Curling Betting Tips 2026: The Cost of Every Stone, Market and Offer

Updated October 2026

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Data current as of 27 October 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register and the operators’ own terms pages.

The line between a curling tip and a curling loss is a thin one. It will not tell you who wins the next mixed-doubles final. It will not hand you a “sure” pick. What it will do is walk you through the price a bookmaker actually charges you, the licence the bookmaker has to hold before it is allowed to take your stake, and the arithmetic that turns an advertised offer into the number of bets it really takes. This guide looks at the curling market’s own costs. The honest version of that promise, on a sport with eight stones, ten ends and one hammer, is a working knowledge of what you are paying for when you tap “place bet”.

Statutory Frame: Who Is Allowed to Take Your Money

A bookmaker serving customers in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission licence. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 that licence is required wherever the operator is based: a Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar registration is not a substitute, and an operator whose remote facilities are used in Britain without one commits an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005. The Commission’s public register, searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, is the only place that settles whether a brand actually holds one. A licensed operator may run on a .com as well as a .co.uk; the domain proves nothing. Several brands can run under one licensee, so Ladbrokes and Coral, or Paddy Power and Betfair, are not independent operations. A “GB-licensed” bookmaker is one whose name appears on that register, full stop.

The licence is an operator-level condition, not a market-level guarantee. It is not a quality mark on a curling price, and it does not mean a single brand is “the only” licensed one: the register lists far more brands than any single page can review, and a place in a comparison here is not the same as holding a licence. The licence categories that matter for a curling bettor are remote general betting standard (real events) and, for any exchange-style book, remote betting intermediary. Pool betting on dog or horse racing is a separate category and a separate duty. Financial spread betting, where losses can exceed the deposit, is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not the Commission, and it is a different product entirely.

Before the first deposit, the operator verifies name, address and date of birth. That check has applied since 7 May 2019 and it covers free bets and bonuses as well as cash play, so no anonymous betting exists at a licensed site. Minimum age is 18. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded payments through an e-wallet; debit cards and bank-based payments are not covered by that ban. The player pays no tax on betting winnings in Britain, and a state-set deposit or loss ceiling does not exist: limits are the customer’s own choice, set on the operator’s safer-gambling page.

A financial vulnerability check, in force since 30 August 2024 and applied at licensed remote operators when deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in a rolling 30 days, is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments) — it is not an income check and not a credit reference check. The wider “affordability checks” reported in the press are a staged plan published on 7 July 2026 with no start date. Bonus wagering requirements are capped at 10x since 19 January 2026, and mixed-product promotions — an offer that requires gambling on two or more product types — are banned. Whether the cap applies to free bets with no wagering condition, and any cap on the money value of a bonus, are not established facts in the public record. General Betting Duty is paid by the operator on gross profits and stays the operator’s concern.

Offshore, the situation is the opposite of what “unlicensed” marketing sometimes suggests. No offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was found in the statute. The loss is protection, not legality: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, and the 10x bonus cap and the £150 vulnerability check do not bind the operator. Enforcement against unlicensed operators runs through cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers, and court-ordered DNS blocking powers that the Commission has been given or is about to receive; ISP-level blocking is not in general operation. The honest frame is that a licence buys you checks, limits, GAMSTOP, the bonus cap and a route to complain, and a non-licensed site buys you none of those.

Wellbeing, Safeguards and Where Help Lives

GAMSTOP is the national multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme and a mandatory licence condition for every online operator since 31 March 2020. Periods run six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal. After the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it, so a short exclusion is rarely short. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops use a separate system. Because every GB-licensed online operator is in the scheme, the only place GAMSTOP does not reach is the offshore bookmaker on the back of a search-results page.

Deposit limits sit on the operator, set by the customer, not the regulator. Remote Technical Standards require a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame, and the first changes have applied since 31 October 2025, with a second phase postponed to 30 September 2026. Timeouts, reality checks and product blocking are all available, and the same safer-gambling page is where a punter who feels the stake drifting finds the controls. Curling, with its long schedule and few live events, is not a market that encourages impulse play in the way in-play football does, but a punt on the next Olympic final can still be the bet a punter wishes they had not placed, and the controls are there for that moment.

