- Fact-checked by Josh Miller
- Edited by Diana Westfield
Christmas sweepstakes, a raffle at the club and a few quid on the Boxing Day racing: December is when people who never think about odds suddenly need to work some out. Here’s how to run each one fairly and what the numbers look like, with the free tool for each job linked as you go.
A Christmas sweepstake on the World Darts
The PDC World Championship at Alexandra Palace runs from mid-December into the first days of January, and with 128 players in the draw it’s made for an office sweepstake. Sixteen people at £5 each is £80 in the pot and eight players each, which the sweepstake generator deals out in one tap.
The catch is that a straight draw isn’t really fair. A handful of players at the top of the rankings hold most of the chance of lifting the trophy, so whoever pulls two of them is a big favourite before a dart is thrown. The usual fix is a pot draw. Put the top 16 on the PDC Order of Merit in one draw and the other 112 in a second, and everybody gets one big name and seven outsiders. With the generator that is simply two runs, one per pot.
Agree the payout before the draw, not after. £60 to the holder of the champion and £20 to the runner-up is simple and gives two people something to cheer in the final. If the board comes out between sessions, let the darts scorer do the chalking, and when someone is stuck on 121 the darts checkout calculator will say T19, T16, D8 before the argument starts.
Somebody always drops out after paying, or wants two entries. How to run a sweepstake has sensible answers for both, plus a few ways to split the pot.
Boxing Day racing: each way terms in small fields
On 26 December it’s the King George VI Chase at Kempton, and the day after it’s usually the Welsh Grand National at Chepstow. They’re very different races to bet on each way. The King George often has a small field, and with 5 to 7 runners only the first two places count at 1/4 odds. £5 each way at 6/1 that finishes second pays £12.50 back on your £10, a profit of £2.50, and third pays nothing.
The Welsh National is a big handicap, and with 16 or more runners four places pay at 1/4. A 20/1 shot running on into fourth returns £30 on a £5 each way bet. Plenty of firms pay an extra place or two on both, so it’s worth shopping around on the morning. The each way calculator settles either one, and the horse racing bet calculator handles a Yankee across the whole card.
A Christmas raffle at the club or the pub
Say your club sells 300 tickets at £2 for ten prizes. Buy five and your chance of winning at least one prize is about 16%, a little under one in six. The raffle odds calculator does that sum for any raffle. If you’re the one running it, the raffle ticket generator prints numbered tickets and draws the winners, and the raffle ticket price calculator tells you what to charge so the prizes are covered. In Ireland, the Millionaire Raffle odds calculator has the full prize list for the draw around New Year.
A bingo night with prizes
For a club bingo night, sort the money out first. Agree how the pot splits between one line, two lines and the full house, because nobody wants that row at 10pm, and the bingo prize calculator will do the sums. After that you need tickets, which the bingo card generator prints as proper 90-ball strips, and someone to call, which the bingo caller does from a laptop hooked up to the big screen.
The CasinoCalcs tools above are free and work on a phone, so the whole lot fits in your pocket for the work do.
Christmas sweepstakes and raffles are for fun and for good causes. Keep the stakes small and set a limit for the racing. BeGambleAware.org is free and confidential if it stops being fun.