Double Bet Calculator: Work Out Your Double Returns, Win or Each Way

The double calculator above is loaded with £10 on two winners, one at 9/4 and one at 13/8. It returns £85.31, which is £75.31 profit on a £10 stake. Change a price, a result or the stake and the figure moves as you type.

A double is the smallest multiple there is: one bet, two horses, two races, and both have to win. That makes it the easiest bet on the whole site to work out by hand, and also the easiest to get slightly wrong, because the stake has to stay inside the sum the whole way through.

How to use the double bet calculator

The bet type is already set to Accumulator with two selections, which is what a double is. Enter the two prices the way the bookmaker showed them. Fractions, evens and decimals all work, so 9/4, evens and 3.25 are all fine. Set each result. For a normal double that means Won or Unplaced, but the other options are there for the days that go wrong. Type the stake and leave it on Per bet: a double is one bet, so per bet and total are the same number unless you tick each way.

That is all there is to it. Below the return, the breakdown shows the single line of the bet with its combined odds, which is the number to hold up against a settlement if you ever need to.

The sum behind a double

A double works by rolling the winnings on. The first horse wins, and everything it returns, stake and winnings together, is staked on the second horse.

Take the loaded example. £10 on the 9/4 horse returns £32.50. That £32.50 goes on the 13/8 horse, and at 13/8 it returns £32.50 × 2.625, which is £85.3125. The slip rounds that to £85.31.

The shortcut is to multiply the decimal prices first. 9/4 is 3.25 and 13/8 is 2.625, so the double is 3.25 × 2.625 = 8.53 in decimals. The stake times 8.53 is the return. As a fraction it is just over 15/2, which is the kind of price that looks odd because no single horse would be quoted at it. It isn’t meant to be. It is the price of the bet, not of a runner.

The mistake people make is to multiply the fractions instead. 9/4 times 13/8 as fractions gives 117/32, about 3.66, which leaves out both stakes and makes the double look worth less than half what it pays. The decimal route includes them automatically, which is why the double bet calculator works in decimals behind the scenes.

One bet, or two singles?

The honest comparison is with the same money split into two singles.

With both horses winning, the double returns £85.31 from £10. Two £5 singles on the same horses return £16.25 and £13.13, a total of £29.38. The double is worth almost three times as much.

With only the 9/4 horse winning, the double returns nothing. The two singles return £16.25, so you still show a profit of £6.25.

That is the whole choice in two lines. The double pays for being right twice. The singles pay for being right once. Neither is better in general, and the calculator makes it easy to see which trade you are making: put the same horses in as a double, then change the bet type to Single(s) with two selections and compare.

What the double price says about your chances

The combined price is also the market’s view of how likely the double is. Divide 100 by the decimal odds of each horse: 9/4 implies about 30.8% and 13/8 about 38.1%. For both to happen, multiply those two chances together, which gives roughly 11.7%. Divide 100 by 8.53 and you get the same figure. So a double at just over 15/2 is, on the market’s own numbers, about a one-in-eight-and-a-half shot.

That figure carries each bookmaker’s margin twice, once per race, which is worth knowing but doesn’t change the arithmetic. It does explain why a double of two short-priced horses rarely pays as much as it feels it should. Two horses at 1/2, each quoted as a two-in-three chance, make a double at 2.25 in decimals, which is 5/4. £10 returns £22.50. It feels like two near-certainties, and on the market’s view it still loses about five times in nine, because two-thirds of two-thirds is only four-ninths.

The same logic runs the other way. Two outsiders at 8/1 make a double at 80/1, because 9 × 9 is 81. The price looks enormous, and it is simply what two unlikely things both happening is worth. The double bet calculator doesn’t judge any of this. It tells you what each outcome pays, which is the half of the decision that can be worked out exactly.

Each way doubles

Tick each way and the bet becomes two doubles: a win double at the full prices and a place double at the place prices. The stake doubles too, so £10 each way costs £20.

With 1/5 terms on both races and both horses winning, the win double pays £85.31 and the place double adds £19.21, so £104.53 comes back from £20. If the 9/4 horse wins but the 13/8 horse only places, the win double loses and the place double still pays £19.21. That is just under the £20 stake: the place side kept most of the money in play, but not all of it.

The place double is where the terms matter. It multiplies two place prices, and each of those is only a quarter or a fifth of the win price, so it is a small number unless the horses are big prices. If both horses are short, the place double will usually return less than its half of the stake even when both place. The each way calculator shows the place price for any single horse if you want to check one leg on its own.

Non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats in a double

A non-runner turns the double into a single. The withdrawn horse’s leg counts as 1.0, so the whole £10 simply rides on the other horse. With the 9/4 horse taken out and the 13/8 horse winning, £10 at 13/8 returns £26.25. The bet didn’t die. It just got smaller.

Rule 4 cuts one leg, and the cut carries through. Say a horse was withdrawn from the 13/8 horse’s race and a 30p deduction applied. The 13/8 becomes a little over 9/8 in winnings terms, and the double returns £69.47 instead of £85.31. Put the deduction on the row of the horse whose race lost a runner. The other leg is untouched.

A dead heat divides the stake at that leg. If the 9/4 horse dead heated with two others for first, a three-way tie, a third of the £10 goes forward and the rest is lost. The double then returns £28.44. A two-way dead heat halves it. The calculator asks how many horses were tied and does the division for you.

Checking a bookmaker’s settlement

A double settlement has only one line, so it is quick to check. Put in the prices you actually got, not the ones you remember. If you took a price in the morning, use that. If you left the bet to the starting price, use the SP from the result, and note that bets at SP are normally untouched by Rule 4.

If the figures still don’t match, there are three usual suspects. A Rule 4 deduction on one of the races is the most common, and it is easy to miss because the deduction is on a horse you didn’t back. The second is a price that was improved by an offer, which the calculator won’t know about. The third is a dead heat you didn’t notice in the result. The slip’s single line, with its combined odds, makes each of these easy to test one at a time.

Double or doubles?

A double is one bet on two horses. The bet type called Doubles is different: it takes three or more horses and backs every pair among them as a separate double.

Three horses make three doubles. Put the two example winners in with a third horse at 5/1 that loses, and £10 doubles on all three cost £30. The one pair that won returns £85.31 and the other two doubles lose. If the 5/1 horse had won too, all three doubles would pay, for £437.81 in total. Four horses make six doubles, and at that point you are close to a Yankee without the trebles.

The full rundown of multiples, from the double through trebles to long accumulators, is on the accumulator guide. The treble calculator is set up for the next step up.

Stake per bet or total

For a win double, per bet and total are the same in the double bet calculator, because there is only one bet. The switch starts to matter as soon as you tick each way, where £10 per bet means £20 in total, or when you choose Doubles on three or more horses, where £10 per bet on three horses is £30.

If you have a fixed amount to spend, press Total and type it in. The calculator divides it across the lines and shows the stake per bet it has used. For a single double that is just the figure you typed; for an each way double it is half of it. The return is worked out from the per-bet stake either way, so the two settings always agree once you know which one you meant.