Put £20 on a 7/2 shot into a single calculator and it tells you £90 comes back before you’ve finished reaching for a pen. That’s all a single calculator is for: a stake, a price, a return. The single bet calculator above is set to exactly that, and it’s free to use as often as you like.
It gets more useful when the bet isn’t quite so simple. Each way at 1/4 odds, a 15p Rule 4 after a late withdrawal, a dead heat for first. Those are the ones people get wrong.
How the single bet calculator settles it
For a winner, the return is stake × decimal odds. 7/2 is 4.5 in decimal, so £20 × 4.5 = £90, of which £70 is profit. If you’d rather see fractions, 7/2 means you win £7 for every £2 staked, plus your stake back.
Mark the selection as lost and you get nothing. Mark it void and you get your stake back, which is how bookies settle non-runners and abandoned matches.
Each way singles
Tick each way and the calculator splits it into two bets of the same size: one to win, one to place. £10 each way costs £20. Say your horse is 8/1, the terms are 1/4 odds, and it finishes second. The win part loses. The place part pays at 2/1, so £30 comes back. Not a profit on £20, but £10 lost instead of £20.
That’s the thing about each way at short prices. If the place odds work out under evens, a placed horse still loses you money overall. Each way earns its keep on bigger prices in bigger fields.
Rule 4 and dead heats on a single
Open the extra options to add them. Rule 4 is a deduction from winnings when a runner is withdrawn late: £20 on a 7/2 winner with 15p in the pound taken off pays £79.50 instead of £90. Your stake is never touched.
A dead heat halves the stake (or splits it three ways for a triple dead heat), then pays at full odds. So £20 at 7/2 dead heating for first returns £45.
Backing more than one selection? A double links two of them, and the single double treble calculator compares them side by side. The odds converter turns any price into the chance it implies.
One bet at a time is still a bet. Stake what you’re happy to lose. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.