Curling Betting Tips: Reading the Odds, the Margin and the Markets

Updated October 2026

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The search is usually for “tips”. The honest answer is that no one can know who wins the next end, the next game or the next championship. What a tipster really offers is a price the reader’s own judgement rates better than the bookmaker’s, and the work behind that judgement is form, statistics, line-ups and the way the odds themselves carry a margin the bettor is paying for. This guide explains the moving parts: how a curling market is put together, where the house edge sits inside every price, how to read a value bet, what staking and bankroll discipline mean for a small-budget punter, and why even a careful approach can lose. The closing sections run through the British licensing frame, responsible gambling and where to verify a brand on the Gambling Commission’s public register before staking anything.

_A snapshot note: this guide is current as of 27 October 2026, written against the Gambling Commission’s public register._

The ten brands that take a curling bet in Great Britain

The shortlist below names every operator the Commission’s public register lists against a remote betting licence for customers in Great Britain at the time of writing, in the order set for this comparison. The licence line is the test a reader does first; everything that follows it is what each brand actually offers.

Two cautions sit next to any licence. First, holding a GB licence covers real-event remote betting; it does not promise that curling is priced every day of the year. Second, having a Commission account does not mean a brand outperforms the rest — every licensed operator pays into the same duty regime, every one runs age and identity verification, every one signs up to GAMSTOP, and the prices offered will differ by quite a small amount once the margin inside them is set. That is the comparison the rest of the page is built around.

Why this list and no other

Curling is a niche sport on British sportsbooks. Outside the Winter Olympics, the World Men’s and World Women’s Championships, the European Championships and the Grand Slam of Curling events, markets thin out to outrights and a handful of match-winner lines. The ten brands above all hold a remote general betting standard licence, so all can legally offer curling prices to customers in Great Britain. The list is not a ranking of who is best at curling — no such ranking exists in the public data, because the volumes are too thin to support one — but it is a complete set of brands whose domain matches a current licence entry. Any British punter who is shopping around is, in practice, comparing within these ten, and the only meaningful questions left are price, market depth and the small print.

What curling betting actually is

Curling on a British sportsbook is mostly a winter sport, mostly outrights and match winners during the championships, and mostly betting against operators who are also offering casino, slots and the rest of the menu. That matters because the house edge on curling is wider than on Premier League football or Champions League tennis. Fewer customers bet on it, the model is fed by less live data, and the operator’s margin absorbs a bigger share of every price. The reader who approaches curling the way they approach football — kicking off bets every weekend through a long season — will run out of markets well before the season ends.

The shape of the game

A curling team has four players (two in mixed doubles), and each player throws two of the team’s eight stones. Games usually run eight or ten ends; international and championship games are the full ten. An end completes when all sixteen stones have been thrown. The team with the stone closest to the button — the centre of the house — scores one point for each of its stones closer to the button than the opponent’s nearest stone, and only stones that finish in the house count. Tied games go to extra ends. Stones weigh between 17.24 and 19.96 kilograms under World Curling Federation rules, which matters because the ice has to be set up for that weight class, but does not show up in the betting.

The most important betting-relevant rule is the hammer: the team that did not score in the previous end throws last in the next end. If an end is blanked, the hammer stays with the same team. A team with the hammer in the final end and a one-point lead can, in many situations, simply choose to blank the end and keep the lead. Skips and coaches read the scoreboard that way; bettors reading the market have to read it the same way or get the price wrong.

How the betting menu is built

The headline markets on a curling event are match winner (regulation time includes any extra ends; the team with the higher cumulative score wins), the outright on each championship, and some books will run a handicap or a total-ends line for the bigger matches. Each price embeds a margin; the closer the price sits to evens on a two-team event, the larger the margin often is, because evens look friendly to the eye and casual bettors back the favourite on instinct. Taking the favourite at 4/6 looks cheap; a careful read of the implied probability often shows the operator is keeping five, six or seven per cent on the line.

Curling became an official Olympic medal sport in 1998 and mixed doubles joined in 2018. That timing matters to the market because the four-year cycle is the spike in British interest — the rest of the time curling is on the sportsbook, but it is not on the front page.

The legality and licensing frame in Great Britain

Curling is not licensed separately. The bookmaker offering the price is licensed for the activity of remote general betting on real events, and the price on any curling market sits under that licence. That is the law the reader is acting under.

