Notes on running a book.
Short pieces on the day-to-day of an independent book: what the fee covers, what active means, how to move platforms without losing anyone. Dated, and checked against the rate card when it moves.
01Latest note
The Latin American Sports Calendar, Month by Month
What Latin American players bet on through the year: two-tournament soccer seasons, the continental club cup, winter baseball and the US leagues.
Read the noteIn the margin
- Rate
- what the bill is made of
- Active
- who you are billed for
- Switch
- moving without losing players
- Lines
- who sets them, who moves them
02All notes
When a Platform Goes Down: What to Expect
What uptime figures mean in hours, what a provider should do during an outage, how bets are handled, and the questions to ask before you sign.
How to Grow a Bookie Business Without Losing Control
How to add players without adding chaos: keep the ones you have, grow in batches, scale the bankroll with the limits, and delegate before you drown.
Running a Bilingual Sportsbook
How to run a book for English and Spanish speaking players: what has to work in both languages, what to ask a provider, and where it goes wrong.
Bookie Mistakes to Avoid in Your First Year
The seven mistakes that close new books in their first year, from limits set too high to late payment, and what to do in place of each one.
Live Dealer Casino: A Guide for Agents
What live dealer casino is, how a streamed table works, why it costs more than digital games, and how an agent decides whether to add it.
Adding a Casino to Your Sportsbook
What a casino adds to a sportsbook: steadier weeks, play between games, and a different kind of risk. How it is billed and what to set up first.
Is Pay Per Head Legal? A Plain Explanation
Pay per head is a software service. Whether running a book with it is legal depends on where you and your players are. Here is how to think about it.
Betting Terms Glossary for Bookies
Plain definitions of the betting terms a bookie uses every week: juice, hold, handle, parlay, teaser, limits, make-up, settlement and more.
Setting Player Limits: Sizing Weekly Credit
How to size a weekly limit for each player: work back from your bankroll, start low, split by sport and bet type, and know when to raise or cut.
How to Compare Pay Per Head Providers
Compare providers on the all-in weekly bill, not the advertised rate: how a player is counted, what sits on top of the tier, and how to test a platform.
How to Become a Bookie
What it takes to become a bookie: the legal question first, then players, a bankroll, limits, software and a weekly routine you can keep.
Do Bookies Know Who Will Win?
No, and the useful question is what a book can predict instead. What the research found about how bettors lean, and what that is worth to a forty-player book.
Pay Per Head vs Building Your Own Sportsbook
What you take on when you build a sportsbook instead of renting one: the parts list, the odds feed, the maintenance years, and when building is right.
How Do Bookies Set Odds?
Where a line comes from: the model behind the number, the margin that turns a forecast into a price, what moves it once posted, and the levers an operator has.
Key Numbers in Football: Why 3 and 7 Matter to a Book
Why so many football games end by exactly 3 or 7, what that does to the value of a half point, and how a book protects itself around those two numbers.
Juice, Vig and Hold: How to Work Out the Margin
How to calculate the vig on any line, why -110 works out to 4.55% and not 4.76%, and why the hold a book keeps at the end of the week is a third number.
When to Add Sub-Agents to Your Book
What a sub-agent is, the bottleneck that tells you it is time, what you hand over and what you never do, and how a tree settles without you chasing everyone.
What a Weekly Settlement Actually Looks Like
The end of a billing week, line by line: what graded means, how a push is treated, and why the settlement day is the one thing that never moves.
How Do Bookies Work? A Week in the Job
What running a book involves: taking players on, setting limits, adjusting a line, watching one-sided action, and collecting. The work, not the theory.
How Do Bookies Make Money?
The vig, the hold, and what a book keeps. Written for the operator: a worked week, why limits protect the margin, and what the software bill does to it.
What Is a Bookie? What the Job Actually Is
What a bookie is, what the job involves day to day, how a bookie differs from a sportsbook and from a software provider, and what agent means in this industry.
Switch Pay Per Head Providers Without Losing Players
A step-by-step guide to changing pay per head providers: when to move, what to check first, how the move works, and how to keep your players through it.
Pay Per Head Pricing: What the Bill Is Made Of
How pay per head pricing works: the per-head rate, what active player means, the casino percentage to watch for, add-ons, and how to estimate your weekly bill.
What Is Pay Per Head, and How Does It Work?
Pay per head explained for agents: what the fee covers, what active player means, who sets the lines, and what a provider does and does not do.
03About these notes
Written by the company, dated, and checked.
There are no guest posts: Mike Casanova writes these for BookiePerHead. Each note shows the day it was published and the day it was last checked against the rate card. Any rate you read inside a note comes from the same file the pricing page reads, so a note cannot quote a number the rate card has moved past.
- Who writes them
- Mike Casanova, for BookiePerHead. Nobody else.
- How often
- When there is something worth a note. There is no calendar to fill.
- What is not here
- Picks, tips, or anything about a specific game. These are about running a book, not betting on one.
04Get a demo
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- A demo login for the player site and the agent backend.
- Whatever a note left you asking.
- Your weekly price, and how you pay.
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