You like three horses in a race and can’t split them. Back all three with the same stake and the 3/1 shot pays a lot less than the 8/1. Dutching fixes that. The dutching calculator above splits your money so that whichever of them wins, you collect the same amount.
£50 across 3/1, 5/1 and 8/1 goes £23.68, £15.79 and £10.53. Any of the three wins and you get back £94.74, so £44.74 profit. If something else wins, you lose the £50. In effect you’ve made your own price of about 9/10 that “one of my three” wins.
How the dutching calculator splits your stake
Each price has an implied chance: 3/1 is 25%, 5/1 is 16.7%, 8/1 is 11.1%. Add them up and you get 52.8%. That’s the chance the bookie gives your group of three. Each horse then gets a share of your stake in proportion to its own chance:
Stake on a selection = total stake × (1 ÷ its odds) ÷ (sum of 1 ÷ odds) Return if any wins = total stake ÷ (sum of 1 ÷ odds)
The shorter the price, the more of your money goes on it, because it has to pay back the same as the longer ones.
When dutching makes sense
Dutching is a way of turning an opinion into one bet. “I think it’s between these three” is a real view, and it’s often a better one than picking the single most likely winner. Where it goes wrong is when you keep adding names. Every selection lowers the combined odds, and once your picks add up to 100% or more you’ve backed so much of the field that a winner can’t pay you back. The calculator will tell you when you’ve reached that point.
It works for anything with more than two outcomes, not just racing. Correct scores, first goalscorer, golf, the winner of a reality show. Same maths.
Odds move, stakes move
Dutching depends on the prices you put in. If one of them shortens before you get all the bets on, the split is off and the returns won’t match. Place the shortest one first, since that’s usually the one that moves, and recheck the others before you place them.
Bookies round stakes too. Most will take pence, but if you round each stake to the nearest pound the returns will differ by a little. That’s fine.
Want the opposite, protecting a bet you’ve already placed? The hedge calculator does that. For laying a horse instead of backing the others, try the lay calculator.
Covering more runners doesn’t make you more likely to profit. It just changes the shape of the bet. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.