Types of Horse Racing Bets in the UK, Explained from Single to Goliath

Every horse racing bet in Britain is built from a few simple parts: which horse, which outcome, and how many races are joined together. Have horse racing bets explained in those terms and the rest follows. Once those three are clear, the long list of names on a betting slip stops looking like a foreign language. A Heinz is not a special bet with special rules. It is six horses, backed in every possible combination.

This page sorts the types of horse bets UK bookmakers and the tote take into five groups, from the simplest to the most complicated, and says what each one is for. The pages linked from here go through each of the types of horse racing bets in detail, with worked examples at real stakes.

Nothing here is exotic. These are the types of horse racing bets you will find on every betting shop wall and every app, with the same names and the same rules across British bookmakers.

Single bets in the UK: win, place and each way

A win single is the plain bet: one horse, one race, paid at the price if it wins. It is the bet every other one is built from.

A place single pays if the horse finishes in the paying places. Fixed-odds bookmakers mostly sell the place as half of an each way bet, which is a win single and a place single of the same stake placed together. The place half is paid at a fraction of the win price, usually a quarter or a fifth, and the number of places depends on the size of the field. Each way is the most useful single bet to understand properly, because it is the one that is easiest to misjudge. The each way bet guide covers the terms, the worked examples and the cases where it isn’t worth the extra stake.

A single is also the cheapest bet to be wrong with. It has one bookmaker’s margin in it, not several multiplied together, and you know exactly what it will pay.

Forecasts and tricasts: the finishing order

A straight forecast asks for the first two in a race, in the correct order. A reverse forecast backs both orders, so it is two bets. A combination forecast takes three or more horses and backs every order of every pair: three horses make six bets, four horses make twelve.

A tricast is the same idea for the first three, in order. A combination tricast on three horses is six bets, and on four horses it is 24.

With a bookmaker, forecasts and tricasts on racing are usually settled on a computer-calculated dividend, printed in the results as the CSF (computer straight forecast) and the CT (computer tricast). The tote runs its own versions as pools: the exacta for the first two in order and the trifecta for the first three.

These are bets on a single race with a lot of runners, where you have a view on more than the winner. They pay well because they are hard. A combination tricast on four horses is 24 lines, which adds up fast.

Multiples: doubles, trebles and accumulators

A multiple joins horses in different races so that the winnings from one become the stake on the next. A double is two horses, a treble three, and an accumulator four or more. Every horse must win. One loser and the whole bet is gone.

The price of a multiple is the prices multiplied, which is why they look so tempting. £5 on a double at 2/1 and 3/1 is £5 × 3 × 4 = £60 back. Add a third horse at 2/1 and the treble returns £180. The price of an accumulator is real, and so is the chance it reflects: on the market’s own figures, each horse you add makes the bet less likely to win by about as much as the price goes up, and the bookmaker’s margin is multiplied along with the odds.

A non-runner doesn’t kill a multiple. That leg is dropped, and the bet carries on as a smaller one. The accumulator guide covers doubles, trebles and longer accumulators in more depth.

Full-cover bets: from a Trixie to a Goliath

A full-cover bet takes a number of horses and backs every multiple they can make, at the same stake per line. Some also include the singles. They exist to solve the obvious problem with an accumulator: one loser wipes it out.

The pattern is simple once you see it. The bets without singles need at least two winners to pay anything. The “Lucky” bets add a single on each horse, so one winner gets something back. And each extra horse roughly doubles the number of bets, which is why a Goliath at £1 a line costs £247.

The four-horse bets are where most people start. The Lucky 15 is four singles, six doubles, four trebles and a four-fold. The Yankee is the same without the singles. On three horses, the Trixie and Patent play the same roles. For five or more horses, the Heinz page covers the Canadian, Heinz, Super Heinz, Goliath and the Lucky 31 and 63.

Tote bets: the Placepot and the pools

Everything above can be placed at fixed odds. Tote bets work differently. Stakes go into a pool, a deduction comes off, and the rest is shared among the winning tickets, so what a bet pays is only known after the race.

The best-known pool bet in the UK is the Placepot: a placed horse in each of the first six races at a meeting. The Quadpot is the same over races three to six, and the Jackpot asks for six winners. There are also win and place pools on every race, and the exacta and trifecta on the finishing order.

Tote bets suit people who want a long interest in a meeting for a small stake. They are harder to judge in advance, because the dividend depends on what everyone else backed, not just on whether your horse runs well.

The types of horse racing bets compared on one budget

Names and bet counts only go so far. The clearest way to compare the types of horse racing bets is to spend the same money on each and run the same result through them.

Take four horses at 2/1, 3/1, 4/1 and 5/1, and a day on which the 2/1 and 3/1 horses win and the other two lose. The budget is £10 in total, whatever the bet.

A £10 win single on the 2/1 horse returns £30. A £10 double on the two winners returns £120. Those are the best results on the list, and they only happen if you picked exactly the right horses. A Trixie on the first three, at £2.50 a line, returns £30 from its one winning double. A Patent on the same three, at about £1.43 a line, returns £27.14. On all four, a Yankee at about 91p a line returns £10.91, and a Lucky 15 at about 67p a line returns £12.67.

The pattern is the whole argument. The more combinations a bet covers, the less money sits on the one that comes in. Full cover protects you from being wrong about which horses win. It doesn’t make being right pay more. If you trust your judgement on two horses, the double pays for it. If you don’t, the full-cover bets are there, at a price.

The same comparison holds for the types of horse bets UK tote pools offer. A Placepot covering several horses per race is more likely to get through than a single line, and pays proportionally less per pound when it does.

Horse racing bets explained by what you want to happen

The easiest way to choose among all these bets is to start from what you think will happen.

If you like one horse to win, a win single is the honest bet. If you like it to run well at a big price in a big field, each way. If you think you know the first two, a forecast. If you have two or three horses in different races and you are confident in all of them, a double or treble. If you like three or four but expect at least one to let you down, a Patent or Lucky 15, depending on whether you want one winner to pay. If you want six races of interest for a few pounds, the Placepot.

Two cautions apply to all of them. The more lines a bet has, the more times the bookmaker’s margin is paid, so a big full-cover bet is an expensive way to back horses you only half fancy. And any bet is easier to judge once you have seen what it returns on an ordinary day, not just on the day everything wins.

One more point about horse racing bets explained this way: you can mix them. Plenty of slips carry a win single on the horse you like most and a small Patent or Lucky 15 on the day’s other fancies. There is no rule that a day’s betting has to be one bet type, and splitting the stake between a single you believe in and a cheap full-cover bet is a sensible way to have both.

Whichever you choose, the bet calculator settles every fixed-odds bet on this page, with each way, non-runners, Rule 4 and dead heats, so you can see the cost and the likely return before you place it. That is the part of horse racing bets explained least often, and it is the part that matters most to what comes back.