Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) Explained: How It Works and When It's Worth Something
Best Odds Guaranteed is the most valuable standing concession bookmakers offer on horse racing, and most punters who benefit from it couldn't tell you how much it's actually worth. Some days it's worth nothing. On the right bet, it's worth a lot.
TL;DR: With Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG), you take a fixed price on a horse, and if the starting price (SP) turns out bigger, you get paid at the SP instead. You always receive the better of the two. It removes the main risk of taking an early price — the horse drifting — while keeping all the upside if it shortens. BOG typically applies to UK and Irish racing, on bets placed on the day, and not every bookmaker offers it.
What does Best Odds Guaranteed mean?
When you back a horse before a race you have two basic choices: take the fixed price on offer now, or take the starting price — whatever the market says at the off.
Normally that's a genuine gamble on market movement. Take 8/1 now and watch the horse go off at 12/1, and you're stuck with 8/1. Take SP and watch it get backed into 4/1, and 4/1 is what you get.
BOG removes the downside half of that gamble:
- You take 8/1. The horse drifts and goes off at 12/1. You're paid at 12/1.
- You take 8/1. The horse is backed into 4/1. You're paid at 8/1.
Whichever of your taken price and the SP is bigger, that's your settlement price. You can't lose the price-taking game on a BOG bet, only tie it or win it.
What BOG is actually worth
The honest answer: on any single bet, usually nothing. Most horses go off somewhere near their morning price, and when the taken price stands, BOG paid you zero extra.
But over a season, the value is real and quietly large. Roughly speaking, horses drift about as often as they shorten. Without BOG, every drift costs you the difference and every shortening saves you nothing you didn't already have — taking early prices has a built-in tax. BOG deletes the tax.
A concrete example. You have £10 win on a horse at 7/1 with a BOG book. It's weak in the market all afternoon and returns an SP of 10/1. It wins.
- Without BOG: £10 × 7 = £70 winnings
- With BOG: £10 × 10 = £100 winnings
That's £30 found down the back of the sofa, on a bet you'd already placed, for no extra cost or effort. Multiply by every winning bet you have on a drifter across a year of betting and the number becomes worth caring about.
There's a sharper way to say this. Odds drift for reasons — usually because the market has learned something negative. When your horse drifts from 7/1 to 10/1 and wins anyway, you beat the market's updated judgement, and BOG makes sure you get paid at the market's final (more generous) assessment rather than its earlier one. You get the best of both readings of the race.
The standard conditions
BOG is a concession, not a law of nature, and it comes with consistent small print:
- Racing only, usually UK and Irish. Some books extend it to greyhounds or international racing; most don't.
- Bets placed on the day of the race. Strike a bet at 9am for a 3pm race and BOG applies. Ante-post bets placed days or weeks out are excluded, essentially always.
- Fixed-price bets only. You must take a price. An SP bet has nothing to guarantee against.
- Win and each-way bets are generally covered, including the place part at the each-way terms.
- Maximum payout and stake caps can apply, and books have been known to restrict BOG for accounts they consider sharp. The concession is aimed at recreational money.
None of these conditions are hidden, but the on-the-day restriction in particular catches people out around the festivals, where the temptation to bet early is strongest and BOG quietly doesn't apply.
Which bookmakers offer Best Odds Guaranteed?
Most of the established UK firms run BOG on domestic racing as a standing offer — it became close to universal among major brands through the 2010s, was trimmed back by some during leaner years, and the exact roster shifts often enough that any list printed here would age badly.
The reliable way to know: the bookmaker's own promotions page, or the small BOG marker most odds-comparison displays (ours included) attach to prices from qualifying books. When two books offer the same 8/1 but one is BOG, they are not offering the same thing, and the comparison on vibeodds should be read with that in mind — 8/1 BOG strictly dominates 8/1 without it.
That "strictly dominates" is worth dwelling on. A BOG price can even beat a slightly bigger non-BOG price, depending on the horse's drift potential. 8/1 BOG against 17/2 without? If there's a live chance this one drifts big, the BOG price is arguably the better ticket. There's no formula for that decision — it depends how likely you think the drift is — but the option BOG hands you costs nothing, and options with no cost have value.
BOG and value betting
If you're betting to a value method — comparing prices against a fair-odds benchmark, as our value analysis does against the exchange — BOG changes the calculation in one specific way: it puts a floor under your price risk.
A +EV bet identified at 8/1 stays +EV even if the market later agrees with the bookmaker and the horse shortens; you locked the good price. The residual risk was always the other direction — that the market moves against your assessment and the horse drifts, meaning you took 8/1 on what became a 12/1 chance. Without BOG, that bet is now badly priced in hindsight. With BOG, it self-corrects to the SP and you're never settled at worse than the market's final word.
In other words: BOG converts "early price versus SP" from a bet-within-a-bet into a one-way option. For anyone systematically taking early prices on value grounds, it belongs in the maths, not the perks column.
When BOG pays: the shape of a typical season
Think about the four things that can happen after you take a morning price:
| Outcome | Without BOG | With BOG |
|---|---|---|
| Horse shortens, wins | Paid at your bigger taken price | Same — paid at taken price |
| Horse shortens, loses | Lost stake | Lost stake |
| Horse drifts, wins | Paid at your smaller taken price | Paid at the bigger SP |
| Horse drifts, loses | Lost stake | Lost stake |
Frequently asked questions
Is BOG the same as a price boost?
No. A price boost is a one-off enhanced price. BOG is a settlement rule that applies to the price you take, whatever it is. A boosted price can itself be BOG if the book applies its guarantee to boosts — check the individual promotion.
Does BOG apply to each-way bets?
Generally yes, both halves, settled at the better of taken price and SP with your each-way terms applied as normal.
Does BOG apply if there's a Rule 4?
Rule 4 deductions apply to the settlement price the same as any other bet. BOG decides which price you're settled at; Rule 4 then deducts from the winnings if there was a qualifying non-runner.
Why doesn't BOG apply to ante-post betting?
Because ante-post prices can be enormous relative to SP — a 33/1 winter price on a horse that goes off 6/1 favourite. Guaranteeing the better of those two is already what an ante-post bet is: you took the early price precisely because you expected it to shorten. BOG on top would make ante-post betting a free option, and bookmakers don't sell those.
Do exchanges offer BOG?
No. Exchange prices are set by other punters, not a bookmaker, so there's no house to fund a concession. BOG is a bookmaker phenomenon.
Can a bookmaker remove BOG from my account?
They can and sometimes do restrict promotional concessions for accounts they deem unprofitable. BOG's terms are set by the book, and like any promotion it can be varied or withdrawn.