Betting Guide

Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) Explained

● FormDialHorse Racing

Best Odds Guaranteed — commonly abbreviated to BOG — is a bookmaker offer that protects you when the Starting Price (SP) of your horse is higher than the price you took. If you back a horse at 8/1 and it drifts to 12/1 by the off, a bookmaker offering BOG pays you at 12/1. You get the best of both prices — the early price if the horse shortens, the SP if it drifts. It costs you nothing. And it is one of the few bookmaker promotions that genuinely shifts value toward the punter.

How BOG Works

The mechanics are straightforward. You place your bet at the available price. At the off, the bookmaker compares your price with the SP. If the SP is higher, they automatically upgrade your payout to the SP. If the SP is lower, your original price stands. You always receive whichever is greater.

BOG eliminates the biggest risk of taking an early price. Without BOG, backing a horse at 8/1 means you are locked in at 8/1 even if the market decides the horse is a 14/1 chance by post time. That gap — 8/1 to 14/1 — represents money left on the table. With BOG, the gap closes automatically. You benefit from the early price if the horse shortens, and from the SP if the market moves against you.

Which Bookmakers Offer BOG

Most major UK bookmakers offer BOG on UK and Irish horse racing, but the terms vary. Some apply it to all races automatically. Others restrict it to specific meetings, exclude certain bet types, or cap the maximum payout enhancement. The differences matter.

Check the cap

Some bookmakers cap BOG enhancements at a certain profit level — for example, a maximum extra payout of £5,000. If you are backing horses at big prices with large stakes, the cap may limit the benefit. Most recreational punters will never hit these caps, but they exist.

Check the race coverage

Some bookmakers only offer BOG on races from selected meetings — typically the major UK tracks. Others extend it to all UK and Irish racing. A BOG offer that excludes Monday cards at Wolverhampton is less valuable than one that covers every race.

Check the bet types

BOG typically applies to win and each-way singles. Some bookmakers extend it to multiples; most do not. If you bet in accumulators, confirm whether BOG applies to each leg before assuming it does.

Check the timing

Most BOG offers apply to bets placed on the day of the race. Ante-post bets — placed days or weeks in advance — are usually excluded. This is reasonable; BOG is designed for day-of-race markets, not long-range speculation.

Why BOG Changes Your Strategy

Without BOG, there is a genuine tension between taking an early price and waiting for the SP. If you take 10/1 in the morning and the horse drifts to 16/1, you have left value on the table. If you wait for SP and the horse shortens to 7/1, you have lost value by waiting. BOG removes this tension entirely. You can take the morning price with no downside.

BOG makes early prices strictly better than SP in every scenario. If the horse shortens, you hold the higher early price. If it drifts, you get the higher SP. There is no situation in which taking an early price with BOG leaves you worse off than waiting. This means that on any day when BOG is available, you should take your price as soon as you have made your selection. There is no reason to wait — and every reason not to, because prices can shorten as well as drift.

The practical impact is significant. Over a season, the cumulative effect of BOG upgrades adds several percentage points to your return on investment. A punter who bets 500 races a year at an average of 8/1, with BOG upgrades on perhaps 30% of those bets averaging an extra 2/1, is earning hundreds of pounds in pure bonus value. It is free money — and the only sensible response is to use a bookmaker that offers it.

BOG and Each-Way Bets

BOG applies to both the win and place elements of an each-way bet. If your horse places at a higher SP than your early price, the place payout is also upgraded. This makes BOG particularly valuable on each-way bets in big-field handicaps, where the place part often represents the more likely return and where price drift is common due to large, volatile markets.

For how odds work in practice, see Betting Odds Explained. For how to decide between win-only and each-way, see Win-Only Betting Explained.