Who licenses commercial betting in Great Britain

The Gambling Commission, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, licenses the whole commercial market under the Gambling Act 2005. The Act covers England, Scotland and Wales; Northern Ireland runs its own separate, older law and is outside the GB frame. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever the operator is based, and sections 33 and 36 of the 2005 Act — as amended — set the offence. A Curaçao, Maltese or Gibraltar licence alone is not enough; the Commission licence is the test.

The Commission’s public register can be searched by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and it is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence. Quote no count of licensed brands without its access date, and never call any one of them “the only” licensed operator — the register lists far more brands than any guide can feature.

What the licence types mean

Remote general betting standard (real events) is the bread-and-butter licence for a sportsbook offering curling. Remote general betting standard (virtual events) is a parallel category for computer-generated fixtures. Remote general betting limited is for lower-stakes or restricted offerings. Remote pool betting is for pool products like the Tote. Remote betting intermediary is the exchange licence — Matchbook holds one in addition to its standard licence. The licence a brand holds tells a reader what kind of bets the brand can legally offer, not which sports it will actually price.

Minimum age, verification and what that means at sign-up

The minimum age is 18. Identity verification by name, address and date of birth is required before a customer can deposit or gamble — including to claim a free bet or bonus. The rule took effect on 7 May 2019 and explains why a GB-licensed site asks for documents before a first deposit. There is no anonymous betting at a licensed brand, and any site offering truly anonymous wagering is not licensed for Great Britain.

What may and may not be bet on

There is no statutory list of permitted bets or markets in the Act. A licensed operator offers markets under its own house rules and the Commission’s Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice. In-play betting is offered by GB bookmakers; the controls sit in the licence conditions and the operator’s customer-protection duties, not in a single statute. Esports are treated like any other event. Virtual events are a separate licence category. Politics, television and novelty markets are offered without a statutory prohibition being found. Pool betting on horse and dog racing sits under its own licence.

Player protection rules inside a GB licence

GAMSTOP has been a mandatory licence condition for online operators since 31 March 2020. The self-exclusion periods are six months, one year, five years, or five years with auto-renewal, and after the minimum period the exclusion stays in place for a further seven years unless the customer asks GAMSTOP to remove it. GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps; betting shops run a parallel offline service.

A financial vulnerability check has applied since 30 August 2024: when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, the operator runs a public-record check (bankruptcy or county court judgments), which is not an income check and not a credit reference check. The financial risk assessment stage — the affordability checks often discussed in the press — was announced in a Commission article of 7 July 2026 with a staged plan and no start date. The right framing in 2026 is “announced, staged, no start date”, never “in force”.

Deposit limits under the Remote Technical Standards have been introduced in two stages: the first changes applied on 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether that second phase is live in 2026 is not established. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling for betting in Great Britain — the figure a punter caps themselves at is their own. Credit cards have been banned for gambling in Great Britain since 14 April 2020, including credit-card-funded e-wallet deposits; debit cards and bank payments are not covered.

Bonuses, advertising and the 10x cap

Advertising is not licensed by the Commission. The CAP Code (non-broadcast) and the BCAP Code (broadcast) handle marketing, enforced by the ASA. Section 16 of the CAP Code sets the social-responsibility test: marketing must not be of strong appeal to under-18s, and no one who is or seems to be under 25 may be featured gambling or play a significant role. That rule is about who can appear in the marketing, not about who can bet.

Promotion rules in force since 19 January 2026 cap wagering requirements on bonuses at 10x — a £10 bonus at 50x wagering used to need £500 of bets; under the cap, no more than £100. Mixed-product promotions — an offer that asks the customer to bet on two or more product types such as sports, casino, bingo and lottery — are banned. Whether the cap also applies to free bets with no wagering condition, and whether there is a cap on the cash value of a bonus, are not established.

The “whistle-to-whistle” rule is an industry code, not law. Since 1 August 2019, betting ads are not broadcast from five minutes before a live sporting event until five minutes after it, before the 9pm watershed, except for horse and greyhound racing. The Premier League clubs’ voluntary withdrawal of front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship from 2026/27 is voluntary, not law, and sleeves and hoardings continue.

Tax

A bettor pays no tax on winnings in Great Britain; that is general information, not tax advice, and a professional gambler should ask HMRC or a tax adviser. The General Betting Duty is the operator’s tax on gross profits and is currently 15 per cent; from 1 April 2027 a new remote betting rate of 25 per cent applies within it, while remote bets on UK horse racing, bets on self-service betting terminals in licensed premises, pool betting and in-person betting stay at 15 per cent. Until 1 April 2027 the remote rate stays at 15 per cent. Whether operators pass duty through into odds is not established. Spread betting has its own rates — 3 per cent for financial spread betting, 10 per cent for other spread betting.