For a punter who feels the sport or the offer has stopped being a choice, the help lines are: GamCare, which runs the National Gambling Helpline; GambleAware; the NHS gambling clinics network; and Gamblers Anonymous. Each is free, confidential and independent of any bookmaker. A financial vulnerability check at a licensed operator is a sign the system is working, not a sign the punter is in trouble; a public-record check at the deposit threshold is exactly the friction a GB-licensed site is required to apply.

Curling Fixtures: The Tournament Calendar and Where Markets Sit

Curling is a small sport on a British betting slip. The bookmakers who carry it run a thinner market than the football or horse racing pages; the calendar is shorter, the field is narrower, and a match between two European sides can sit without a price at all on a Wednesday in March. Knowing which competitions the bookmakers actually price is half the cost of getting a bet on, because the price you do not see is the price you cannot take.

Tournaments the Bookmakers Cover

Curling became an official Olympic medal sport at the 1998 Winter Olympics, and mixed doubles was first held there in 2018, so the Olympic cycle is the spine of the betting calendar. The World Curling Championships, the European Curling Championships, the World Mixed Doubles Championship and the Grand Slam of Curling on the World Curling Tour round out the international calendar. Domestically, the Scottish, English and Canadian national championships sit alongside the playdowns, and the curling tour carries a winter schedule that runs from late September into the spring. A bookmaker that runs a curling book through the winter will price the World Championships, the European Championships, the mixed-doubles events and, when the calendar lines up, the Olympic Games themselves.

How the Game Is Built

A curling team has four players, two in doubles, and each player throws two of the team’s eight stones. Stones weigh between 17.24 and 19.96 kilograms under World Curling Federation rules, and the ice runs the standard 45.7 metres from hog line to hog line. Games usually last eight or ten ends; international competitive games are generally ten ends. After all sixteen stones of an end are thrown, the team with the stone closest to the button — the centre of the house — scores one point for each of its stones closer than the opponent’s nearest stone, and only stones in the house count. A blanked end, with both teams clearing the house, hands the hammer (the last stone of an end) back to the team that already had it, so blanking is a tactical choice. Tied games go to extra ends, one at a time, until one team scores.

What the Market Looks Like

The standard curling market mirrors the standard match market in any sport: match odds, with each team a price, often drawn at the end. From there, the bookmakers spread. Outright winner markets sit alongside the World and European Championships, the Olympic gold medal and the mixed-doubles equivalents. Handicap markets exist on the bigger events, set in ends rather than goals. Total-ends markets, over and under, appear on the bookmakers who run them. In-play curling is rarer than in-play football, but the bigger events see live prices; live streaming on curling is unusual and a punter who wants to watch a price move is often watching a feed the bookmaker has not provided.

The Punter’s Calendar

For a British punter in 2026, the calendar is a winter one. The European Championships run in November or December; the World Championships in March or April; mixed-doubles events through the autumn and into the new year. The Olympic cycle, every four years, brings a spike in coverage that recedes as the Games end. Outside that window, curling sits on a small handful of bookmakers and disappears from the rest, and a price comparison across the market is the kind of work a punter does by hand, opening three or four apps and lining up the numbers.

Ranking the Curling Bookmakers: A Cost-Based Shortlist

The licensed set in this comparison is reviewed against one question: what does it cost a punter to bet on curling with them, and what does that cost look like once the welcome offer is on the table? The set is not a ranking in the marketing sense; the order below is this site’s own, and it changes if the criterion changes. A GB-licensed bookmaker is the only kind of bookmaker reviewed, and every brand named here is on the Gambling Commission’s public register.

Two cost patterns stand out of the table. The first is that the headline offer is rarely the headline cost: a 50% back as a free bet up to £50 sounds generous until the free bet’s stake is not returned with a win, and the qualifying bet is the only stake the punter ever keeps. The second is that a thin market costs in time as well as in margin. A bookmaker who prices only the World Championships, or who lists curling only as a tournament winner market, sends the punter to a second or third bookmaker to find a price; the spread between the two is the spread the bookmakers keep.

Curling Betting Fundamentals: How a Tip Becomes a Price

A “tip” in the search-engine sense is a predicted outcome, the name of a side the tipster thinks will win. A “tip” in the betting sense is a price a punter believes is wrong, in the punter’s favour, by enough to overcome the bookmaker’s margin. The two senses never quite line up, and the rest of this section is the distance between them.

