Whenever people find out what I do for a living, their first reaction is one of surprise and then the inevitable question comes, what does a bookie do?
What It’s All About
The answer is both simple and very complex at the same time, the definition of a bookie is someone who sets betting odds, accepts, and settles wagers and then pays or collects winnings from these bets. But, what goes into making all those things happen is extremely complex. So, let’s break it all down.
Setting the Betting Odds
Coming up with a line requires a lot of knowledge, of the sport, the teams, the venue, and the bettors. You start with gathering all kinds of data on the teams, their winning percentages, home vs. away winning percentages, player stats, injury reports, weather conditions, and then you have to get your therapist hat on, and even figure out whether any of the key players or coaches are undergoing a rough time in their personal lives that might affect their performance during the match. With all this information you run a series of mathematical formulas (luckily these days computers do all the complicated math work) to come up with the real probabilities of the result of the game. But your job is not done yet, once you have this number you need to study your players, and figure out how much you feel they are willing to pay, so you can decide to add some points or to shave some points, once you feel you have a betting line that will be appealing to your players, you post it and adjust it as the money comes in.
Now that I have registered as an agent with AcePerHead.com, I let them do all this for me, I’ve come to realize they are much better at it than I ever was, I am in awe of how sharp their betting lines are every day.
Accepting and Settling Wagers
This is where the betting software really makes a difference for me as a bookie agent. I’ve worked with different betting software platforms over the years, and some were great from a backend point of view but sucked for the players, others were the opposite, the front end was extremely user friendly and my players loved it, but, it was a nightmare for me to try and keep up with everything that was going on because the backend provided no useful information and I had to heavily rely on other people to do things for me, which I hated.
Once I switched to Ace Per Head, all of that went away, now I and players are happy as can be. What the betting software does, is display the available lines for each event in a clear, and easy to find manner. Players will select what and how much they wish to wager and then submit their bets. The system accepts and stores this information when the game is over, it gets graded and the system will settle the wagers, either adding the winnings or deduct the risk amount from the balance.
Paying and Collecting
Then at the end of the week, I run a report showing how much each player has won or lost and I set a schedule to either pay them their winnings or collect their losses. This part used to take me forever, I hated the accounting side of the business, but, but now thanks to the great reports I receive from www.AcePerHead.com, I get everything done in no time.
There you have it, the next time you hear someone asking what does a bookie do? You know what to answer.
Ace Per Head has been in the online bookmaking services business since 1998 running one of the top-rated and most trusted brands in the pay per head industry. We give our bookie agents the personalized dedicated service they deserve.
