Royal Ascot Betting: Group 1s, Handicaps and Why the Draw Matters

Royal Ascot is five days of Flat racing in June, from Tuesday to Saturday, at Ascot Racecourse in Berkshire. It has eight Group 1 races, the highest level of Flat racing, and some of the biggest handicap fields of the whole season. For Royal Ascot betting, that combination makes the week a mix of the most predictable races and some of the least.

The Group 1 races bring together the best horses from Britain, Ireland and further afield. The handicaps bring together dozens of good horses at different weights, often on a straight course where the draw can shape the result. The two kinds of race need very different approaches, and the rest of this page takes them in turn.

How the week is laid out

The five days mix Group races, handicaps and races for two-year-olds. The eight Group 1 races are spread across the week and range from the King Charles III Stakes over five furlongs to the Gold Cup over two and a half miles.

The Tuesday opens with several of them, including the Queen Anne Stakes, the King Charles III Stakes and the St James’s Palace Stakes. The Wednesday has the Prince of Wales’s Stakes. The Thursday is Gold Cup day, also known as Ladies’ Day. The Friday has two Group 1s, the Coronation Stakes and the Commonwealth Cup, and the Saturday closes with the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes over six furlongs.

Around them sit the big handicaps: the Royal Hunt Cup and the Britannia Stakes over a mile, the Buckingham Palace Stakes over seven furlongs and the Wokingham Stakes over six. Those are the races where most of the week’s each way betting happens.

Royal Ascot betting on the Group 1 races

Group 1 races are not handicaps. The horses carry set weights, with allowances only for age and sex, so the best horse on the day is expected to win. That makes them the most predictable races of the week on paper, and it shows in the prices: a top-class horse can start at a short price, sometimes odds-on.

The fields in Group 1 races are often smaller than in the handicaps. That affects each way. A field of eight or more in a non-handicap pays three places at a fifth of the odds, and five to seven runners pay two places at a quarter. With a short-priced favourite, the place price on the other fancied horses is small. £5 each way at 7/2 on a horse that finishes placed in a race paying a fifth returns £8.50 from a £10 stake. On a well-fancied horse in a small Group 1 field, a win bet is usually the cleaner choice.

The other point about the top races is that they bring horses together from different countries and different form lines. A horse that has been winning in France or Ireland may never have met the British horses in the race. That is part of the fascination of the week, and it is also a reason to read the form carefully rather than rely on reputation alone.

The big handicaps

The Royal Ascot handicaps are among the hardest betting races of the Flat season. They attract large fields of well-handicapped horses, many of them prepared specifically for these races, and the margins between them are small.

For each way, that is an advantage. A handicap with 16 or more runners pays four places at a quarter of the odds under the standard terms, and many firms offer extra places on the big Royal Ascot handicaps. The offers vary by firm and by race. A placed finish at a big price in a race paying a quarter of the odds is worth having: £4 each way at 16/1 on a horse that finishes fourth returns £20 from £8.

It is also a reason for caution. A field of 20 or more good horses running over a straight six furlongs or a mile is genuinely hard to call. The prices are big because the race is difficult, not because the bookmakers are being generous. Covering a handicap with one or two each way bets you have real reasons for is a more sensible approach than spreading money across half the field.

What an extra place is worth in a big handicap

Extra places are where Royal Ascot betting on the handicaps can change most from firm to firm, so it is worth seeing what one is worth in money.

Take the same £4 each way at 16/1, in a handicap with more than 16 runners, paying a quarter of the odds. If the horse finishes fourth, it is placed on standard terms and returns £20 from £8. If it finishes fifth, it is unplaced on standard terms and returns nothing. With a firm paying five places, that fifth place is worth the same £20.

In a race of 25 or 30 runners, fifth is not much worse than fourth as a performance, and on a straight course where the field splits, a horse can be first or second in its own group and still finish outside the first four overall. That is why extra places are valued so highly in these races. The terms at the time you strike the bet are the ones that count, and they can differ between the ante-post market and the day.

Why the draw matters at Royal Ascot

On the Flat, horses start from stalls, and the stall a horse is drawn in can matter. At Royal Ascot it matters most in the big handicaps on the straight course, where more than 20 runners can line up across the width of the track.

In those races, the field often splits into two or more groups racing on different parts of the course, sometimes one along each rail. If the ground on one side is faster, or the pace is stronger in one group, the horses drawn on that side have an advantage that has nothing to do with their ability. The same horse could win from one stall and finish midfield from another.

Which side is favoured is not fixed. It can change with the ground, the weather, the watering of the course and the way the race is run, and it can change from one year to the next or even during the week. Watching the earlier races on the straight course during the meeting is one way to form a view, but it is a view, not a certainty. The draw is published when the final field is declared, before the day of the race, so it can be checked before betting.

For bets placed before the draw is known, such as ante-post bets on the handicaps, the draw is an extra unknown. A horse backed weeks in advance can end up drawn on the wrong side, which is one of the risks built into an ante-post price.

Ante-post and betting on the day

The Group 1 races and the big handicaps have ante-post markets well before the meeting. As at the jumps festivals, a standard ante-post bet is lost if the horse doesn’t run, and horses can be entered for more than one race during the week. Some firms offer non-runner no bet on selected markets, which refunds the stake if the horse doesn’t take part. The terms vary.

On the day, the fields and the draw are known, and many firms offer best odds guaranteed. For the handicaps in particular, waiting until the draw is published removes one of the biggest unknowns. Ante-post betting explains the trade-off in more detail.

Non-runners during the week

Back a horse on the morning of the race and see it taken out, and your stake is simply returned. The cost falls on everyone else: when a runner comes out too late for the market to re-form, fixed-price winners lose a slice of their winnings to Rule 4, and the shorter the price of the horse that came out, the bigger the slice. Checking the final declarations on the morning of the race tells you which horses are actually running, which matters more in a 25-runner handicap than anywhere else, because each withdrawal can change the shape of the race and the side of the course the pace is on. Rule 4 explained has the full table.

Two-year-old races and the rest of the card

The meeting also has races for two-year-olds, horses in their first season of racing. They have very little form, often only one or two runs, and some have travelled from abroad. That makes them hard to assess, and prices in these races can move a lot on the day as the market forms a view.

For Royal Ascot betting, the two-year-old races are best approached with small stakes and a lot of humility. A horse that looked impressive winning a small race in May may be facing much stronger opposition here.

Setting a budget for the week

Five days of racing, with several races a day, is a lot of betting opportunity. As with any festival, the sensible approach is to decide a total for the week before it starts and divide it by the races you actually have an opinion on, not by the number of races on the card.

It is also worth thinking about which kind of race suits you. If you like to back a horse you are confident in, the Group 1s may suit you better. If you prefer each way at bigger prices, the handicaps are the natural home. If you want a small stake to last a whole afternoon, a Royal Ascot Placepot covers six races, though the big-field handicaps make it a hard one to get through. Trying to bet on every race, in both styles, is the fastest way through a budget. The bet calculator shows what any bet costs and what it would return, with each way terms set for each race.