BETTING ODDS: Harriers v Macclesfield

Harriers are 5/2 according to BetVictor.com. The correct score markets offer punters an opportunity to back several outcomes at decent prices and still win, even if the majority of bets lose – as they have an unfortunate tendency to do.

For instance, assume you've backed the draw (13/5, Skybet) as a form of insurance, supplementing this bet with a selection of correct scores could pay dividends.

A goalless outcome appears unlikely, but a backing a 2-2 draw, priced at 14/1 by Winner.com, is not the action of a desperate gambler chasing outrageous odds. Supporting results 'either side' of this effectively hedges the bet, with the most obvious being a 1-1 outcome, offered at 11/2 by Paddy Power.

Similarly, a 2-1 home win (8/1, Ladbrokes) is not out of the question, although nor is a 2-1 away victory (19/2, William Hill).

Instead of placing say, £20 on a 2-2 result, putting £5 on all four results ensures that, even if the shortest-priced outcome (11/2) comes up, the punter still enjoys a 37% profit, clearing £7.50 on top of his £20 stake.

Meanwhile, in an 'exclusive' for this column, emailed responses from more than a dozen bookmakers this week suggest that fewer than twenty people nationwide actually backed Leicester City at the start of the season at (the now) widely-publicised odds of 5,000/1 to be crowned Premier League champions.

Furthermore, only a handful of bookies offered those 5,000/1 odds, although most are hovering around the Foxes' current 9/4 price (Stan James). Such dramatic changes in price are extremely rare, as is backing a possible 5,000/1 outcome with more than a fiver, but every week, millions of punters place relatively small stakes on treble and accumulator bets at attractively long odds, a characteristic of fixed odds.

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