The offshore frame

A GB licence is compulsory at the point of consumption. Providing gambling facilities in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires is an offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 — aimed at the operator — with a summary conviction penalty of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment, a fine up to level 5, or both. Enforcement is disruption, not blocking: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, registrar and payment-provider work, and court-order DNS blocking powers the Commission has been given or is about to receive. ISP blocking is not in operation as a generic system.

A bettor using an unlicensed brand loses the protections of the GB frame: no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution body, no British consumer redress if funds are withheld, no 10x bonus cap, no £150 vulnerability check. The honest framing is that licensed means checks, limits, GAMSTOP, the bonus cap and identity verification before the first bet; unlicensed means none of that, and possible loss of funds. Neither side is “the safe choice” by default.

Responsible gambling in a curling market

Curling itself is low-risk in tone — quiet ice, polite shouting, no crowd violence — which can make a punter forget that the wagering is the risk, not the sport. A responsible approach has three moving parts: knowing what the bookmaker’s tools do, knowing what national services do, and knowing when the wagering itself has stopped being a game.

Tools at the operator

Every GB-licensed operator in the comparison above offers deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. Midnite and Fitzwilliam Sports list timeouts and deposit limits on the home page; Betfred, William Hill, BetUK and the rest make them available through safer-gambling pages once logged in. A deposit limit fixes a gross ceiling for a set period; under the Remote Technical Standards, an operator must offer one, but the customer sets the figure, with a minimum 24-hour turnaround on increases. Self-exclusion routes through the operator’s own site or directly through GAMSTOP.

Tools at the national level

GAMSTOP is the multi-operator online self-exclusion scheme; a single registration closes a punter out of every licensed online brand. GamCare runs the National Gambling Helpline. GambleAware funds treatment and education. The NHS gambling clinics are commissioned regionally. Gamblers Anonymous runs peer-support meetings.

When the wagering is no longer a game

The signs are not always dramatic. A punter who has to chase losses to be able to afford the next stake, who is hiding bets from family or who is borrowing to top up an account is in trouble before they realise it. The right move at that point is to switch the comparison entirely — away from brands, away from markets — and speak to GamCare or to a GP. The bookmaker’s own safer-gambling pages are the first click, but the national services are the second.

Sports and tournaments: where a curling season actually runs

Curling in Great Britain is, on a sportsbook menu, a Winter Olympic window plus a smattering of world and European championships through the autumn and winter. The bulk of the betting sits inside three or four months of the year, which is why a punter looking to bet year-round should manage expectations before the season starts.

The Olympic cycle

Curling has been an Olympic medal sport since 1998; mixed doubles joined in 2018. The Olympic cycle drives the headlines and the outright markets, and the four-year rhythm is when casual bettors actually open the curling tab. Outside that window, the market thins but does not disappear.

The world and European championships

The World Men’s and World Women’s Curling Championships run annually and are priced throughout by the GB-licensed sportsbooks that price curling at all. The European Curling Championships sit alongside them. The Grand Slam of Curling events run through the autumn and winter and draw the strongest club field of the season; some British books will list them, some will not.

Tournament formats that affect the price

A round-robin stage followed by a playoff is normal. That structure means a top seed can lose one round-robin game to a qualifier and still reach the medal round, which any curling price has to account for. A knockout format from the quarter-finals onward is short — every stone matters. Mixed doubles uses a different page of statistics than the four-player game and many sportsbooks price them as separate events.

What a careful price read looks like in practice

A line that opens on a curling match is usually a function of the world rankings plus a small adjustment for the hammer. A sharp punter watches the order of play before placing — the team with the hammer in a blankable end is much more likely to blank, which depresses the totals market. Hitting that with a small stake on the under is the kind of price the bookmaker has under-priced because the public does not read the scoreboard.

The bookmaker’s margin, work-by-work

Every price carries a margin. The margin is what the bookmaker keeps on average from every unit bet on that market; it is also called overround and is the difference between 100 per cent of the stake and the share that would be returned to bettors on a perfectly fair market. On a two-way curling match the margin is usually between four and eight per cent of the stake, sometimes wider when only two or three prices are available.

