Treble Bet Calculator: Work Out a Three-Horse Treble, Win or Each Way

Is a treble worth the risk? That depends on the prices, and the treble bet calculator above shows exactly what they add up to. It is loaded with £4 on three winners at 5/4, 15/8 and 10/11. Those three prices multiply to just over 12, so the £4 comes back as £49.40, a profit of £45.40.

A treble is a double with one more link in the chain. The first horse’s return rides on the second, and that return rides on the third. Every horse must win, and any one of them losing takes the whole bet down.

Setting up the treble bet calculator

In the treble bet calculator, the bet type is Accumulator with three selections. Put the prices in the order you like; the order makes no difference to a treble, because multiplication doesn’t care which comes first. Set each result, type the stake, and the return appears.

Keep the stake on Per bet unless you are working each way. A treble is one bet, so £4 per bet is £4 in total. Tick each way and it becomes two bets, £8 in total, which is where the two settings stop meaning the same thing.

If the treble includes a horse that dead heated, was withdrawn or ran in a race with a Rule 4 deduction, set that on its row. Each of those changes one leg, and the calculator carries the change through the rest of the bet.

Following the stake through three legs

It helps to watch the money move once. £4 on the 5/4 horse returns £9. The £9 goes on the 15/8 horse and returns £25.88. That goes on the 10/11 horse and returns £49.40.

In decimals the treble is 2.25 × 2.875 × 1.909, which is 12.35. Take one off and the fractional price is a shade over 11/1. Nobody would quote a single horse at 942/83, which is what the pure arithmetic gives, so the calculator shows the combined figure as a multiplier in its line-by-line list: ×12.35.

Notice how little the third leg adds. The first two horses turn £4 into £25.88. The 10/11 shot, a price that says it is more likely to win than not, only takes that to £49.40. It nearly doubles the return, and it adds a whole extra race that can go wrong. Short-priced third legs are the most common way a treble gets bigger on paper while getting only slightly more likely to lose, and the calculator is a quick way to see what one is really worth: take it out, make the bet a double, and compare.

Trebles at different prices

Because the prices multiply, a treble’s return swings a long way with each leg.

Three evens shots make a treble at 7/1: each one doubles the stake, so £4 becomes £32. Three 2/1 shots make 26/1, and £4 becomes £108. Three 5/1 shots make 215/1, and £4 becomes £864. The step from 2/1 to 5/1 on each leg multiplies the return by eight.

Each of those is also a statement about how likely the treble is. On the market’s figures, three evens shots all winning is a one-in-eight chance. Three 5/1 shots all winning is about one in 216. The calculator only settles the bet; the prices say what you are betting against.

A useful habit is to type the three prices in before deciding the stake. If the combined figure in the breakdown is smaller than you expected, one of the legs is probably a short price doing very little, and it may be worth backing the other two as a double instead.

Each way trebles

An each way treble is a win treble and a place treble at the same stake. At £4 each way it costs £8.

With all three horses winning and 1/5 terms in every race, the win treble returns £49.40 and the place treble adds £8.13, for £57.52 in total. The place treble on its own pays if all three horses finish in the places, and that is where it helps. If the 10/11 horse had only placed, the win treble would lose, and the place treble would still return £8.13 from the £8 stake: a small profit on a day the main bet failed.

Look at the size of that place return, though. At 1/5 terms, short prices produce tiny place prices. The 10/11 horse’s place price is 2/11, less than a quarter of evens, and the place treble on these three horses is a little over 1/1 in total. Each way trebles pay their place side properly when the horses are bigger prices and the races pay 1/4, and much less when they aren’t.

Non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats

A non-runner shortens the chain. If the 10/11 horse is withdrawn, its leg counts as 1.0 and the bet becomes a £4 double on the other two. That returns £25.88. The treble hasn’t failed; it has turned into a smaller bet.

A Rule 4 deduction trims one leg. With a 20p deduction in the 15/8 horse’s race, that leg’s winnings are cut by a fifth, from 15/8 to 3/2. The treble then returns £42.95 instead of £49.40. Put the deduction on the horse you backed in that race.

A dead heat divides the stake at that point. If the 5/4 horse dead heated for first with one other, half the £4 goes forward, and the treble returns £24.70, exactly half the full figure. A three-way dead heat would leave a third.

These can stack. A treble with a non-runner in one leg and a Rule 4 in another is a double with one reduced price, and the calculator settles it that way without any extra steps.

Treble or Trixie?

The same three horses can go into a Trixie instead, which is the three doubles and the treble: four bets.

For the same £4, the Trixie stakes £1 on each of its four lines. With all three winning at the example prices, it returns £28.60, against the treble’s £49.40. That is the cost of cover: the Trixie spreads the money across combinations, so less of it is on the one that won. With one loser, the positions reverse. The treble returns nothing, and the Trixie still pays its surviving double.

Which is better depends on how confident you are in all three. A treble backs your judgement fully. A Trixie hedges it. The accumulator guide covers trebles and longer multiples in more depth, and the double calculator is the same tool one leg shorter.

Trebles on four horses or more

If you have four horses and want every treble among them, change the bet type to Trebles and set four selections. Four horses make four trebles, so £4 per bet costs £16.

Add a fourth horse at 3/1 to the example and let it lose. Only one of the four trebles avoids it, the original three, so the bet returns £49.40 from £16: a profit, but a much smaller one than the single treble made from £4. If the 3/1 horse had won as well, all four trebles would pay, and the total would be £309.44.

That is the logic of covering more combinations in one line. It protects you when one horse lets you down and costs more on the days when none of them do. Five horses make ten trebles, six make twenty, and at that point it is usually clearer to look at the full-cover bets, which add the doubles and bigger multiples as well.

Stake per bet or total

With a single win treble, per bet and total are the same number. They split apart as soon as each way is on, or when the bet type is Trebles on four or more horses.

Say you want to spend £12 on the example as an each way treble. Press Total and type £12. The calculator splits it into two £6 bets, one on the win treble and one on the place treble, and the three winners return £86.28. Type the same £12 as Per bet instead and you would be staking £24, because each way doubles it. Most betting slips are written with the stake per bet, so if you are copying a slip, leave the setting on Per bet.

One card or three meetings

A treble can be three races at one meeting or three races at three different courses on the same day. The bet is settled the same way. The practical difference is timing. On one card the treble is decided within an afternoon, and a wet morning that changes the going affects all three legs at once. Spread across meetings, the legs are more independent of each other, and the bet can take all day to settle.

Some people like to build a treble around the ground: three horses that all want soft going on a day of heavy rain. That is a view, and a reasonable one, but it also means the three results are tied together. If the rain stops, all three lose their edge at the same time.

Checking a settled treble

To check a settlement in the treble bet calculator, enter the prices you were actually paid at and the results as they were declared. The most common reason for a difference is a Rule 4 deduction in one of the three races, often from a withdrawal you didn’t see because it wasn’t your horse. The next is an SP bet, where the price is only known after the race: use the returned starting price, not a morning price.

If the settlement is still out, check each leg separately. Set two of the three to non-runner and the third to won, and you have that leg’s price on its own. Do it for each horse and the leg with the problem shows up quickly.