Horse Racing is the best-known example of pool betting - it was also known as parimutuel (French for “mutual betting”). Pool betting operates by adding the total of all money that has been bet on a specific race/event and paying out winners based off that pool.
The Tote return is a function of prizes won from prize pool rather than stake, in contrast, fixed-odds betting guarantees a chance of winning a predefined amount of money.
The Tote derives its title from Totalisator, an early form of mechanical (computing) device that was inventively created around the beginning of the 20th Century in order to calculate and sum the number and values of bets on each respective horse/race via sophisticated mechanics.
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How do odds work on the Tote?
The Tote operates differently than regular, fixed-odds betting, which is offered by most bookmakers whether they are on-course, in shops or online, in that it produces its odds in a different manner.
There is a general misconception that betting odds are a reflection of the likelihood that a certain outcome will happen. This is partly why the term odds is sometimes also referred to as price; even though the odds offered should reflect in part the probability of a certain outcome occurring, they actually don't convey accurate or true odds. Bet the Tote is not accurately representative of what your bet is worth; it only represents the amount you will be paid if you win, and it merely reflects the amount you will have to wager to recover a fixed amount of money if your wager wins.
Bookmakers generate odds for their customers by using their own criteria for determining the profit they want to make on a race as well as betting against their customers individually as a bookie. Kenyan bookmakers use the odds offered to bettors as part of their calculations to arrive at an estimate of what their profits will be from each race. Conversely, the Tote uses its commission or taxes (if a government owned operator) from the total amount collected in the pool to make its profit instead of using the amount wagered on winning outcomes as a method to determine how and when to pay winnings for bets placed.
Placing a bet on the Tote
Because bets affect the total pot, the odds are always changing when someone places a bet similar to how they change on a betting exchange or financial market. Betting is not allowed once the race begins. After the race finishes, all the people who backed the correct horse get their share of the tote.
In most instances, the Tote payout odds on horses who finish in front of one another, can be quite close to fixed odds, as they are both based on the same amount of money going into each market. However, due to the fewer number of bets placed on the horse who finished towards the end of the field; generally speaking the odds will tend to be longer on less-favored horses.
To summarize one of the key pieces of advice for Tote players; The more different your horse is from other horse winners or placed horses, the better your chance of winning an over-the-odds pay-out.
Betting on singles vs multiples on the Tote
As we have seen, when betting with fixed-odds bookmakers, there are prices to indicate the amount you will be paid for every pound bet. The same is true for placing single bets on the Tote, whether that be a ToteWin or a TotePlace bet, with the odds given indicating the potential pay-out, or ‘dividend’ for every pound wagered on each horse. Whilst odds can and, in all likelihood, will change right up to the beginning of the race, they can at least give an approximation of what price a horse is likely to go off at, and how much you stand to win.
In this sense, we can in practice think of odds for Tote singles working the same way as they do for regular bookmakers or exchanges. Bear in mind though that your bet will affect both the size of the overall pool and the proportion staked on your selection – so the bigger your stake, the more significantly it is likely to reduce the dividend.
Betting on multiples however – or ‘exotics’ as they are known on the Tote – works in a different way to how it works with fixed-odds bookmakers. To start with, stakes are fixed, just like a lottery ticket would be, and there is a set number and selection of races you can cover in each, to ensure the prize pool can be fairly split between punters betting on the same thing.
Because the pay-out is decided not by your stake, but by the size of the prize pool and the number of winning ‘tickets’, it is in practice impossible to know how much you stand to win in advance. For this reason there is zero point in backing the same line more than once, to up your stake – if you lose you will lose more, and if you win you will just be winning back the extra money you spent!
How does each-way betting work on the Tote?
There is no each-way betting per se on the Tote – only to win or to place. You can still create an equivalent bet if you like, by placing a win, or ‘Totewin’, bet on a horse, and a place, or ‘Toteplace’ bet on the same animal to the same stake. Your return wouldn’t be worked out in the same way it would be betting each way – but that can be to your advantage. Here’s why.
With an each-way bet, two identical stakes are placed: the first half is wagered on your horse to win, the second half is wagered on your horse to place (place terms vary according to the number of horses in a race, the type of race, and further bookmaker offers – you can find out more about place terms here).
The downside of this is that if your horse does finish placed but does not win, you are only refunded the ‘place’ half of your stake, and only paid out on the ‘place’ half of your bet. This means you will still make a net loss if those winnings amount to less than you lost on the ‘win’ half.
With the Tote, there is a separate ‘to place’, or ‘Toteplace’, market on which you can back a horse to finish in the top positions. Unlike with place markets or each-way terms you would find with a regular, fixed-odds bookmaker, this place market is not a derivative of – or directly calculated from – the win market.