Form, Statistics and Line-Ups

A curling punter who wants to build a tip from the bottom up looks at the same evidence a tipster uses, with one important addition. Form is the team’s record across the last few events, with weight on the same discipline: a four-player team playing mixed doubles is not directly comparable. Statistics at international level are thinner than in football, but World Curling Federation rankings exist and head-to-heads between national programmes are usually available. Line-ups in international curling change more than the casual viewer expects: a skip with a 70% draw percentage is a different bet from one with a 55% rate, and the back end of a curling team is a higher-value position than the front end. The bookmakers price this in the bigger events; the smaller the event, the more the price reflects the jersey and not the lineup.

What a Value Bet Is

A value bet is a price the punter believes is higher than the true probability of the outcome, once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. It is not a bet on the favourite, and it is not a bet on the underdog. It is a bet on a price that is wrong in the punter’s favour, in any direction. The price of every curling market already contains the bookmaker’s margin, so a price of 1.91 on one side and 1.91 on the other is not a 50/50 market: it is a market with a margin built in. A punter who can read the margin out of the price can decide whether a price is value, and that is the work a tip is supposed to do.

The Bookmaker’s Margin in Practice

The margin is the share of every unit bet on a market the bookmaker keeps on average. The arithmetic is the share paid out, subtracted from one. A market priced 1.91 / 1.91 pays out roughly 1 ÷ (1/1.91 + 1/1.91), or 0.9555, and the margin is 1 − 0.9555, or 4.45%. A market priced 1.85 / 1.85 pays out roughly 0.9730, for a margin of 2.70%. The fairer the price, the closer the margin is to zero, and a market priced 2.00 / 2.00 is a 100% market with no margin at all, which is a market the bookmaker is giving away.

A worked illustration, in the decimal form a British punter sees on the slip, is a two-way market at 1.90 and 1.90 (fractional 9/10). The payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90), or 0.95; the margin is 1 − 0.95, or 5%. On a £10 stake at either side, the return is £19 if the bet wins, the net profit is £9, and the bookmaker keeps roughly 50p of every £10 staked on the market across both outcomes. That 5% is a band, not a single number: real curling markets drift around it as money comes in, and a market with a heavy favourite can run a thinner margin on the favourite and a heavier one on the outsider. The example is illustrative only; the real margin on a real event is whatever the price on the slip says it is at the moment the bet is placed, and the punter who has learned to read it carries an edge no tipster can hand over.

Stake, Return and the Slip

The arithmetic of a curling bet is the same as the arithmetic of any bet. A £10 stake at 1.90 returns £19 if it wins, for a net profit of £9. A combination bet multiplies the prices: two legs at 1.90 and 1.90 give a combined price of 3.61, and a £10 stake returns £36.10. A bet builder on a single curling match, common on the bigger bookmakers’ apps, works the same way inside one event, multiplying the chosen markets into one price. The commission, where it applies, is taken out of the winnings, not the stake. The return is what hits the account, the profit is the return minus the stake, and the punter who has both numbers in front of them has the only numbers a tip ever really needed.

How the Curling Market Is Built: Landscape, Markets and the Cost of Thinness

A “landscape” in the betting sense is the set of markets a bookmaker offers on a sport, the lines they run, the depth of those lines and the speed at which they move. The curling landscape is small, and the size of it is itself a cost.

The Match Odds Market

Match odds on curling run as match winner, with each team a price, and a draw is not a third outcome in regulation because the match goes to extra ends. The market typically opens with the favourite at shorter odds and the outsider at longer, and the bookmaker’s margin sits across both prices. The size of that margin varies by bookmaker and by event: a market with a heavy favourite can carry a margin of 2% on the favourite and 8% on the outsider, and the average across both is what the punter is paying.

Outright Markets and Tournament Winner

The World Championships, the European Championships, the Olympic gold medal and the major mixed-doubles events all carry outright markets. A bookmaker’s outright market runs a heavier margin than a single match, often 10% or more, because the field is wider and the bookmaker’s exposure is harder to balance. The punter who plays a 20-runner outright pays for the privilege of being able to back any of them, and that privilege has a price written into the book.

Handicap and Totals

Handicap markets on curling run in ends, not stones, and the bigger events carry totals on the number of ends played. A market with extra ends is settled on the final score, not on the regulation count. The bookmaker’s margin on these markets tends to be heavier than on match odds, in part because the markets are less liquid, and the punter who treats a totals price as the equivalent of a match-odds price is paying more than they think.

