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On Friday, we released for FREE our special report on the new bookmaker, Black Type, who have been causing quite the stir given their ‘winners-welcome’ policy and guarantee to lay to lose up to £500 on any given bet.
If yet to read it download your FREE report PDF
Yet whilst their unique approach to bookmaking is very welcome, what many punters want to know is does their winners-welcome policy come at a cost in terms of the odds they offer customers?
Therefore, to help answer this question and gauge just how their odds stand up in comparison, I commissioned some detailed odds tracking across two key sports they keenly price up – horse racing and darts.
You can read about this in more detail in the Free Black Type Report, but for those of you interested in either Horse Racing or Darts (Especially given that the PDC World Championship starts on Thursday) I have summarised some of the key findings below.
Black Type Darts Odds In Comparison
To examine Black Type’s odds, my team and I analysed the prices they offered during the recent Grand Slam of Darts tournament in November.
To gauge this, we tracked the odds for both players across 37 Darts games from the Group Stages to the Quarter Finals, leaving us with 74 sets of odds to compare.
We recorded the odds for all 74 outcomes from 7 different bookmakers: Black Type, Bet365, Bet Victor, Paddy Power, Skybet, William Hill & Coral.
The odds were taken at various times of day to ensure we compiled a wide and varied cross section of data.
First off, here are the average odds for all 74 outcomes from each of the 7 bookmakers:
Taking as an average, Bet365 lead the way with average odds of 2.72, with Black Type in 5thposition with an average of 2.62 – a small difference of 0.10.
As useful as this study was, it is slightly flawed for two reasons – firstly the low data sample and secondly the influence of a few larger priced ‘outliers’, which skewed the results.
Eliminating High-Priced Outliers
Although most matches in the Grand Slam of Darts were competitive, there were a few games which featured a very short-priced favourite, usually Michael Van Gerwen, and a big priced outsider.
The price of the outsider in these matches could be as high as 15/1 and with such a small pool of data, it only served to skewer the results.
For example, on the 14h November, Max Hopp was priced as big as 10/1 with Bet365 and as low as 7/1 with Paddy Power to beat Michael Van Gerwen.
By eliminating all bets at 5/1 and over from our data sample, we were then able to get a more realistic set of results. The 5 games we removed were:
14/11 Darren Webster to beat Phil Taylor. Odds ranged from 11/2 to 13/2
14/11 Max Hopp to beat Michael Van Gerwen. 7/1 to 10/1
16/11 Jeff Smith to beat Michael Van Gerwen. 11/2 to 7/1
16/11 Robert Thornton to beat Michael Van Gerwen. 13/2 to 10/1
18/11 Brendan Dolan to beat Michael Van Gerwen. 9/1 to 14/1
Here then is the table of average odds after removing these 5 players priced at over 5/1.
Without the 5 outsiders, the differences between all 7 bookies is marginal with Black Type more than holding their own. So small were the differences in fact, we had to illustrate them to 3 decimal points!
Final Thoughts on Darts Odds
Bearing in mind the limited data sample we could gather from the Grand Slam of Darts tournament, Black Type’s odds on the sport were clearly very competitive.
Considering how quick some of their bookmaking rivals are to close and restrict the accounts of punters that do well on Darts, there is even more reason to consider using Black Type for betting on the sport.
The likes of Bet365 and Bet Victor might on average offer marginally better odds, yet you do run the risk of being restricted if taking industry stand-out prices with them once too often.
For those of you keen Darts punters – make sure you also check out their free Sign The Board Darts podcast hosted by Andy Dawson and featuring guests such as comedy legend, Bob Mortimer.
Recent Smart Betting Club Publications (Click each image to read more!)
Black Type Racing Overround In Comparison
To understand just how Black Type’s racing odds stand up, we also tracked and compared their overround with those on offer from 3 different bookmakers: Coral, William Hill & Ladbrokes.
We chose Coral, William Hill & Ladbrokes as they are considered more ‘traditional’ bookmakers, with a very large betting presence both online and in the high street.
Analysing 75 races in total, we recorded the odds at different times of day and over a variety of races to build as detailed and varied a set of data as possible.
This analysis ran from the 28/10/16 to the 13/11/16, which also included each race at the Cheltenham Open meeting – helping us gauge how strong their odds were at a major race meeting as well as the standard midweek racing fare.
Here then is the average overround across all 75 races from each of the 4 bookmakers:
Taken as an average, Black Type’s overround was the best overall at 115.03%. This was 0.45% better than Ladbrokes, 1.29% better than William Hill and 2.70% better than Coral.
A very positive start to proceedings and an early indication that they offer good value racing odds.
Cheltenham Open Meeting
The Cheltenham Open Meeting ran from the 11th to the 13th November and with the high-quality racing on show, it was also useful to isolate the overrounds from this meeting for comparison purposes.
It is generally accepted that at these bigger meetings, with the greater volume of money swishing around, bookmakers pay more attention to their prices and take larger sized bets.
Here then is what we found at this meeting in terms of the overrounds from the 4 bookmakers:
Once again Black Type offered the lowest overround, although the differences between them and their competitors was bigger than ever.
The Black Type overround of 108.59% was 3.87% better than William Hill, 4.53% better than Ladbrokes and 6.63% better than Coral.
From this analysis, it is safe to say they more than held their own and their policy of ‘winners welcome’ does not come at a cost of worse odds in the horse racing markets.
If anything, the Black Type setup is allowing them to offer better value odds that favour the punter.
Perhaps the notion of employing skilled racing traders able to build and manage a proper racing book is not as dead a concept as some bookmakers would have you believe.
Read The Full Report & Enjoy More Betting Help!
I have summarized some of the analysis in this email for reasons of brevity, so those of you interested in understanding more I encourage you to access the full report for free. Click here to download.
With so much high quality Darts & Racing to look forward over the next few weeks, its without doubt a great time to consider a Black Type account. Especially those of you impacted unfairly by account restrictions and closures by other bookies.
For those of you looking for further help with your betting over the festive period – then why not consider a Smart Betting Club membership?
By signing-up today you can enjoy access to our 10+ year back catalogue of expert tipster reviews, interviews and strategies. Including every single tipster review we have ever written (there are literally hundreds available!) and all of the Hall of Fame Tipsters we recommend to make you money betting.
All of which comes with a 90 day money back guarantee – so you can sign-up totally risk-free, with everything to gain and nothing to lose.
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