Free Bet Calculator for UK Horse Racing: Work Out Your Bet Returns

The horse racing bet calculator above is loaded with a £1 Lucky 15. Two horses won at 2/1 and 3/1, the 4/1 shot was a non-runner and the 5/1 horse lost. Fifteen bets cost £15 and return £39.00. The non-runner’s stake runs on to its partners, so its single hands the £1 back and its doubles and treble pay as if the horse wasn’t there.

Change anything on the slip and the figures move with it. The bet calculator handles every bet a UK betting shop will take on horses: singles, doubles, trebles and accumulators up to eight legs, and every full-cover bet from a Trixie to a Goliath. It also knows the three things that turn a simple sum into an argument at the counter, which are each way terms, Rule 4 deductions and dead heats.

How to use this free bet calculator

There are four steps, and you only need the first two for a straight bet.

1. Pick the bet type. Singles, doubles, trebles and accumulators let you choose how many selections go in. The full-cover bets fix the number for you: a Yankee is always four horses, a Heinz always six.
2. Enter each price and result. Type the odds the way they appear on the slip or the screen, so 5/2, 11/10, evens or 3.5 all work. Then set how each horse finished.
3. Set the stake. Choose whether the figure you type is the stake per bet or the total. This matters more than it looks: “£1 Lucky 15” means £1 on each of 15 lines, which is £15, not £1.
4. Tick each way if you need it, and give each horse its place terms. Terms can differ from race to race, so a Lucky 15 across four meetings may have four different fractions.

Rule 4 and dead heats are there for the day something goes wrong. Most bets never need them.

Below the returns you get the bet broken down by singles, doubles and so on, with the number of lines that paid in each. Open “every bet, one by one” to see each line with its combined odds. That list is the quickest way to check a settlement you think is wrong, because you can hold it next to the one the bookmaker gave you.

The calculator doesn’t add bookmaker promotions. Some firms pay a bonus on a Lucky 15 with one winner, or double the odds on a single winner. Those offers vary by firm and change often, so they are left out here and the figure you see is the bet on its own terms.

Returns vs profit: what the two numbers mean

Returns are what comes back across the counter. Profit is what you are up on the day. The gap between them is the stake, and in a full-cover bet the stake is big enough to swallow a decent-looking return.

Take the example on the slip. £39.00 sounds good for £15, and it is: £24 profit. Now change the 3/1 winner to unplaced. The return drops to £7.00: the £3 single on the 2/1 winner, the £1 back from the non-runner, and the £3 double that pairs the winner with the non-runner. Twelve of the fifteen lines lose, and you are £8 down even though you backed a winner.

That is the trade every multiple makes. More lines cost more, and they protect you when one horse lets you down. They do not guarantee a profit, and a single winner in a Yankee (which has no singles) returns nothing at all. Look at the profit box, not just the big number, and set a budget before you bet rather than after.

Fractional and decimal odds, and the starting price

British racing still prices horses in fractions. 5/2 means you win £5 for every £2 staked, and you get the stake back on top. Decimal odds put the stake in the number: 5/2 is 3.5, because £1 returns £3.50. To convert, divide the top of the fraction by the bottom and add one.

A few prices come up so often they are worth knowing on sight. Evens is 2.0. 11/10 is 2.1. 6/4 is 2.5, 13/8 is 2.625 and 7/4 is 2.75. Odds-on prices sit below 2.0: 4/6 is about 1.67 and 1/2 is 1.5. Odds also tell you the chance the market gives a horse. Divide one by the decimal odds: 3.5 is 1 ÷ 3.5, about 28.6%, and an evens shot is 50%. Add up that figure for every horse in a race and the total comes to more than 100%. The extra is the bookmaker’s margin, and it is the reason a book of prices can never be backed all round at a profit. None of this changes a settlement, but it is worth knowing what a price is claiming before you take it.

The calculator reads either form, and if you type a decimal it shows the matching fraction in the line-by-line list. The odds converter goes the other way as well and adds American odds and the implied chance.