The arithmetic in plain English

For an illustrative two-way market priced at 1.90 / 1.90 in decimal — about 9/10 each in fractions — the calculation is straightforward. The implied probability from each price is one divided by the odds: 1 ÷ 1.90 = 0.5263, or 52.63 per cent. Add the two sides together and the total is 1.0526, or 105.26 per cent. The excess over 100 per cent is the operator’s margin: 5.26 per cent of the stake, which is the share of every unit bet the bookmaker keeps on average. That figure is a band rather than a number — a real market with three or four prices and a take-out for the operator’s risk tends to land between four and seven per cent on curling events, but a bookmaker pushing for casual punters at the Grand Slam of Curling might widen to eight or nine per cent.

What that means for the bettor

The margin is the cost of placing the bet. On a 5.26 per cent margin the reader is paying roughly 5 p in every £1 staked for the privilege of being on the book. On 9 per cent the cost is 9 p. The cost is invisible because the operator does not print it on the betting slip. The only way to spot it is to convert every price to its implied probability, add the probabilities, and see what sits above 100. The reader who never does this conversion is paying the margin without knowing it.

The value-bet test

A price carries value when it is bigger than the true probability once the margin is taken out. If the bettor’s read is that the favourite wins 60 per cent of the time, and the bookmaker’s price converts to 55 per cent, the bet is a value bet at the operator’s price. If the price converts to 65 per cent, the bet is a value trap — the operator is offering less than the real probability of winning. The arithmetic is not the prediction; the bettor still has to make the prediction. The arithmetic is the gateway that says whether the prediction is worth taking to the cashier.

How a winning bet pays out

The mechanics of a single bet are simple enough that the marketing copy around them sometimes obscures the maths. Two formulas cover everything the reader needs.

The single bet

For a single bet, the return is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds, and the net profit is the stake multiplied by the odds minus one. Stake £10 at decimal odds of 3.50, the return is £35 and the profit is £25. Stake the same £10 at 1.50, the return is £15 and the profit is £5. The decimal odds include the stake in the figure; fractional odds do not, and a 5/2 price converts to 3.50 in decimals. A bet at “evens” or 1/1 is the same as 2.00 in decimals — break-even on the stake.

Combination bets

For a combination bet the odds of each leg multiply into one price. Three legs at 2.00, 3.00 and 4.00 give a combined price of 24.00; a £10 stake returns £240 if all three legs win, with profit of £230. The same maths adds the risk: each leg has to win. A treble at long prices pays well when it lands, but the chance of all three winning is the product of each leg’s probability, not the sum.

What that means in practice

The reader who bets a curling outright at 8.00 and the price lands is reading a one-in-eight return, plus the original stake. The reader who chains three curling selections into a treble is reading a one-in-several-hundred return. The marketing shape of “win £1,000 from a £5 acca” is exactly the same arithmetic as a 200/1 accumulator price — long odds, long odds, long odds, multiplied. Whether the price represents value is the question the margin section above addresses, not the question the marketing addresses.

Staking and bankroll discipline

The careful mathematics runs out unless the bettor can keep their stake sizes proportionate to the size of their bank and the edge they think they have. Bankroll discipline is the unglamorous half of tipping, and it is the half that separates the punter who enjoys curling from the punter who can’t.

The unit

A unit is a stake size fixed at one or two per cent of the bank, set so that a bad week of ten losing bets at flat stakes takes less than a fifth of the bank. A tenner-sized punter with a £500 bank is staking £5 to £10 a bet, no more. The unit is the upper limit, not the target, and the bettor who sizes up after wins and sizes down after losses is, in practical terms, sizing in the wrong direction: chasing, by another name.

The record

A betting record is a spreadsheet with the date, the event, the price, the stake, the return and a one-line reason for the bet. It is the only way to tell whether the edge is real or whether the reader is paying the margin and remembering the winners. The spreadsheet does not have to be elaborate; it has to be honest.

The line that stops mattering once another sits beside it

The most important number on the page is the one nobody quotes: not the 5.26 per cent margin example or any one price, but the line that reads “no tip is certain”. Once that line sits beside every selection the reader makes, the headline price stops mattering — and the cost of running through the margin does. That is the comparison the rest of this page is built around: the small, repeated cost of the price versus the very occasional chance of a winner. The reader who treats every bet as one of a long sequence, not as a private chance to win, is the reader whose bankroll lasts long enough for the edge, if there is one, to show.

