Bet Calculator

Settling a bet means working out what a finished slip actually paid. You need three things: the stake, the odds you took, and how each selection finished. Everything else is arithmetic, and on a full-cover multiple there is a lot of it.

Pick your bet type, enter the stake, then set the odds for each selection and mark it won, placed, lost or void. The totals update as you type. The table underneath breaks the bet into its parts, so on a Lucky 15 you can see exactly what the singles paid against the doubles, the trebles and the four-fold.

Stake per bet is the number that catches people out. A Lucky 15 at 1 unit is not a 1 unit bet, it is fifteen separate bets and costs 15 units. The calculator labels the field for whichever type you have selected, so an accumulator asks for your total stake and a Lucky 15 asks for the stake on each line.

If the figure here does not match your bookmaker, the difference is almost always a bonus rule, a Rule 4 deduction or a place term rather than the maths. Check those three before assuming the slip is wrong.

Most of the bet types here come from British and Irish horse racing, which is where full-cover multiples are the everyday currency. A Lucky 15 across four horses at an afternoon meeting is the classic example, and a Yankee, Patent or Trixie is the same idea with a different shape.

Racing brings two complications that football rarely does. Horses get withdrawn, and prices get cut when they are. Mark a withdrawn horse as void and it settles at odds of 1.00: the leg returns its stake and the rest of the bet stands, so a Lucky 15 with one non-runner still pays on the remaining three selections.

The second is Rule 4. When a horse comes out late, the bookmaker takes a deduction from winnings on the remaining runners, scaled to the price of the one that was withdrawn. This calculator settles the bet before deductions. Our Rule 4 calculator applies the Tattersalls scale if you need the number after the deduction.

Traditional ready reckoners printed a grid of stakes against prices so you could look up a return without doing the sum. This does the same job, except it handles each-way terms, non-runners and every full-cover multiple rather than just win singles.

An each-way bet is two bets of equal size. One backs the selection to win, the other backs it to finish inside the paid places. A 10 unit each-way bet costs 20 units.

The place part pays at a fraction of the win odds. A quarter of the odds and a fifth of the odds are the common terms, and the number of paid places depends on the field size and the race type. Turn on each-way, pick your fraction, and the calculator prices both legs.

Once each-way is on, a third result appears alongside won and lost: placed. Use it when a selection finished inside the places without winning, and only the place leg pays. A winner takes both legs, because a horse that wins has also placed.

Multiples can be backed each-way as well. An each-way Lucky 15 is thirty bets rather than fifteen, and the calculator settles both halves separately before adding them.

A void selection is one that never ran, or a market that was settled as a no-action. It does not lose the bet. It prices at 1.00, returns its own stake, and the bet around it shrinks by one leg.

This matters most on accumulators and full-cover multiples. An accumulator with a void leg becomes an accumulator with one fewer leg rather than a loser. A Yankee with a non-runner settles as a Patent plus a Trixie, and still costs the same 11 units. Mark the selection void and the calculator handles the reduction for you.

Dead heats work differently and are not handled here. When runners share a placing, the stake on that selection is divided by the number of runners in the dead heat and the remainder is lost. Our dead heat calculator covers that case.

Enter odds in whichever format your bookmaker shows. Fractional is standard in the UK and Ireland, so 5/2 means you win five for every two staked and returns 3.5 times the stake in total. Decimal is the European convention and already includes the stake, so 3.50 is the same price. American odds run from a baseline of 100, so +150 wins 150 on a 100 stake and -200 needs 200 staked to win 100.

Switch format at the top of the calculator and everything reprices. You can mix a slip in your head and enter it in one format, but you cannot mix formats within a single bet, so convert first if your selections came from different books.