Patent Bet Calculator: Work Out a Patent Line by Line, Win or Each Way

Say your Patent came back with £17.63 and you want to know if that’s right. That is exactly the bet loaded into the Patent bet calculator above: 50p on three horses at 13/8, 11/4 and 8/1, with the 13/8 and 8/1 horses winning and the 11/4 horse beaten. Seven bets cost £3.50, and £17.63 is correct to the penny.

The way to see why is to look at the seven lines one at a time, which is what the calculator’s breakdown does.

The seven bets, and where £17.63 came from

A Patent backs every combination of three horses: each on its own, every pair, and all three together. That is three singles, three doubles and a treble, all at the same stake.

Number the horses 1, 2 and 3 in the order entered. Horse 2 lost, so every line with horse 2 in it is dead: the single on horse 2, the doubles 1+2 and 2+3, and the treble. Three lines survive.

The single on horse 1 at 13/8 returns 50p × 2.625 = £1.31. The single on horse 3 at 8/1 returns 50p × 9 = £4.50. The double 1+3 returns 50p × 2.625 × 9 = £11.81. Add them and you have £17.63.

The calculator’s summary says the same thing in short: singles, two of three paying, £5.81; doubles, one of three paying, £11.81; treble, none. When a settlement looks wrong, that summary is the place to start. If it shows the line count you expected and the total still differs, a price is wrong. If the line count is wrong, a result is.

Using the Patent bet calculator

Choose Patent as the bet type and the Patent bet calculator shows three selection rows. Enter the prices, fractional or decimal. Set the results, including any non-runner or dead heat. Type the stake. A “50p Patent” is 50p per bet, so leave the switch on Per bet and the total will read £3.50.

To work to a budget instead, press Total. £10 in total is about £1.43 a bet, and on the example day that returns £50.36. Tick each way and the calculator adds a place line for every bet, doubling the count to fourteen. The order you enter the horses in doesn’t change the return. It only changes the numbering in the line-by-line list, so it can help to enter them in race order, which makes the list easier to match against a settlement slip.

What each number of winners is worth

With the same three prices and 50p a line, here is how the return grows.

One winner. Only its single pays. If it is the 13/8 horse, £1.31 comes back. If it is the 8/1 horse, £4.50, which is more than the £3.50 staked. The break-even price for a lone winner in a Patent is 6/1, because the stake is seven times the line stake and a 6/1 winner returns seven times its stake.

Two winners. Two singles and a double pay. The two shortest prices, 13/8 and 11/4, return £8.11. The two longest, 11/4 and 8/1, return £23.25. The example pair, 13/8 and 8/1, sits between them at £17.63.

Three winners. Every line pays. The singles, doubles and treble together return £85.59, from £3.50.

The spread between “two shortest” and “two longest” is the same lesson every full-cover bet teaches: most of the value sits in the combinations of the bigger prices.

On the three-winner day, the split between the parts is worth a look. The three singles return £7.69, the three doubles £33.61 and the single treble £44.30. One line out of seven brings in more than half the money. The singles are the Patent’s safety net, and the treble is its prize, and the doubles do the work in between.

Each way Patents

Each way turns the Patent into fourteen bets: seven on the win and seven on the place. At 50p each way it costs £7.

With 1/5 terms in every race, the example day returns £21.31: £17.63 from the win side and the rest from the place lines on the two winners. If the 11/4 horse had placed instead of losing, all seven place lines would pay, and the total would rise to £27.80. With all three placing and none winning, the place side alone returns £10.17 from £7.

That is the best case for each way on a Patent: a day when the horses run well without winning. With three big prices in big fields it can turn a losing bet into a winning one. With three short prices the place lines barely cover their own stake.

The three races rarely share the same terms, so set them horse by horse. Suppose the 8/1 horse ran in a big handicap paying 1/4 rather than 1/5. Its place price goes up from 8/5 to 2/1, every place line it is in pays a little more, and the example day returns £21.78 instead of £21.31. The difference is small here, because only one horse’s terms changed. On a day of big fields and bigger prices, generous terms across all three races can decide whether the place side covers its half of the stake.

Non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats

A non-runner costs nothing and saves a lot. If the 11/4 horse had been withdrawn instead of losing, its single would hand back 50p, the doubles 1+2 and 2+3 would become singles on horses 1 and 3, and the treble would become the double 1+3. The bet would return £35.75, against £17.63 when the same horse ran and lost. A non-runner is always better news than a loser in a full-cover bet.

Rule 4 cuts a winner’s price wherever it appears. A 25p deduction on the 13/8 winner reduces its single, its surviving double and nothing else, because the treble is already dead. The return drops to £15.59.

A dead heat divides the stake on that horse’s lines. If the 13/8 horse had dead heated for first with one other, its single and the double 1+3 would each be settled on half the stake, and the bet would return £11.06.

All three are set on the horse’s own row, and the calculator applies them to every line that horse is in.

Choosing three horses for a Patent

The break-even rule gives a simple way to think about the selection. With a single winner, a Patent only pays its way if that winner is 6/1 or bigger. So a Patent of three short-priced horses is a bet that needs at least two winners to show a profit, and at that point a Trixie would have done almost the same job for less. Try it: put one horse at 6/1 in the example and make it the only winner. The 50p Patent returns exactly £3.50, the stake and not a penny more.

Where the Patent comes into its own is a mix: one or two horses at bigger prices alongside one you fancy strongly. The singles on the bigger prices can carry the bet on a day when only one comes in, and the doubles and treble pay handsomely when two or three do.

None of this is a reason to back a particular horse. It is simply what the structure rewards, and the calculator makes it quick to test: change one price at a time and watch how the one-winner and two-winner results move.

Stake sizes

Every line of a Patent scales with the stake, so the return does too. On the example day, a 10p Patent, 70p in total, returns £3.53. A 20p Patent returns £7.05, a £1 Patent £35.25 and a £2 Patent £70.50. The shape of the bet never changes; only the size of it.

That makes small stakes a sensible way to try a Patent without much risk. The same seven lines, the same structure and the same lessons about prices apply at 10p a line as at £10. What changes is only how much the bet costs, and the calculator shows that in the total stake box before you place anything.

Checking an SP Patent

If you placed the Patent without taking prices, it is settled at the starting prices, and the Patent bet calculator needs those, and they are only known once each race is run. Enter the returned SP for each horse from the result. Before the races, the calculator can only show what the bet would pay at prices you type in, which is useful for planning but isn’t the settlement.

An SP bet is normally unaffected by Rule 4, because the market re-forms after a withdrawal and the starting price already reflects the smaller field. So if an SP Patent comes back lower than the calculator’s figure, look first at the prices you entered, then at dead heats in the results.

Patent or Trixie?

A Trixie is the Patent without the singles: four bets instead of seven, £2 instead of £3.50 at 50p a line. On the example day the Trixie would return £11.81, the double on the two winners, while the Patent adds £5.81 from the singles.

The singles cost £1.50 extra at 50p and return something on any day with a winner. Whether they are worth it depends on the prices. With a big price in the three, one winner on its own can cover the bet, and the Patent’s singles do real work. With three short prices, the singles return little and the Trixie is the leaner bet.

The same logic runs up the scale: the Lucky 31 is the five-horse version with singles, and the Lucky 15 the four-horse one. For the bet itself and when it suits, read the Patent bet guide.