How do horse racing odds work when betting with the Tote
The scent of the stables, the smell of cigars. The grass, and the smartly dressed overweight men wearing fedora’s. The attraction, the rush. The thrill of a wager won…
Horse racing may have changed over the years, but the fundamentals that brought it into the forefront of sports betting culture have always remained the same. And as such a quintessential part of Americana. There’s an almost palpable attraction.
Any novice young bet maker would love to place some money down and watch it grow. In order to do so, you must first understand the rules, the regulations, and the methods of horse track betting. It’s all pretty simple, it’s foundations can be found in your average junior high-school mathematics class. But for those of you out there who might not remember those classes, here is how you bet on horses.
The first thing to understand is the chart, known as a “tote board”. The tote board will have everything you need to know to get started.
On the tote board will be a set of numbers on the left numbers separated by colons. The win odds explain the amount of profit you will make on a particular horse. For example if the odds are 5:2, this means you will get $5 of pure profit, for every $2 wagered. So in a race where the odds are 5-2 and you bet $40 you will make $140.
How did I come up with this number?
It’s a simple calculation. When the odds are 5:2 then the number on the left (5) is the profit and the number on the right (2) is the wager.
Divide the amount you put down (40) by the wager (2), and you will get the amount of times you have made $5 (which is the profit).
Odds are 5:2 so, on a $40 bet simply go 40 ÷ 2 = 20.
Therefore 20 (the amount of times you bet $2) x 5 = $100.00 + your original $40 bet and you get $140.00.
Are we still following?
Now this number is not exactly how much you would make, to fully understand the exact amount you would be making, it is necessary to ad a few more calculations into the mix.
Assigned to your horse will be a certain amount. This amount is the addition of what you and others have bet on your horse.
On the tote board there is a section at the bottom known as the “total win pool”.
The total win pool is all the money available to be divided among the winners. The track will then subtract 14% - 20% of that and put that in there own pockets. This is known as the take. So the total pool minus 20% or so, is the amount that will be divided up amongst the winners.
So the total win pool minus (14%-20%) gives a number. Take that number and subtract the amount assigned to your horse, the total amount that has been bet on your horse by you and others. Whatever is left, is what you will be splitting with the other winners.
Because most tracks have a $2.00 minimum in order to place a wager, the board will usually also display the payout on a $2.00 bet.
How the odds are calculated in the first place is by taking the amount of money that has been bet on a horse and figuring out what percentage of the total win pool was bet on that horse.
For example, if $1,100 has been placed in the total win pool, and $375 has been placed on Our Horse to Win as the total of all the people that have bet on this horse, and the track’s take is 15%, then we would use the following procedure to calculate the horse racing odds on our stallion:
First, determine what is left after the track’s take by subtracting 15% from $1 100.00. The equation being $1 100.00 ÷ 100 = $110.00.
Simply multiply $110.00 by 85 and you will get $935.00 and that is the amount which is left after the track has its take.
We then subtract the amount associated with our horse, $375 from $935, ending up with $560.
Then, we divide the total remaining bet pool by the amount placed on our horse, so divide $560 by $375, winding up with $1.49. That gets rounded up to $1.50, and our final horse racing odds are 1.5:1, which will be presented on the tote board as 3:2.
All this may sound a little complicated, but the best way to learn is to try. With a little practice the entire calculation of odds will become second nature and once you understand the fundamentals of the odds, all bets, as they say, are off.
Tags: