Betting has its own vocabulary, and a lot of it is never explained to you. Some of it is technical, some of it is 200 years of racecourse habit, and some of it exists because it was quicker to shout than to write down.
This is a plain-English glossary of the terms you will actually meet on a betting slip. It is written by James Lovell, who has been taking bets on course for 25 years and whose family have been in the ring for three generations. Where a term is best explained by someone who deals with it for a living, his own words are quoted.
Bet types
Single
One selection, one bet. It wins if that selection wins.
Double
Two selections in one bet. Both must win, and the returns from the first roll onto the second.
Treble
Three selections in one bet, all of which must win.
Accumulator
Four or more selections in a single bet, with every one needing to win. Often shortened to acca. The returns compound, which is why the odds get big quickly and why they rarely land.
Each-way
Two bets in one: half your stake on the win, half on the selection placing. A £10 each-way bet costs £20. Place terms vary by race size, and the full each-way guide has the standard table.
Banker
The selection you are most confident in, used as the anchor of a multiple. If the banker loses, the whole bet usually goes with it.
Lucky 15
Four selections combined into 15 bets: 4 singles, 6 doubles, 4 trebles and a fourfold. One winner returns something. The multiples guide covers Yankees, Heinzes and the rest.
Forecast
Picking the first two home in the correct order. A reverse forecast covers both orders and costs two bets.
Tricast
Picking the first three home in the correct order.
Odds and prices
Fractional odds
The traditional British format, written 5/1 or 11/4. The first number is what you win, the second is what you stake. 5/1 returns £5 profit for every £1 staked, plus your stake back.
Decimal odds
The same price expressed as a single number, including your stake. 5/1 is 6.0. Multiply your stake by the decimal to get the total return.
Odds-against
Any price bigger than evens, where you win more than you stake. 5/1 is odds-against.
Odds-on
Any price shorter than evens, where you stake more than you stand to win. 1/2 is odds-on.
Evens
A price of 1/1, or 2.0 in decimal. You win exactly what you stake.
Implied probability
What a price says about the chance of something happening. For fractional odds A/B the sum is B divided by (A+B). So 3/1 implies 25%.
Starting price (SP)
The official price returned at the off, set from the prices available on course. It is the default if you take a bet without asking for a price.
Board price
The price a bookmaker is showing at the moment you take it, as opposed to the starting price. Taking a board price fixes your odds there and then.
Ante-post
A bet placed well before the event, often months out. The prices are bigger because more can go wrong, and traditionally your stake is lost if your selection does not run.
Best Odds Guaranteed
If you take a board price and the starting price is bigger, you get paid at the bigger one. DragonBet applies it automatically on UK and Irish horse racing. Full explanation here.
Price boost
A bookmaker shortening its own margin to push a price out beyond the market. Lovell describes boosting River Tiber to 2/1 on the morning of a Royal Ascot race.
Steamer
A selection whose price shortens sharply because money is arriving for it.
Drifter
A selection whose price gets bigger as the market pushes it out. Lovell on Coltrane at the 2023 Gold Cup: pushed “out to 4/1 in the morning”.
Overround
The bookmaker’s margin, and the reason a book makes money. Add up the implied probabilities of every runner and a fair book totals 100%. Anything above that is the overround.
Making a book
Pricing every runner so the total take covers whatever wins. Lovell’s picture of the traditional version is hard to improve on: “a fellah in a field, with a book and a sharp pencil and nothing else but his wits”.
Racing terms
Handicap
A race where horses carry different weights according to their official rating, so the better horses carry more. The aim is a close finish.
The going
The state of the ground, running from hard through good to heavy. It changes how a race is run and which horses are suited.
Nap
A tipster’s strongest selection of the day.
Non-runner
A horse withdrawn before the race. Bets on it are normally void and the stake returned.
Rule 4
A deduction applied to winnings when a horse is withdrawn late and there is no time to re-form the market. The shorter the withdrawn horse’s price, the bigger the deduction, because its absence helps everything else. Deduction scales are published by the bookmaker, so check the current terms.
Dead heat
Two or more selections tied for a position. The stake is divided by the number tied, then paid at full odds, so a two-way dead heat pays half.
Photo finish
A finish too close to call by eye, settled on the photograph.
Point-to-point
Amateur jump racing, often run in a farmer’s field. Lovell on Bonvilston: “you’d be surprised at the money that changes hands in this particular farmer’s field”.
Settlement
Void bet
A bet that stands as neither a win nor a loss, with the stake returned. Non-runners and abandoned events are the usual causes.
Cash out
Settling a bet before the event finishes, for a figure the bookmaker offers based on how it currently stands. You take certainty and give up some value.
Liability
What a bookmaker stands to pay out if a particular result lands. Lovell on Royal Ascot 2023: “Jumbly was a really big liability (over 10K)”.
Hedging
Laying off part of a risk elsewhere to cap the damage. On the £2,500 MMA double that cost DragonBet nearly £25,000, Lovell notes they “had ample time to hedge the bet should we have wanted to”.
Stake
The money you put on. Returns are stake plus profit; profit is the winnings on their own.
In the ring
Racecourse slang is a separate language again, and mostly a survival of the tic-tac men who relayed prices across the ring by hand. A monkey is 500, a pony is 25, a carpet is 3 or 300. Odds get reversed into back slang, so a rouf is 4 and neves to rouf is 7/4.
Lovell wrote the full guide to it, including where the terms came from and what the tic-tac hand signals meant: Choc Ices and Stakes, the language of the betting ring. Choc ices, for the record, means prices.
A note on the numbers here. Rule 4 deduction scales and each-way place terms both vary, and they change. The examples above show how the mechanisms work rather than acting as a current price list, so check the live terms before you bet.
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Keep reading
Betting explained: your questions answered is the hub for the longer guides, covering each-way betting, multiples and Best Odds Guaranteed in detail.
