What is Board Price?

How Board Price Works

When you place a bet on-course or with certain online bookmakers before a race starts, you can choose to take the price currently displayed rather than accepting the Starting Price. That displayed figure — whether shown on a bookmaker's pitch at the rails or quoted on a betting slip — is the board price. It is fixed the moment you agree to it, so if the horse shortens from 5/1 to 3/1 before the off, you still receive 5/1. Equally, if it drifts out to 8/1, you are stuck with your original 5/1.

Board prices change constantly as money comes in or goes out of a market. On-course bookmakers update their boards manually or digitally in response to market movements, often following activity in the betting ring or on the exchanges. Online, the equivalent is simply taking a quoted price rather than an SP option. There is no single governing body that fixes board prices; each bookmaker sets their own, so two pitches standing side by side may display different odds on the same horse at the same moment.

Worked Example

Suppose a horse is available at 6/1 on the boards thirty minutes before the off. You place a £10 win bet and take that price. Your potential return is fixed: £10 × 6 = £60 profit, plus your £10 stake back, giving total returns of £70. The SP is returned at 4/1 when the race starts, meaning anyone who took the SP on the same horse receives only £40 profit plus stake — £50 in total. By taking the board price you are £20 better off in this instance.

The reverse can also occur. If you take 6/1 on the boards but the horse drifts to 10/1 SP, an SP backer collects £100 plus stake while you collect only £70. This is why the decision to take a board price or wait for SP carries real financial consequence. Some bookmakers offer Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG), which would pay the higher of the two in certain circumstances, but this is a separate promotional feature and does not apply universally.

Why Board Price Matters When Judging a Tipster

When assessing a tipster's results, the price recorded against each tip is critical. A tipster who consistently claims to have advised odds at the board price — particularly early in the day when prices may be generous — should be able to demonstrate that through a transparent proofing record submitted to a third party at the time of the tip. If advised odds are recorded at 8/1 but the SP was 5/1 and no contemporaneous proof exists, the published profit figures may be unreliable. On TipsterCheck, we look closely at whether advised prices were achievable and properly timestamped.

Board prices can also reveal how a tipster's activity moves markets. If a widely followed tipster advises a horse at 10/1 and that price rapidly contracts to 5/1 SP, it may suggest the market absorbed their followers' bets, making their stated odds increasingly difficult to replicate. Followers placing bets after the tip is published may have obtained significantly shorter prices. When comparing yield or profit in points figures between tipsters, always check whether results are based on advised odds, SP, or an average — the difference can be substantial.

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