Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) Explained

Picture a jumps Saturday morning. You fancy a horse at 5/1, you take the price, and by the time the tapes go up it's out to 7/1. On an ordinary fixed-odds bet that's hard luck: you're on at 5/1 and that's that. With Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG), you get paid at 7/1 anyway.

That's the appeal in a sentence. BOG takes the nagging worry out of betting early, because the price you take becomes your floor rather than your ceiling. The 2026/27 National Hunt season is only a few weeks old, the big winter Saturdays are coming, and we think BOG is the most useful concession a racing punter can have on their account.

So let's get into it: how BOG works in plain English, worked examples for win, each-way and Rule 4 bets, early prices against the starting price, which major bookmakers offer it and on what terms at 30 October 2026, and why the best version of BOG is the one you actually get to keep.

Back a horse at a fixed price and, once the race is off, BOG compares your price with the official Starting Price (SP). SP bigger? You're paid at SP. SP shorter? You're paid at the price you took. You get the better of the two, every time.

The SP is a horse's price at the moment the race begins, an industry-standard figure supplied to every bookmaker from the racecourse. Your early price and the SP are two snapshots of the same market taken at different times. BOG lets you keep whichever pays more.

Paddy Power and Betfair use the same simple illustration on their help pages, and William Hill's works the same way:

Bet at SP without taking a price and nothing changes: you're settled at the starting price as normal. BOG only earns its keep once you've locked in a fixed price.

The maths is easy. Seeing the numbers side by side shows you exactly what the concession adds.

A straight win bet

£10 win at 2/1, horse wins

SP 3/1 (bigger):   paid at 3/1  ->  return £40  (profit £30, not £20)
SP 6/4 (shorter):  paid at 2/1  ->  return £30  (your price stands)

On the drifter you pocket an extra £10 for doing nothing. On the steamer you're protected at the price you were sharp enough to take.

An each-way bet

Betfred, Sky Bet, Paddy Power, bet365, Ladbrokes and Coral all include win and each-way bets in BOG, and at those firms the bigger price feeds through to both halves. The place part still uses the bookmaker's each-way fraction; it's simply applied to the BOG price.

£5 each-way (£10 total) at 8/1, place terms 1/5 odds, SP 10/1

Win part:    £5 x 10/1          = £50 profit  -> £55 return
Place part:  £5 x (10/1 / 5)    = £10 profit  -> £15 return

Horse wins:         £55 + £15 = £70   (instead of £58 at 8/1)
Horse places only:  £15              (instead of £13 at 8/1)

New to place terms? Our complete guide to each-way betting walks through fractions and places in full.

Why the time you bet matters

BOG doesn't start the night before. Most bookmakers switch it on at 8am on race day (Sky Bet at 9am), and Betfred's own example shows why that matters. A horse is 5/1 the night before, 6/1 in the morning and 8/1 at the off. Bet after 8am and you're paid at 8/1. Bet the night before and you're stuck with your 5/1.

An early price (often called the show price) is the bookmaker's own fixed odds, offered from the morning of the race or earlier. The SP forms at the off, by which point the market has soaked up everything: the going, the market moves, the non-runners and the money.

Neither one is better by nature. Prices can lengthen or shorten between breakfast and the off, and BOG removes exactly that uncertainty. Without it, an early price is a bet on the price as well as the horse. With it, you only have to be right about the horse.

Why prices move

Money for fancied runners tends to firm prices up towards the off, but plenty go the other way. The widest swings come in big-field handicaps, and longer-priced runners have the most room to move. A 20/1 shot can drift to 33/1. A 6/4 favourite can only go so far.

That's why BOG matters most to punters who bet early on the day and like a price. "Should I wait?" stops being a question. Take the price now and let the market argue with itself until the off.

BOG also ties in neatly with closing line value. The SP is effectively the closing price, and beating it regularly is one of the best signs you're betting well. Our guide to closing line value explains why, and with BOG every bet you strike pays at least the closing price.

Best Odds Guaranteed used to be handed out far more freely by the big bookmakers. These days the firms lean towards opt-ins, invitations, loyalty qualifiers, minimum stakes and daily caps. Here's where the major bookmakers stand.

Terms as at 30 October 2026.

The loyalty and invite versions

Sky Bet ties BOG to its Club. Opt in, stake £30 between Monday and 23:59 on Sunday, and you have BOG the following week. Miss a week's qualification and BOG goes with it. William Hill runs an invite-only version, and any bet struck before 8am is settled as struck, with no BOG top-up.

The opt-in versions

Paddy Power wants you to opt in on its promotions page, and BOG then kicks in from 8am the next day. Ladbrokes and Coral need a single opt-in, though some deposit methods (Neteller, PayPal, Paysafe, Skrill, prepaid cards and certain debit cards) don't qualify.

Betfred keeps it simple: no opt-in, open to verified online customers. Smaller bookmakers run their own versions with their own caps and start times, so read their terms before you lean on one.