In-Play and Live Streaming

In-play curling is offered on the bigger events by some bookmakers, with prices that move end by end. Live streaming of curling is rarer: a bookmaker with a streaming tie-up for horse racing and greyhounds is not necessarily one with a curling feed, and a punter who wants to watch a price move is often watching a YouTube clip of the event. The cost of in-play is the margin, which is often heavier than pre-match because the bookmaker’s risk is harder to model on the fly. The cost of not watching is the punter’s blind spot on the line-up change, the injury withdrawal, the blanked end that hands the hammer back to the team that already had it.

The Cost of a Thin Market

A thin market is one with few bets on it, and the cost is a wider margin. A bookmaker with one punter on a curling price cannot balance the book, so the price sits further from the true probability. The punter pays the difference. The way around the thinness is to shop the price: a 1.91 at one bookmaker and a 1.85 at another is a 3% gap on the same outcome, and over a season the punter who takes the higher number keeps more of the bookmaker’s overround than the punter who takes the first one they see. The trade-off is the time it takes to open three or four apps, line up the prices and place the bet, and that time has a cost too.

The Featured Bookmakers, Reviewed

The ten brands below are the ones this site has chosen to feature. They are reviewed on what they cost the curling punter, not on the marketing claim each bookmaker makes about itself. Each review closes with this site’s verdict, and the verdict is the one thing no set of specifications can give a reader.

Kalooki Sportsbook

Kalooki Sportsbook is operated by Kalooki Sportsbook Limited under Gambling Commission account 57730, and the site links to GAMSTOP. The brand is small within the licensed set, the sportsbook is the front of the operation, and the curling market is one of the smaller lines. A punter who opens the curling page out of season will find little, and the in-season schedule carries the World Championships and the European Championships but not always the World Tour events. The sportsbook’s safer-gambling tools are standard: deposit limits, timeouts, the safer-gambling page in the footer. That is the operator’s service, and the verdict is a neutral one: this is a bookmaker for the punter who wants a small, GAMSTOP-bound bookmaker and is willing to shop for curling prices in season.

Octobet

Octobet is operated by Octopus Game Limited under Gambling Commission account 62545. The new-customer offer is 50% back as a free bet up to £50 plus a £10 casino bonus, and the offer is mixed-product in structure: a sports free bet plus a casino bonus. Under the 19 January 2026 rules, a mixed-product promotion of this shape sits in a restricted area, and the punter who claims it should read the offer terms for how the casino component is unlocked. The free bet’s stake is not returned with a win, and the qualifying bet is the only stake the punter ever keeps. The offer is moderate, but a punter who only wants the sportsbook side should look elsewhere before paying for a casino bonus they do not intend to use.

William Hill

William Hill is operated by WHG (International) Limited under Gambling Commission account 39225, and is one of the larger names in the licensed set. The curling book is one of the deeper ones on the British market, with the bigger events priced and in-play available. Best Odds Guaranteed runs on UK and Irish horse racing from 8 AM on the day, on single and multiple bets, and it does not apply to curling. The free-bet and price-boost cadence is regular. The brand is the safer pick for a bettor seeking a curling market on a big event without spending half an hour price-shopping, and the brand premium is the depth of the market itself.

Bet Ahoy

Bet Ahoy is operated by Bet Ahoy Ltd under Gambling Commission account 100094. The new-customer offer is a £5 sports bet and a £5 acca on a £10 qualifying stake. The offer is light in headline value and light in qualifying burden, which is the trade-off: a punter who wants a small qualifying bet and a small return gets a small offer, and a punter who wants a big return is looking at a different book. The curling market is in-season only and thinner than the bigger books. This is a small-stake entry point for the bettor seeking a licensed book and not chasing the headline value.

Betfred

Betfred is operated by Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited under Gambling Commission account 39544, and the app covers 21 sports with over 2,000 casino-style games. Curling sits inside the schedule but is not a featured market, and the in-season lines can be thin outside the World Championships and the Olympic cycle. The free-bet and price-boost cadence is regular, and the safer-gambling tools are standard. This is a mainstream multi-sport book first, a curling book second; check the schedule before betting.

Matchbook

Matchbook is operated by Triplebet Limited under Gambling Commission account 39504, and it is a betting exchange: customers bet against each other rather than against the bookmaker. The exchange carries a betting intermediary licence rather than a general betting standard one, and the rates and rules sit differently. The market on curling is thinner than on the traditional books, and a market that is thin on a traditional book is thinner still on an exchange. Commission rates apply and reduce winnings. This brand suits a punter who wants an exchange price on a curling event with enough liquidity to support one; otherwise, search a fixed-odds book.