The starting price is the price a horse was trading at as the race began. If you ask for SP, or don’t take a price at all, that is what you are paid at. The SP is only known once the race is off, so for an SP bet the slip is a what-if until the result is in. Type the returned SP afterwards and you get the real settlement. Bets struck at SP normally escape Rule 4, because the market re-forms after a withdrawal and the SP already reflects the smaller field. More on that in starting price explained.

A Lucky 15 with a non-runner, settled by hand

This is the bet loaded on the slip, worked out the long way, so you can see there is no trick in the machine. The four selections are A at 2/1, B at 3/1, C at 4/1 and D at 5/1, £1 a line. A and B won, C was a non-runner and D lost.

First turn every price into decimals, and give each horse the figure its result deserves. A is worth 3.0 and B is worth 4.0. C, the non-runner, is worth 1.0, because a void leg neither adds anything nor kills the line. D lost, so D is worth nothing, and any line with D in it returns nothing.

The four singles. A returns £3 and B returns £4. C hands the £1 back. D loses. That is £8.

The six doubles. A and B: £1 × 3 × 4 = £12. A and C: £1 × 3 × 1 = £3, which is simply the A single again. B and C: £4 on the same logic. The three doubles with D return nothing. That is £19.

The four trebles. Only A, B and C survives, at £1 × 3 × 4 × 1 = £12. The other three all contain D.

The four-fold contains D, so it loses.

Add it up: £8 + £19 + £12 = £39 from £15 staked. Seven of the fifteen lines paid. Open the full list under the slip and you will see the same seven, each with the same figure.

Two things stand out. The non-runner cost nothing: every line it was in simply shrank to a smaller bet on the others. And the result depended heavily on B. Swap B’s win for a loss and the return collapses to £7, as the section above showed. That swing is why a Lucky 15 suits four horses you rate roughly equally, and why many people back it each way.

Tick each way on the slip with 1/5 terms and watch what changes. The bet is now 30 lines and £30. The place half settles the same way as the win half, only at a fifth of the odds: A is worth 1.4, B is worth 1.6, the non-runner still 1.0. The fifteen place lines add £11.48 to the £39 from the win lines, so £50.48 comes back and the profit is £20.48. Double the stake, a smaller profit. That is the normal shape of each way on a good day, and the reverse of a bad one, when the place lines are the only thing paying.

How each way is calculated on UK horse racing bets

An each way bet is two bets of the same stake. One is on the horse to win. The other is on it to finish in the places, and that half is paid at a fraction of the price. So £5 each way costs £10, and the calculator counts it as two bets.

The fraction and the number of places depend on the race. Under the standard UK terms, races of five to seven runners pay two places at 1/4 of the odds and races of eight or more pay three places at 1/5. Handicaps are more generous: 12 to 15 runners pay three places at 1/4, and 16 or more pay four at 1/4. With four runners or fewer, there is no each way at all. Many firms offer extra places on big races, and those vary from firm to firm.

Here is £10 each way at 8/1 with 1/5 terms, costing £20:

• The horse wins. The win half pays £10 × 9.0 = £90. The place half pays at 8/1 ÷ 5 = 8/5, which is £10 × 2.6 = £26. Total £116.
• The horse places. The win half loses. The place half returns £26. You are £6 up.
• The horse is unplaced. Both halves lose.

In a multiple, each way works line by line. An each way double is a win double plus a place double, and a placed horse counts in the place double at its place price even if it didn’t win. That is why an each way Lucky 15 can pay well on a day with only one winner. Set the terms separately for each horse, because a four-horse bet can easily cover a big-field handicap and a seven-runner novice race. Each way has its own guide, and there is an each way calculator set up for a single.

How Rule 4 is calculated

Rule 4 comes from the Tattersalls Committee’s rules on betting. When a horse is withdrawn after you have taken a price, and there isn’t time to form a new market, the remaining horses were priced against a rival that is no longer there. Their odds were too big. The rule corrects that by taking a set amount off each pound of your winnings. The stake is never touched.

The deduction depends on the price of the withdrawn horse when it came out. A 4/1 shot pulling out costs you 20p in the pound. A hot favourite at 1/2 costs 65p. A 20/1 outsider costs nothing.

Here is how it plays out. You have £10 on a winner at 10/1, and a 5/2 shot was withdrawn after you struck the bet, so the deduction is 25p. Your winnings would have been £100. A quarter comes off, leaving £75, and you get the £10 stake back on top: £85.

