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A fair price is the odds a horse would be if the bookmaker's profit margin were removed. Bookmakers build in an overround — the implied probabilities of all runners typically sum to 110-125% rather than 100% — so every quoted price is shorter than fair. Strip the overround out and you get the market's true consensus probability. Racing Alpha computes this on every priced racecard: the median price across ~31 bookmakers, de-overrounded, shown as a 'Fair' column.
Convert every runner's price to an implied probability (1 ÷ decimal odds), sum them to get the book's total (say 118%), then divide each runner's probability by that total so the field sums to 100%. The fair price is 1 ÷ the adjusted probability. Using a median across many bookmakers first protects the calculation from one book's outlier price.
It means one bookmaker is currently paying more than the market consensus thinks the horse is worth — a price check, not a tip. The consensus can still be wrong about the horse; what the comparison reliably tells you is which book stands out from the pack right now, which is exactly when taking a price is most attractive.
No. A value bet claims the true chance is better than ANY available price — that requires a judgement or model that beats the market. A fair-price check only removes the bookmaker margin and compares books to each other. It's humbler, but it's verifiable maths rather than a claim.
Single bookmakers commonly price UK races to 110-125% depending on field size — roughly 1-2% margin per runner. Exchanges run much tighter (often 101-105% before commission). The bigger the overround, the more taking the best available price matters.
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