Star Sports

Star Sports is operated by Star Racing Limited under Gambling Commission account 9177, and the brand runs a telephone-led bookmaker with a direct line to a trader on 08000 521 321. A punter can open an account, place a bet or chase a customer query by phone, and the email support is at [email protected]. The model is old-fashioned, and on a thin market like curling it is an advantage: a phone call to a trader can move a price that the app cannot, and a stake that fits the trader’s risk profile gets a price the punter would not see online. This is the right bookmaker for a punter who bets by phone, as a thin curling market is one of the times that matters.

BetUK

BetUK is operated by LeoVegas Gaming PLC under Gambling Commission account 39198. The new-customer offer is four £10 free bets on a £10 qualifying stake, valid 7 days, with opt-in required. The two football accas of 4+ selections and two multiples of 2+ sit awkwardly for a curling bettor, because curling markets do not always offer four legs on a single event, and a punter who claims the offer for the curling side is reading the offer terms for how the acca is built. This offer is structured for the football market, and a curling-only punter paying for a sportsbook shape that does not fit the sport is spending on value they cannot use.

Tote

Tote is operated by TDCO Limited under Gambling Commission account 54779, and the brand carries a pool-betting heritage. Pool betting on curling is a niche within a niche, the cash terms sit differently from fixed-odds curling, and a punter used to the fixed-odds slip is reading the tote terms before they place. The licence is a remote general betting standard one and covers fixed-odds markets as well. This brand suits a bettor looking for the pool-betting side of curling; a fixed-odds punter should look elsewhere.

Midnite

Midnite is operated by Midnite Limited under Gambling Commission account 101839, and the site cites that licence number on the home page. The new-customer offer is £25 in free bets and 50 free spins on a £5 qualifying bet at EVS (2.0) or greater, valid 7 days. The site shows in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. A curling market on a smaller bookmaker is sometimes easier to find on a brand that has not been around for thirty years, and Midnite is one of the newer names on the licensed list. The verdict is that the offer is competitive against the longer-established names, the qualifying bet is small, and the brand is a credible choice for a curling punter who wants a recent bookmaker with a real book.

The Cost of a Bet, Worked Out

A curling bet, like any bet, has three numbers on the slip: the stake, the price and the return. The arithmetic is small enough to hold in the head. A £10 stake at 1.90 returns £19 if it wins, for a net profit of £9. A £10 stake at 1.91 returns £19.10, for a net profit of £9.10. The 0.01 difference is a 10p edge on the same bet, and over a season of curling bets the difference between always taking 1.90 and always taking 1.91 is the difference between leaving a margin on the table and not.

A combination bet multiplies the prices into one. Two legs at 1.90 and 1.90 give a combined price of 3.61, and a £10 stake returns £36.10. Three legs at 1.80, 1.95 and 2.10 give a combined price of 7.371, and a £10 stake returns £73.71. The more legs, the bigger the combined price, the smaller the chance of winning, and the heavier the bookmaker’s margin across the combined price. A four-leg acca at 1.90 each, with a margin on each leg of 5%, has a combined margin well over 18%, and the punter is paying for the privilege of the big number on the slip.

A free bet is different. A free bet’s stake is usually not paid back with a win: a £10 free bet at 1.90 wins £9, not £19, and the £10 stays with the bookmaker. A free bet’s expected value is its size multiplied by the price minus one, divided by the price, multiplied by the payout share of the market. A £10 free bet at 1.90 in a market with a 95% payout share is worth £10 × 0.90 ÷ 1.90 × 0.95, or roughly £4.50. The punter who spends a £10 free bet at 1.50 instead is sitting on a smaller edge, because the price-multiplied payout is lower. The punter who spends a £10 free bet at 3.00 is sitting on a bigger edge, because the price is bigger, but the chance of winning is lower, and the expected value stays around the same band. A free bet is a discount on a bet, not a free bet.

A welcome offer is a free bet with conditions. A £10 free bet on a £10 qualifying bet is, in expectation, the punter paying £10 in qualifying-bet margin to receive £4.50 in free-bet value. The offer is positive if the qualifying-bet margin is lower than the free-bet value, and negative if the reverse. The 10x bonus cap, in force since 19 January 2026, sits on top of the welcome offer on a cash bonus: a £10 cash bonus with a 10x wagering requirement is £100 of qualifying bets, and a £10 cash bonus with a 50x requirement is no longer offered in the licensed market.