The ten brands, in the order set for this comparison

The comparison below keeps the order from the table at the top of the page. Each entry names what the brand does at a curling price, where its terms differ from the rest of the field, and the verdict the page draws from that material. Brand names are written as proper nouns; none of these entries prints a web address.

Kalooki Sportsbook

Kalooki Sportsbook runs under Kalooki Sportsbook Limited, Commission account 57730, with a GAMSTOP-signed-up site. The licence holds up to a remote general betting standard category for real events; the site identity-checks before any deposit, which is the GB rule. Curling appears seasonally; the rest of the menu is built around winter sports and tournament outrights. The verdict: a tidy, modest bookmaker for a punter who wants the GB protections and is willing to watch the curling calendar to know when prices appear.

Octobet

Octobet sits under Octopus Game Limited on Commission account 62545. The new-customer sports welcome offer is 50 per cent back as a free bet up to £50, plus a separate £10 casino bonus for new accounts, with the GB-standard wagering and minimum-price conditions attached. Verdict: the offer is decent at the headline value, but a free bet whose stake is not paid back costs roughly the free-bet amount multiplied by the odds minus one, divided by the odds, against the market’s margin — on a curling match the headline rarely lands at the £50 cap.

William Hill

William Hill runs under WHG (International) Limited on Commission account 39225. The brand carries the longest British track record of the comparison set, pays Best Odds Guaranteed on UK and Irish horse racing from 8 AM on the day of the race on singles and multiples, and offers curling match-winner and outright markets at the major championships. Verdict: the BOG commitment is the headline feature for racing, and a curling punter pays a small price premium for the brand’s depth on adjacent sports. The operator suits a careful British punter who wants the legacy bookmaker’s track record.

Bet Ahoy

Bet Ahoy runs under Bet Ahoy Ltd on Commission account 100094. The welcome offer is a £5 sports bet plus a £5 acca for a £10 qualifying stake, and the brand tracks the main winter calendar on curling. Verdict: a small qualifying stake for a small headline return, useful for a punter trying the book on curling before sizing up. The licence is current; the price range on curling match winners is the field’s median rather than its peak.

Betfred

Betfred runs under Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited on Commission account 39544, with a sportsbook covering 21 sports plus a deep casino catalogue of over 2,000 games. The licence is current; the brand runs match-winner and outright prices on curling through the Brier, the World Championships and the European Championships. Verdict: the breadth of the menu is the headline feature. A curling punter pays a small premium over the thinnest-priced bookmaker for the access to the rest of the catalogue, and the breadth is the value.

Matchbook

Matchbook runs under Triplebet Limited on Commission account 39504, with both a remote general betting standard licence and a betting intermediary licence. The brand offers back and lay prices, multiples, in-play and a Bet Builder; live streams cover horse racing and greyhound racing. Verdict: the exchange model suits a confident curling punter, because the backer’s price is matched against another customer’s lay, and the margin inside the price can be tighter than a traditional sportsbook. The catch is liquidity — a curling match is rarely liquid enough to get the full stake on at the price.

Star Sports

Star Sports runs under Star Racing Limited on Commission account 9177, and offers customers a phone line on 08000 521 321 for opening accounts, placing bets and queries. Verdict: the phone-trader service is the headline feature. A curling punter who wants a human at the other end of the line pays for that in the form of slightly older prices on the bigger markets and a thinner curling offering than the high-street giants.

BetUK

BetUK runs under LeoVegas Gaming PLC on Commission account 39198, with a new-customer offer of four £10 free bets after a qualifying £10 sports bet, split as two football accas and two multiples, valid for 7 days each. Verdict: the headline offer favours football and multiples rather than curling outrights; a curling punter reading the terms will find the two multiples usable on curling, the two football accas not. The value lies in the multiple legs, not the headline four-free-bet shape.

Tote

Tote runs under TDCO Limited on Commission account 54779. The brand’s pools heritage translates well to tournament outrights and accumulator-style stakes on curling championships, with the pool pricing replacing the fixed-odds margin. Verdict: Tote is a different way to bet on curling, with the stake distributed among winning tickets in a pool rather than paid at fixed odds, and a curling punter who likes tournament outrights will find a different margin shape here than at a fixed-odds bookmaker.

Midnite

Midnite runs under Midnite Limited on Commission account 101839. The new-customer offer is £25 in free bets and 50 free spins after a £5 pre-match qualifying bet at EVS (2.0) or greater within 14 days; the site lists in-play events, an acca builder, popular accas and price boosts with maximum-stake limits. Verdict: the 14-day qualifying window and the EVS minimum price matter more than the £25 headline for a curling punter reading the small print. The acca builder and the price boosts are useful on curling at the bigger championships where multiple selections add real value.