BOG is a racing concession for fixed-price bets struck on the day, and nearly everything outside that is excluded. The exact list varies by firm, but these exclusions come up again and again:

• Ante-post bets. Anything struck before the BOG start time, including bets placed weeks out, is settled at the price you took.
• Tote and pool bets. Tote, pari-mutuel and products such as bet365's Colossus sit outside BOG.
• In-running bets. BOG covers bets struck before the off, never in play.
• Free bets and tokens. Paddy Power, Betfair and Betfred exclude bets placed with free-bet funds or boost tokens.
• Boosts, specials and enhanced accas. Sky Bet, Ladbrokes and Coral exclude price boosts, specials and enhanced accumulators.
• Extra-place products. Sky Bet's Extra Place races, bet365's and William Hill's Each Way Extra, and Betfred's Super Extra Place races are all excluded.
• International racing. Sky Bet, Paddy Power, Betfair and William Hill exclude international racing, and bet365 restricts BOG to UK and Irish racing.

Two more slip under the radar. Cashed-out bets don't qualify at Ladbrokes and Coral, and Betfair's BOG is a Sportsbook feature only, so Exchange bets never get it. If you play the promotions regularly, our betting promotions guide shows how offers like these fit together.

BOG protects the price. It doesn't protect the bet.

Non-runners muddy things. When a horse is withdrawn after you've taken a price, Rule 4 trims your winnings, and bookmakers don't all run the BOG comparison in the same order. The deduction table itself lives in our guide to Rule 4 deductions.

Compare after the deduction

Betfred, Coral, Ladbrokes and bet365 apply Rule 4 to your fixed price first, then compare that reduced price with the SP. If the SP beats your price after the deduction, you're paid at SP.

£10 win at 6/1, 20p Rule 4 applied to your price

Your price after Rule 4:  6/1 x 0.80 = 4.8/1  -> £48 profit, £58 return
SP 11/2 (5.5/1):          bigger than 4.8/1   -> £55 profit, £65 return

Paid: £65 (assuming the SP itself carries no deduction)

So a horse returning at 11/2, shorter than your 6/1, can still pay more than your price once Rule 4 has taken its bite.

Sky Bet's version

Sky Bet puts it differently. If a price you took is hit by Rule 4, the deduction stands unless the horse returns at a bigger SP, in which case you're paid at SP with no Rule 4, unless the SP itself carries a deduction. bet365 adds that if no SP is declared for a withdrawn horse, your bet is settled at the odds you took, subject to Rule 4.

When the race goes SP only

William Hill and Betfred both switch BOG off when non-runners leave a race reverting to SP only. There's no early price to take in that case anyway, so every bet is settled at the starting price.

Think of BOG as a free option. Every time you take a price, you keep all the upside if it drifts and give up nothing if it shortens. On a single bet the extra looks small. Over a season of early-morning bets on bigger-priced horses in competitive handicaps, it mounts up.

No tidy percentage tells you what BOG is worth, because that depends entirely on how you bet. The best measure is your own record. Note the price you took, the SP and the extra each bet returned, and after a few months you'll see exactly what the concession has paid you.

Why accounts get restricted

That free option costs the bookmaker money, and their terms don't pretend otherwise. Paddy Power and Betfair reserve the right to exclude customers "for commercial reasons". Sky Bet's trading team reviews accounts that need "tighter liability management". William Hill can restrict BOG at its sole discretion, and Betfred excludes customers "due to internal risk policies and/or account staking restrictions".

Several firms also void the BOG element where there's "evidence of collusion by a customer, or group of customers, which seek to guarantee profit irrespective of the outcome." Put that alongside the daily caps in the table above and the message is plain: BOG is for punters betting on horses, not for anyone trying to farm the concession.

Keeping it

The way we see it, BOG is built for racing fans betting sensible, consistent stakes across a spread of races and prices. Holding it at two or three bookmakers also means that losing it at one isn't the end of the world.

• Take the price after 8am. BOG doesn't cover the night before. If you fancy a horse, wait for the morning switch-on (9am at Sky Bet) and take the fixed price straight away.
• BOG loves a bigger price. A 16/1 shot has far more room to drift than an odds-on favourite, so the concession earns most on each-way types in big handicaps.
• Never bet at SP on a BOG account. Taking a price can only match or beat the SP, so a straight SP bet throws the option away.
• Mind the exclusions. Free bets, extra-place races, ante-post bets and, at most firms, price boosts don't get BOG. Use the boost when the boost is better, and BOG when it isn't.
• Spread your accounts. Opt-ins, Club qualifiers and invites mean BOG isn't a given anywhere now, so holding it at more than one bookmaker keeps you covered.
• Keep a record. Price taken, SP, extra return. It's the honest way to see what BOG is worth to you, and it doubles as a closing line value check.

BOG protects your price, not your bet, so keep your stakes sensible and consistent whatever the morning market says.

• Ante-Post Betting & Non-Runner No Bet Explained
• Rule 4 Deductions Explained
• Price Boosts & Enhanced Odds: Are They Actually Value?
• Arbitrage Betting Explained: How Sure Bets Work
• Betting Odds Explained: Fractional, Decimal and American Odds Made Simple

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