Founder & Editor · Last reviewed 2026-07-08
What Is Best Odds Guaranteed?
Best Odds Guaranteed — almost always shortened to BOG — is the single most valuable everyday concession a bookmaker gives a horse racing punter. The promise is simple: if you take an early price on a horse and the Starting Price (SP) turns out bigger, the bookmaker pays you at the bigger of the two. You never lose out by backing early.
Say you back a horse at 4/1 in the morning. It drifts in the market and goes off at 6/1. Without BOG you are paid at the 4/1 you took. With BOG you are paid at 6/1 — the bookmaker automatically upgrades your price to the SP because it beat your early price. If instead the horse had shortened to 3/1, you keep your 4/1. Heads you win the bigger price, tails you keep yours.
That asymmetry is why BOG matters so much. Over a season, backing at fair early prices and being paid the bigger of your price or the SP is worth real money — it is the difference between beating the drift and being punished for it. It is the concession that separates a book built for racing punters from one that merely takes racing bets.
BOG is not a sign-up bonus or a one-off promotion. On the books that offer it, it is a standing, automatic feature applied to qualifying racing bets — you do not opt in, claim it, or enter a code. It simply settles you at the better price when the SP is bigger.
It is also the heaviest single item in our own racing product score — worth more than live streaming, early prices or price boosts — precisely because it is the concession a racing punter feels most, on every winner. The rest of this guide explains exactly how it settles, who offers it, and the fine print worth knowing before you rely on it.
How BOG Pays Out — A Worked Example
BOG works on the gap between two prices: the early price you took and the Starting Price returned when the race goes off. The rule is a one-way upgrade — you are always paid at whichever is bigger.
The worked example
You back £10 win on a horse at 5/1 in the morning (an "early price" or "board price"). Three things can happen at the off:
- The horse drifts to 8/1. BOG upgrades you to the SP. You are paid as if you backed it at 8/1: £10 × 8 = £80 profit, plus your £10 stake back — a £90 return instead of the £60 your 5/1 would have paid. BOG earned you an extra £30.
- The horse shortens to 3/1. BOG never downgrades you. You keep your 5/1 and are paid £50 profit — the shorter SP is ignored.
- The horse goes off at exactly 5/1. No difference; you are paid at 5/1.
So BOG can only ever help you or leave you level. That is the whole point.
The conditions that always apply
BOG is generous, but it is bounded by a standard set of rules that are near-identical across the books that offer it:
- UK and Irish horse racing only — occasionally greyhounds too, but rarely other sports.
- Early prices / board prices only. You have to take a fixed early price. If you bet at SP, or ante-post (before final declarations), BOG does not apply — there is no early price to improve on, or you are already on the SP.
- Singles and the racing legs of multiples. A qualifying horse inside an accumulator is usually upgraded on its own leg.
- A daily start time. Many books only run BOG from the morning (for example from 8am on the day), so overnight prices may not qualify.
- A per-customer payout cap on some books (a maximum extra winnings figure per race or per day) — this is where the books differ most, so it is worth checking.
- Excludes Tote and pool bets, enhanced or boosted prices (you cannot stack BOG on top of a price boost), and often "non-runner no bet" ante-post markets.
None of these are unusual or hidden — they are the industry-standard shape of BOG. The one to actually compare between books is the payout cap, because an uncapped BOG on a big-priced drifter is worth far more than one quietly limited to a small maximum.
Which Bookmakers Offer Best Odds Guaranteed?
BOG is close to standard among traditional British racing bookmakers — but it is not universal, and it has been in gentle retreat as some firms trim costs. Rather than tell you "most books offer it," here is the honest count from the operators we actually rate and verify.
Best Odds Guaranteed across the bookmakers we rate
Of the 13 bookmakers in our review set, 10 offer Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish racing and 3 do not:
Offer BOG: bet365, Betfred, Paddy Power, QuinnBet, Coral, William Hill, Ladbrokes, LiveScore Bet, BetGoodwin and HighBet.
Do not offer BOG: Star Sports, 10bet and Spreadex.
That is the split you will not find on a generic explainer: it comes straight from our verified feature grid, re-checked against each operator's live racing terms.
What the absence tells you
The three without BOG are instructive, because "no BOG" does not automatically mean "avoid":
- Star Sports is a specialist on-course firm whose edge is big bets and a genuine trading room, not standardised concessions — it still rates well with us on other strengths.
- 10bet is a broad multi-sport book where racing is not the headline.
- Spreadex is primarily a sports spread-betting firm; its fixed-odds racing book has never carried BOG, and its point of difference is spread markets rather than value concessions.
You can see the current picture, sorted, on our best bookmakers for Best Odds Guaranteed page, and the feature appears in every operator's scorecard across our bookmaker reviews. Because BOG is worth 1.5 of the 5 points in our racing product score — the heaviest single feature — a book that skips it starts a length behind on the metric racing punters care about most, and has to make it up elsewhere.
Is BOG Worth It — And What to Watch For
For anyone who backs horses at early prices rather than SP, BOG is worth having — and worth choosing a bookmaker for. The reason is structural, not promotional.
Why it adds up
Prices drift more often than casual punters realise. Money for other horses, a market that over-reacts to a non-runner, a stable's second string being backed — any of these can push your horse's price out between the morning and the off. Every time that happens and your horse wins, BOG hands you the difference for free. You are not gambling more; you are simply not being penalised for betting early into a moving market. Across a season of racing bets, that compounding "bigger of the two" upgrade is a genuine edge, which is exactly why we weight it so heavily.
The effect is largest exactly where casual punters bet most: big, competitive handicaps. Take a Saturday handicap where you fancy a horse at 8/1 in the morning. Come the off, weight of money has pushed it out to 12/1. On a £20 win bet, BOG pays you at 12/1 — a £240 return rather than the £160 your 8/1 would have given, £80 extra for having done nothing but back it early. Multiply that across a festival's worth of drifters and the value is obvious. It is worth stressing this is not a promotion you have to remember to claim — on the books that carry it, it is applied automatically at settlement, which is why we treat it as a core product feature rather than an offer.
The catches to keep in mind
BOG is honest value, but read the shape before you lean on it:
- The payout cap is the real variable. An uncapped BOG is materially better than one limited to, say, a small maximum in extra winnings per day. If you bet meaningful stakes on drifters, the cap is the number that matters.
- It only rewards early-price backing. If you are an SP or ante-post bettor, BOG does nothing for you — pick your book on other strengths.
- You cannot stack it. A boosted or enhanced price is already an offer; BOG will not also upgrade it to a bigger SP.
- It has been narrowed before. Some firms have quietly time-limited BOG or capped it more tightly to control costs. It is a standing feature, but not a legal guarantee — always sanity-check the current racing terms.
The honest bottom line
If you take early prices, BOG is close to essential and one of the first things worth checking on a bookmaker. If you only ever bet at SP, it is irrelevant to you. And "no BOG" is a mark against a book on value, but not a disqualification on its own — a specialist can still earn its place on service, prices or markets the big chains do not offer. That is why we score it as a heavy feature rather than a pass-or-fail gate.
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