betting because those odds would offer no long term value.

To understand how betting for value affects long term profits, consider the scenario where you bet £10 on each of ten horses that have fair value of 1/1, but where you can only obtain odds of 10/11 (poor value). Assuming that 50% of those horses win (which is a fair estimate for horses deserving odds of 1/1) then you would make £45.45 profit from the winners and you would lose £50 on the losers, leaving you with a loss of £4.55. Betting at poor value odds have left you with a loss even though the expected percentage of horses won their races.

On the other hand, if you were able to bet £10 on each of the same horses at odds of 11/10 (which is betting for value), you would make a £55 profit from the winners and you would lose £50 on the losers. This would leave you with an overall profit of £5 because each of your bets were offered at good value odds.

Finding betting for value odds is more an art than a science, but hopefully you should now be able to understand why it is so important for you to shop around for the very best odds on each one of your horse betting online selections.

Our advice is to open accounts with all of the companies featured on our Bookmakers page and get into the habit of betting with the bookmaker that offers the best odds for each of your selections. That might mean placing bets on different horses with different bookmakers, but the minor additional effort that such a betting for value strategy involves should, over the long term, be very well rewarded.