Each way bets take the deduction on both halves. The place part is worked out from the reduced price. So £10 each way at 10/1 with 1/4 terms and a 20p deduction becomes 8/1 after Rule 4, and the place half is paid at 8/1 ÷ 4 = 2/1. A placed horse returns £30. In the slip, set the Rule 4 box on the horse you backed, not on the one that came out. When two or more horses are withdrawn, the deductions are combined, up to a ceiling set in the rules. The full detail is in Rule 4 explained.

In a multiple, the deduction only touches the leg that ran in the affected race. £5 on a double where the first horse won at 10/1 with a 25p deduction and the second won at 2/1 is settled with the 10/1 cut to 15/2, which is 8.5 in decimals, then carried on. Without the deduction it would have paid £5 × 11.0 × 3.0 = £165.00. With it, £5 × 8.5 × 3.0 = £127.50. The second race had no withdrawal, so its price stands.

How dead heats are calculated

When two or more horses can’t be split by the photo, they share the position, and they share the payout too. Your stake is divided by the number of horses in the dead heat. The divided stake is paid at the full price, and the rest is lost.

£10 at 6/1 in a two-way dead heat for first is settled as £5 at 6/1: £35 back, a £25 profit rather than £60. In a three-way dead heat the stake is divided by three.

Dead heats for the last place in an each way bet work on the same idea, with one extra step. You count the places still to be shared and divide by the horses sharing them. If two horses dead heat for third in a race that pays three places, they share one place between two horses, so half the place stake counts. £10 each way at 10/1 with 1/4 terms: the win half loses, and the place half is settled as £5 at 10/4, which returns £17.50. If three horses tie for second with two places left, two thirds of the place stake counts.

A dead heat for first in an each way bet doesn’t touch the place half. The horse finished in the places either way, so the place part is paid in full. A dead heat inside a multiple divides the stake at that leg and carries the rest forward. £10 on a double where the first horse dead heated for first at 6/1 and the second won at 2/1 becomes £5 at 6/1, which is £35, rolled on to the 2/1: £105. Without the dead heat the same double would have paid £210, so a shared photo halves the whole bet, not just one leg of it.

In the slip, pick “Dead heat for 1st” or “Dead heat for a place”, then say how many horses were tied and, for a place, how many places were left for them.

Which bet type? Bets, lines and cost

Every full-cover bet is the same idea at a different size. You take a number of selections and back every combination of them from a certain size upwards. The ones with “Lucky” in the name add the singles.

Each way doubles every figure in the last two columns.

The table makes one thing obvious that the names hide: the cost climbs much faster than the number of horses. Going from six selections to eight takes a Heinz at £57 to a Goliath at £247, more than four times the money for two more horses. The bigger bets only make sense at small stakes, and even then a single winner in a Goliath returns nothing, because it has no singles.

A quick way to compare them is to ask what one winner is worth. A £1 Patent costs £7, and one winner at 6/1 returns exactly £7 through its single: that is the break-even price. A £1 Lucky 15 costs £15, and a lone winner has to be 14/1 before its single alone gets the stake back. A Trixie has no singles, so one winner returns nothing at any price. It needs two, and two evens winners return £4, the stake and not a penny more.

For most people the useful range is the Trixie to the Lucky 15. With three or four horses, a Patent or Lucky 15 gives you something back from one winner, and a Trixie or Yankee is cheaper but needs two. The accumulator sits at the other end: one line, the biggest price, and no second chance. For the whole family, including tote bets such as the Placepot that this calculator doesn’t settle, start at types of horse racing bets.

If you want to check an old slip, this horse racing bet calculator will settle it the same way. It works as a bet return calculator for any fixed-odds bet the table above covers, and the slip shows every figure to the nearest penny. If your settlement differs by more than a penny, open the line-by-line list and find the line where the two part company.

A horse racing bet calculator can’t tell you which horses to back. It can tell you exactly what a bet costs and what each result is worth, before you place it. Try the Yankee you were planning with one winner, then with two.

Two versions of this bet return calculator open with one bet already set up: the Lucky 15 calculator and the each way calculator.