How to verify a Gambling Commission licence yourself

A reader who wants to check the table above against the register can do the search in three steps. The Commission’s public register is at the Gambling Commission’s website, and it is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number.

The first step is to enter the brand name in the trading-name field, which lists the licence against the trading name customers see on the website. The second is to confirm that the licence categories include remote general betting standard (real events) at minimum, and remote betting intermediary if the brand is an exchange. The third is to cross-check the licence status, which should read “active”.

A brand with an active licence for the relevant categories is licensed today; a brand whose record reads “suspended”, “surrendered” or “expired” is not. Anyone whose domain does not appear in the register at all is offering gambling facilities to customers in Great Britain without the licence the Act requires, which is the offence discussed in the legality section above. The exercise takes about three minutes per brand, and it is the only check that holds against every marketing pitch the brand sends out.

What to do if a brand is not in the register

A brand not in the register is, by the Act’s own test, unlicensed for GB customers. The reader who is already registered with such a brand has limited recourse — no Commission complaints route, no approved dispute-resolution service, no British consumer redress. The right move is to withdraw funds, close the account, and place any further wagers through a licensed brand. Any reader who believes an unlicensed site is being offered to customers in Great Britain can notify the Commission; enforcement is the regulator’s job, not the punter’s.

The bettor’s checklist, top to bottom

A short list of the page’s worked points, in the order they appear on the gambling slip rather than in the article.

• The price carries a margin. Add the implied probabilities; the figure above 100 per cent is the operator’s take on every unit staked.
• A free bet is not a refund. The stake is not paid back on a win; the value is the free-bet amount multiplied by odds minus one, divided by the odds, against the market’s margin.
• A bonus carries turnover. Wagering requirements on bonuses are capped at 10x; the cap is in force as a licence condition.
• Mixed-product promotions are banned. An offer that requires gambling on two or more product types is off the menu as of 19 January 2026.
• Credit cards are banned. Debit cards and bank payments remain.
• Identity is checked. Name, address and date of birth are verified before the first deposit, including for a free bet.
• GAMSTOP is universal. A single registration closes the punter out of every GB-licensed online operator.
• No tip is certain. The reader acts on probability, not on outcome, and the wagering is the risk, not the sport.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I actually bet on curling?

Pick a GB-licensed sportsbook, complete identity verification on sign-up, head to the curling section during the Winter Olympics, the World Championships, the European Championships or a Grand Slam event, choose a market — match winner or outright most often — and place a stake at the price shown. The stake is debited from your deposit balance, the bet is recorded on the betting slip, and the result settles once the event finishes.

Can you bet on curling from Great Britain?

Yes, through any operator licensed by the Gambling Commission for remote general betting on real events. The Commission’s public register is the whole test of who holds such a licence, and the register’s licence categories include remote general betting standard (real events) for the sportsbooks listed above.

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

A value bet is a price that converts to an implied probability below your own read of the event’s true probability, once the operator’s margin has been taken out. No tip is ever certain because every selection involves chance — the hammer, the ice, the opposition’s last stone — and a price the model rates as value is still a price that can lose. The arithmetic opens the door; the bet still has to win on the ice.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how does it show in the odds?

The margin is what the operator keeps on average from every unit staked on a market. For an illustrative two-way curling match priced at 1.90 / 1.90 in decimal odds, the implied probabilities sum to 105.26 per cent, leaving a 5.26 per cent margin to the operator. The figure is a band rather than a single value, and the band’s lower bound sits around four per cent and its upper bound around seven or eight per cent on a typical curling event.

How is a return worked out from the stake and the odds?

For a single bet, the return is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds, and the profit is the stake multiplied by the odds minus one. A £10 stake at decimal odds of 3.50 returns £35 with a profit of £25. For a combination bet, the odds of each leg multiply into one price, and all legs must win for the bet to pay out.

How can a bookmaker’s Gambling Commission licence be checked?

Enter the trading name, the licence holder, the domain or the account number into the Gambling Commission’s public register at the regulator’s site, and confirm that the licence is active and that the categories include remote general betting standard (real events) at minimum. A brand whose record does not appear, or which is suspended, surrendered or expired, is not licensed for Great Britain at the time of the check.

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