How to Place a Bet at the Racecourse

There are many different types of bets you can place at the racecourse. The most common type is betting with one of the on course bookmakers. But if you are a complete novice you would be better off locating the Tote betting windows and picking up one of their useful guides.

The on course bookies and the Tote allow two main types of bet: Win and Each Way. Win is where you name a horse to win the race, and if it does you get paid out at X times your stake. Each Way is where your horse can finish 1st or 2nd, mostly 3rd and in some big races 4th. 1st is classed as winning whilst 2nd-4th is classed as placing. If a horse places you win roughly a 1/5 of the win odds, whilst if you win you get the full win odds plus the 1/5th win odds for the place.

The Tote also take a range of exotic bets such as:

• Forecast / Exacta – predict which horses will finish 1st and 2nd. The payouts for this can be big
• Tricast / Trifecta – predict which horses will finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd. This is a very hard bet to win but the payouts can be huge
• Placepot – predict which horses will place in the first 6 races of the meeting. This is an inexpensive bet which is a lot of fun and can return anything from a few pounds to a few thousand!
• Jackpot – predict which horses will win the first 6 races. This is extremely hard to win but can generate a life changing win

Exotic bets can have many combinations. e.g. For an Exacta bet you can pick a combination of, say, three horses such that if any two of the three finish 1st and 2nd you will win the bet. Note that the more horses you add to the combination, the more your stake is increased. Three horses combined in an any order Exacta costs 6 x your stake.

Placepots are great fun and can also have any number of horses in each leg of the bet. This is a good bet for sharing with friends, where you each pick one or two horses per race and share the stake.

Note that gambling is a risky business. Never bet with money you can not afford. If you are new to horse racing betting then put aside a small bit of cash for betting and expect to lose some or all of it!