Horse Racing Tips: The Ultimate Win Bet Guide

What is a win bet?

A win bet is probably one of the easier bets for first-time punters to wrap their heads around. You simply pick the horse that you think will win the race, if your selection places first then you’re a winner! It’s all rather simple.

How to interpret the odds

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of horse racing betting, it’s important that you get to grips with how to read odds. Here at Hollywoodbets, you can read odds on our website as fractional or decimal. Each is explained below within the same scenario.

In our scenario, we are going to take DO IT AGAIN (the name of our chosen horse) to win the Hollywoodbets Durban July. In this example, we’ll say that DO IT AGAIN’s odds to win the race are 8/1 (this is the fractional representation of the odds). This simply means that for every R1 you stake on DO IT AGAIN to win the race, you could potentially win R8 back. So if you stake R10 on the horse, you will bag R80 if it wins.

The other way that these odds can be represented is in decimal form. 8/1 represented in decimal form is simply 8.0. The decimal representation simply shows you how much you’re likely to win for every R1 you stake on your selection.

Fixed odds vs Starting price

With Hollywoodbets, you can choose whether you want to take a bet on fixed odds or the starting price. The biggest benefit of fixed-odds betting is that you can immediately calculate your potential winnings based on the price of the horse.

Starting price means exactly that – you will get the price of the horse at the jump of the race. So if you take a starting price win bet on DO IT AGAIN a week before the Hollywoodbets Durban July when the fixed odds price of the horse is 8/1, you don’t really know for sure what sort of price you’ll get at the jump of the race. His price could shorten to 5/1 or drift out to 10/1. 

Irish Objection

An Irish objection is designed to assist punters. If the horse that you backed wins, and then has that victory overturned on a race objection, we will pay you back your initial stake. This is valid for all races throughout the world.

Dead Heat

A dead heat is another word for a tie. This is usually called when horses cannot be separated by the photograph at the finish. Although horses run over long distances you will be surprised at how many times this actually occurs. The most famous dead heat of the 21^st century in South Africa came in 2008 Hollywoodbets Durban July when Pocket Power dead-heated with Dance’s Daughter.

When your horse dead heats the odds get halved. For example, if your horse that you have dead heats and you backed at it at 4/1 your odds will now be 2/1.

Taking a win bet on the tote

When taking a win bet on the tote you will be betting into a the tote pools. Here the dividend will determine the amount that is being displayed on the totaliser board. For example, if the horse pays R3.80 and you back it with R100, you will win R280 + your R100 stake back – this means that you will make a profit of R280.

Tote Bet

When switching over to the tote with the button provided on the Hollywoodbets website and mobisite, you now can take a bet where the payout is limited to the rules stipulated by the TabGold website.

Difference between Open Bet and Tote Bet

An Open Bet is a tote/TAB type bet taken with a bookmaker. The bookmaker – in this case, Hollywoodbets – lays the bet, and pays the dividend as declared by the tote on the winning combinations.

No fixed odds are agreed at the time the bet is placed. The winnings and therefore the payout is determined after the outcome of the event on which the open bet was struck becomes known, with reference to the dividends generated by the totalizator.

Tote betting works by a player betting into a cumulative pool that also includes other punters. The payout is then shared among all of the winning players – this is referred to as a dividend. Remember that the total amount that gets paid out is determined by the number of people who won the pot.