- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
With £50,000 in the win pool, an 18% deduction and £4,000 riding on the winner, the tote calculator above says the dividend is £10.25 for every £1. That’s the whole idea of pool betting: you’re not taking a price from a bookie, you’re splitting a pot with everyone else who backed the same horse. Change the numbers in this free calculator and the dividend, your return and the fractional equivalent follow.
How the tote calculator works out a dividend
Three steps, every time:
- All the win bets go into one pool: £50,000.
- The operator takes its deduction first: 18% leaves £41,000.
- That £41,000 is shared between the winning tickets: £41,000 ÷ £4,000 = £10.25 per £1.
A £5 bet gets £51.25 back. As fractional odds that’s a touch over 9/1. The calculator rounds it to the nearest bookmaker price so you can compare it with the board.
Tote odds vs starting price
Fixed odds and pool odds come from different crowds. Pool money tends to pile onto the names everyone knows, so favourites often pay a bit less than their SP and outsiders a bit more. If the horse above went off at 8/1 (9.0 decimal), the tote’s 10.25 beats it by about 14%. Open the extra option and type the SP to see the gap.
| Money on the winner | Dividend per £1 | £5 returns |
|---|---|---|
| £20,000 (a hot favourite) | £2.05 | £10.25 |
| £4,000 | £10.25 | £51.25 |
| £800 (an outsider) | £51.25 | £256.25 |
All three rows use the same £50,000 pool and 18% deduction.
How does tote betting work?
Tote betting is pool betting. Every stake on a horse goes into one pot, the operator takes its percentage off the top, and the rest is divided between the tickets on the winner. If £10,000 is bet to win, £1,500 is deducted and £1,000 of it is on your horse, each £1 ticket gets £8.50 back. You don’t know the dividend until the race is over, which is the main difference from fixed odds.
Place pools and the bigger tote bets
A place pool works the same way, except the net pool is split into equal parts for each placed horse first, then shared out among the tickets on each one. The exotic pools build on the same idea with harder targets: the CasinoCalcs Placepot calculator covers six races (the Quadpot is the same idea on races three to six), the quinella calculator the first two in any order, and the trifecta calculator the first three in order. For fixed-odds bets, use the bet calculator.
Running a charity race night? The race night odds calculator works out each horse’s payout from the money bet.
A pool bet is still a bet, and the deduction comes off before anyone is paid. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.