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Odds play a very important role in horse race betting. It is not only useful for the punters but for the bookmakers as well.
If you are a bookmaker odds will help you to make a profit from the punters. The odds are calculated in by taking many factors into consideration.
If a particular horse is favoured and has higher chances of winning, the odds will be low. It will help the bookmaker to demand more money and pay less profit.
Similar if a horse is not likely to win, they will place higher odds on it so that punters can easily fall into the trap of more profit and lose their wagered money.
Similarly, it is very useful for the punters as well. If you are a punter, you can check the odds to know your expected profit and stake. You will clearly know the risk of betting on a horse with higher odds.
The odds are not the same for all the horses. It differs on the basis of track type, horse as well as time. In live horse race betting, the live odds keep in changing.
Traditional Horse Racing Odds:
It is the traditional format of shoeing odds. It is mostly given as 7-1, where 7 is the profit you will earn by placing a bet of $1. It is profit – stake. This is the traditional way of showing odds.
Earlier this format was only used in betting. Most of the bookmakers still follow this approach. It is very easy to understand.
Here is an example of traditional odds. If the odds on a horse are 5-1 and you place a bet of $5, you will get $25 profit. You will get a total $31 in return.
Here is the odds are high, so the profit is more, but sometimes the odds are really low like 1-5. In this case, if you use $10 to bet, you will get $2 profit only. The total return will be $12. The profit will be less if the odds are low.
Modern Method of Settling Bets:
Nowadays, people mostly use Pari-mutuel pool. It has become a common way to check the return or payout.
This method came from France. Here the standard wager is $2. Here the types of bets are divided into different pools.
The money which goes into the pool is kept aside to reinvest in the sport. Apart from that, all the money is kept in the pool.
This money is divided as per the total number of bets on each horse. So if the horse is more popular, the odds will be low.
However, in some cases, you might get in luck. If most of the people don’t bet their money on the popular horse, the odds will be more. So you can make good money from betting on the horse.
Although the standard wager is $2, people bet with higher amounts. So to calculate the payoff, you can multiply it by the stake and after than divide it by 2.
Example, if the payout is $8 and you wager $10, you will get 80/2 = $40.
This is the difference between traditional horse racing odds and modern method of calculating the payouts.
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