Tote betting

The Tote is the only bookmaker in Britain which is allowed to offer parimutuel betting on horse racing. Other bookmakers offer a Tote service through syndication, while other bookmakers will accept a Tote bet and pay out on exactly the same terms as the Tote.

The pooled bets offered by the Tote are:

Win, Place, Exacta, Trifecta, Quadpot, Placepot, Jackpot, Scoop6 and Swinger.

As other bookmakers can offer similar gambling services it is necessary to disambiguate the bets. A bookmaker win-only bet (on-the-nose) isn't the same as a Tote Win bet, as the bookmaker is offering fixed odds for that particular outcome, while the Tote is a dividend paid out from the betting pool. The betting pool is generated from individuals placing money on a Tote bet.

A price quote for a horse on the Tote is the current dividend payout on the event of that outcome happening. This tends to be similar to normal bookmaker odds, and tracks the market in a similar way, but at any given time may be better or worse than a bookmaker's quoted odds. However, since all bets are pooled, all bets are essentially "starting price" (SP), that is, until the race has started (and all betting finished) one cannot calculate what the final payout will be; whereas bookmakers can offer either SP or a "board price", that is, a guaranteed payout at a given price for a winning bet. (The SP for horse races is the average price offered by bookmakers when the race starts, as inspected by employees of the Jockey Club).

It is sometimes suggested that Tote odds are generally less favourable than bookmakers' SPs. This claim is controversial, some assert they vary little from bookmakers' odds.

The minimum stake for this bet is £1. One selects a horse from the field. This can be on any horse at any race meeting. The betting slip can be denoted with the horse's race card number, or the horses name (and if at another course, the name of the course), or it can be marked as the 'favourite', where the horse is not nominated but the bet is placed on whichever horse is favourite (has the largest amount of money put into the pool) at the start of the race. This will, obviously, have the lowest payout (since the pool will be shared with the largest number of winners) but the assumption is that if others have bet on it, it must have a good chance of winning.

A Tote Place bet is still on one, but the horse may come second, third or even fourth for the bet to win. Not every race qualifies for this type of bet. There must be a minimum of 5 horses in the field, the minimum stake is £2 and the following rules apply:

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Wikipedia