What is a tissue price?

The origin of the word

The term comes from the old Tattersalls ring, where bookmakers wrote their opening prices on thin tissue paper before the betting started. The 'tissue' was their honest opinion of each horse's chance, before public money moved the market.

How a modern tissue is built

At Odds Father, the tissue is generated by a Python model that ingests:

• Recent form (weighted by class and class drop/rise)
• Course and distance fit
• Going preferences from historical performances
• Jockey and trainer strike rates at that track/conditions
• Sectional and speed figures where available
• Race shape and pace projections

The output is a probability for each runner, normalised to 100% across the field, then expressed as decimal odds.

Tissue vs market

When the tissue says a horse should be 5.00 (4/1) and the market is offering 8.00 (7/1), that's a +60% overlay. Either the tissue is wrong, or the market is wrong. Over a large enough sample, the tissue tends to win — because it's built from objective data, not from where the public money has gone.

Why this matters more than tips

A tip tells you which horse to back. A tissue tells you at what price. Without a price, you can't know if a tip is value or not.

• Horse A tipped at 2/1, true price 5/4 → terrible bet
• Horse B tipped at 10/1, true price 5/1 → excellent bet

Same tipster, same confidence. Completely different bets.

How we use the tissue

1. Generate a tissue price for every runner in every UK & Irish race.
2. Scan every bookmaker and exchange for the best available odds.
3. Flag any horse where market price > tissue by a defined threshold.
4. Score each flagged selection with the OF Score™ — and publish the daily list.