Practical Steps: A Curling Punter’s Order of Operations

A punter who wants to bet on curling in 2026 goes through a sequence, and the sequence is shorter than it looks. First, a check on the Gambling Commission’s public register by brand name, by domain or by account number, to confirm the licence the operator’s home page claims. The register is the only place a GB licence is settled. Second, a check on the curling schedule at the operator, to confirm the event is priced and the market is not closed. Third, a check on the price against the same market at one or two other licensed bookmakers, to confirm the price is competitive and not just available. Fourth, the safer-gambling page, to set a deposit limit before the first deposit and a reality check before the first bet, because the controls are easier to set at the start than to add later. Fifth, the bet, the slip, the stake, the price, the return, all three numbers in front of the punter. Sixth, after the bet, the result, the settlement, and the entry into the betting record. A betting record is a one-column sheet: date, event, stake, price, return, profit, and the punter who keeps one knows the cost of curling betting at the end of the season without needing a bookmaker to tell them.

The Curling Betting Market: A Final Read

The bookmakers who price curling in the British licensed market are not many, the market is thinner than the football market, and the punter who wants a price on the World Championships or the Olympic gold medal has a handful of brands to choose from. The welcome offers across the licensed set are smaller than the football offers, the free-bet stakes are smaller, and the qualifying conditions are tighter. The cost of a curling bet is the margin on the market, the value of any free bet, the time spent price-shopping, and the time spent waiting for a market to open. The cost of a curling tip is the cost of being wrong, and the cost of being wrong on curling is the same as the cost of being wrong on any sport: the stake, gone.

The honest read is that curling is a sport for a punter who already follows it, and the betting market is a way to add a small edge on top of that interest. The punter who follows the World Curling Tour, who knows the skips and the percentages, who has a view on the hammer in the tenth end, has a market where the price is sometimes wrong. The punter who comes to curling for the first time on the back of an Olympic year has a market where the price is rarely wrong, and the bookmaker’s margin is the price of admission. The licence is a check, the limit is a choice, the offer is a discount, and the bet is a bet.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is the return on a curling bet worked out from the stake and the price?

The return is the stake multiplied by the decimal price. A £10 stake at 1.90 returns £19 if the bet wins, for a net profit of £9. A combination bet multiplies the prices into one figure, and a £10 stake at a combined price of 3.61 returns £36.10. The free-bet stake is usually not paid back with a win, so a £10 free bet at 1.90 returns £9 in winnings, not £19, and the £10 stays with the bookmaker.

Can you bet on curling at a GB-licensed bookmaker?

Yes, on the bigger events. The World Curling Championships, the European Curling Championships, the Olympic cycle and the World Mixed Doubles Championship are the events a British bookmaker is most likely to price, and the in-season lines run from late September into the spring. Out of season, the curling book is thin, and a punter who wants a price on a smaller event is shopping the licensed set or waiting for the schedule.

What is a value bet and why is no tip ever certain?

A value bet is a price the punter believes is higher than the true probability of the outcome, once the bookmaker’s margin is taken out. The bookmaker’s margin is the share of every unit bet on a market the bookmaker keeps, and it sits inside every price. A punter who can read the margin out of the price has a real edge; a punter who cannot is paying the margin. No tip is ever certain, because the bookmaker’s price already accounts for the most likely outcomes, and a tip that always wins would be a price the bookmaker would not offer.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the price?

The margin is the share of every unit bet on a market the bookmaker keeps on average, and it sits inside every price. A two-way market at 1.90 and 1.90 has a payout share of 0.95 and a margin of 5%. The bigger the margin, the more the bookmaker keeps, and the less the punter gets back on average. A market at 2.00 and 2.00 has no margin, and a market at 1.50 and 3.00 has a margin of roughly 11%.

How can it be checked that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register, on its own site, can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number. A brand whose name appears on the register, with a remote general betting standard licence for real events, is a GB-licensed bookmaker. A brand whose name does not appear is not, and the operator’s own claim on the home page is not the same as the register. A licence is an operator-level condition, not a market-level guarantee, and a licensed bookmaker is not the same as a better-priced one.

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