Horse racing has always been an exciting sport to bet on. With a plethora of events and betting markets, it’s only natural that some new bettors may wonder how to bet on horse racing.
You, too, can master horse race betting if you want to. In this guide, we’ll show you how betting on horse races works and walk you through the steps of placing your first horse racing bet. You’ll also learn how we created a rock-solid betting strategy so you can start off on the right foot. Just keep reading!
Although betting on horse races can be fun, you need the right betting strategy for your exploits to be rewarding. Here are the pros and cons of having one.
Did you know that horse racing is the second most popular betting sport in the United Kingdom (UK)? We were surprised to learn this because we had figured that rugby, golf, and tennis were more popular.
The fact is, horse racing has always been popular in the UK and has always been one of the top spectator sports in the UK. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before some smart folks decided it’d make a great sporting event for punting, and what started as private betting among a handful of mates has grown into a £4 billion industry today.
Thanks to the loads of online sportsbooks and innovations like live streams and statistics, you can have a great experience betting on horse races at the biggest horse racing events online. However, you’d need to understand how to bet on horse racing and have a good grasp of the right betting strategies. The first step in that direction would be to offer you a description of some of the buzzwords used in horse racing betting.
| Buzzword | What it means |
| Price | Refers to the odds a bookie offers on a particular horse |
| Starting Price | It’s the official odds that a horse started the race with |
| Odds-on | A strong favourite to win at its price |
| Long odds | Refers to a horse with a low chance of winning a race |
| Short odds | Refers to a horse with a high chance of winning a race |
| Distance | Horse races are displayed in miles, furlongs and yards |
| Fractional odds | It’s the traditional odd format used in the UK and looks like a fraction |
| Decimal odds | It’s an odds format that uses decimals instead of fractions |
| American odds | This odds format is based on $100 stakes and is described using plus or minus symbols |
| Fixed-odds | The meaning of fixed odds in horse betting is that you’ll be getting the same value of the odds when you place a bet |
To become great at horse race betting, you’d need to be familiar with the available horse race bets. That way, you’ll be able to figure out which bets work best for you, and then you can build a betting strategy. Here are the top horse racing betting markets.
With this bet, you’re betting on a horse to win the race. If it does, you win your bet! If it doesn’t, your bet is lost.
Here, you’ll be betting on a horse’s finish in a particular position, such as first, second, or third place.
You might not want to use other bets once each-way betting is explained to you. Here’s why. With this bet, you’ll wager on a horse to either win a race or take a specific position. It’s a two-way bet that gives you a chance of getting a part of your stake back.
Exotic bets offer high payouts but require a lot more skill and experience.
We’ll start with the “Forecast” or “Exacta” bet, which involves picking the first two horses in a race in the correct finishing order. Its variant is known as the “Quinella” bet, which involves choosing the horses you think will finish in first and second position. There’s also the “Trifecta” bet, which involves placing a bet on which horses will finish first, second, and third in the exact order.
With accumulator bets, you can combine multiple selections from different races into a single bet. From our experience, they are great for the Royal Ascot and Cheltenham Festival because of the volume of races at these events. Accumulator bets have high payouts, but you could lose your bet if one selection fails.
You can place ante-post bets on horse racing events way before the event takes place. It requires a lot of guts and calculation, but it’s easily one of our favourite bets for the Royal Ascot, Grand National, and Cheltenham Festival racing events.
It’s easy. All we had to do was sign up at a reputable online sportsbook. Here are the steps to take:
Each site has unique processes, but you’re generally required to follow these steps when exploring horse betting online.
Here’s the part of this guide where we’ll describe the things we did to get a horse racing betting strategy that works. Here goes:
We deposit a set amount of our funds for a set period and then wager 10% of our betting bank whenever we place a bet. Let’s say we deposit £100 each month into our betting bank. The first bet we place in that month amounts to £10 (10% of £100). Regardless of wins or losses, what we stake remains fixed at 10%. We’ve found it to be a great way to manage our bankroll.
After compiling our guide on betting exchanges , we’ve never looked back. Here’s how they work. Betting exchanges are marketplaces where you can set your odds and bet against other bettors. If your bet wins, you’ll pay a small commission to the exchange, but you won’t pay anything if your bet loses. At betting exchanges, we can have greater control over our odds, and that’s why we’re beginning to see them as a viable alternative to traditional bookies.
This strategy works like the each-way bet, and we only use it for horse races with lots of runners. Here’s what we mean. Let’s say we want to bet on a 12-horse race. We’ll use most of our stake (80%) on a horse to place and stake whatever’s leftover (20%) on it to win. The trick is to target races where most of the horses have good prices but aren’t favourites to win. That way, the potential for a return is high, and we’d still have a decent shot with the ‘win’ bet.
To keep the main points of this piece at the top of your mind, here are some takeaways we compiled just for you:
Horse racing is a fun and exciting sport, and it can get even more fun and rewarding when you know how to bet on it. Knowing how to bet on horse races isn’t rocket science, and it’s something that you can easily get good at in little or no time.
The trick is to understand the basics and then have a great betting strategy. We’ve described how horse racing betting works and the three things that we did to create a solid betting strategy. All that’s left for you to do is use our links to sign up at a reliable sportsbook and act on the information you just got.
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