It worked: if somebody won a bet and got paid out at odds of 4/1 they were unlikely to complain, especially at this early stage, that they had not been paid at the true probability of 5/1. In order to achieve this, he slightly adjusted prices in his favour. Not only did Ogden begin the process of making a book, he also understood that he had to save a percentage of his takings for his own purse. Most early bets were simply a way of settling an argument over whether a named event would come to pass or not. Operating on Newmarket Heath towards the end of the 18th century, Ogden was the first bookmaker to take betting beyond its strikingly crude roots. How did odds making start?Īs touched on in our Brief History of Betting blog, the concept of calculating the likely chance of a winner in a horse race, and converting that into bookmaker odds, was devised by one Harry Ogden.
The evolution of exchange betting has revolutionised market-making to such a degree that even the biggest bookmaker names no longer employ professional odds setters.