Horse Betting Online

Betting on newspaper naps is a very simple approach to making money from horse betting online, but one that can be surprisingly effective if you go about it in the right way. In this article we tell you exactly how to do that, and by the time you finish reading you will have a great little betting system which you can use all year round to help you pick winners week after week…

The first thing you need to understand (if you don’t already) is what a newspaper nap is. In a nutshell, a ‘nap’ is the best betting selection of the day according to a newspaper tipster. If you look at each tipster in your regular newspaper you will see that he identifies one selection as his ‘nap’, and in most cases this is the horse that he thinks has the best chance of winning.

Following newspaper naps blindly is quite common, but not necessarily the best way of making money from newspaper naps. A much better way is to first have a look to see if the newspaper nap meets the criteria detailed below:

• Is the newspaper nap named first in the newspaper betting forecast?

• Is the newspaper nap in the first three in the actual betting market?

• Did the newspaper nap win its last race?

If the answer to these three questions is yes then you have a newspaper nap that may well be worth betting on. Not all of these hand-picked naps will win, but you can improve your strike rate even further by adhering to the following advice:

Always use the same newspaper when following naps for horse betting online purposes. Switching from one newspaper to another would mean that you are using naps from different sources, so you wouldn’t get consistent results. If you are online regularly, we recommend using the online version of the Racing Post and choosing one of its tipsters to follow for newspaper naps purposes.

Adopt a sound Money Management strategy that will help you to grow your bank when you enjoy a run of success, but won’t blow all your profits if you hit a loser. Remember, there is no such thing as a 100% winning strike rate, so don’t bet as if there is!

Finally, consider monitoring the results you would get from several different newspaper tipsters, but without actually betting. This is known as paper trading, and it will show you which newspaper naps are likely to be most profitable for you.

Horse betting accumulators are horse racing bets that consist of several selections, all of which have to win (or place if you make an each-way accumulator bet) in order for the bet to be successful. Many online bookmakers allow you to place accumulator bets, so it’s well worth understanding how accumulators work so that you can decide whether or not you want to have a go at profiting from them when horse betting online.

Accumulators work by staking your entire outlay on the first selection in the bet. When that selection wins, the total return is effectively staked on the next selection, and so on. Because of this approach, if one of your selections lose, the whole accumulator bet loses. However, if all of your selections win, you can make a profit that is worth many times your initial outlay, and that’s because the odds of each winner have really been multiplied together.

For example, if you had a £10 bet on a four horse accumulator (meaning that you have selected one horse to win in each of four separate races) and all of them won at odds of 2/1, your total return from the bet would be £810. We arrived at this figure by converting the fractional odds to decimal and then adding 1 point for the returned stake (see our article on horse betting odds) and then multiplying the resulting figures together before multiplying by the stake. Four 2/1 winners therefore involves calculating 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 81 x £10 = £810.

The number of selections that you include in horse betting accumulators is up to you. Bet on two selections and you have a ‘double’. Three selections give you a ‘treble’, four selections give you a ‘four-fold’, and so on. Of course, you always need to bear in mind the fact that the more selections you include in your accumulator, the more chance there is of one or more of them losing.

The potential to make a profit that is many times the size of your outlay makes horse betting accumulators very popular. However, the downside is that accumulators are very difficult to succeed with. Picking a winner in a single race is challenging enough, so picking winners in several races is even more tricky. For this reason, many horse betting online enthusiasts who place accumulators choose to bet each way instead of to win only.

An each way accumulator costs twice as much as a win only accumulator (£20 instead of £10, for example) but your selections only have to get a place for you to get a return. The betting odds of placed horses are not the same as for those that win, but are generally calculated as a fraction (usually 1/5) of the win odds. A horse offered at 5/1 for the win would therefore be worth 1/1 (as far as calculating your return is concerned) if it only manages to get a place.

Whether or not you use accumulators when horse betting online will depend on what you are looking for. If you are looking to win as often as possible then straightforward win singles are vastly superior to accumulators. However, if you don’t mind taking a much bigger risk in the hope of landing a much bigger payout, accumulators offer plenty of potential.

Horse betting odds are something that everyone who participates in horse betting online should understand. The horse betting odds that you get from bookmakers reflect the betting market perception of how big (or small) a chance your horse has of winning its race. Horse betting odds also determine how much of a profit you will make if your bet is successful.

Horse betting odds are generally presented in one of two ways: as fractional odds or as decimal odds. Most bookmakers allow you to choose which type of horse betting odds you want to see displayed, so let’s take a quick look at how they differ.

Fractional Odds
Fractional horse betting odds present the odds as fractions such as 1/1, 2/1, 5/2 and so on. The left hand side of the fractional odds tells you how many units profit you will make if you stake the number of units on the right hand side of the odds. For example, if the fractional odds are 6/1 and you bet £10, you would make £60 profit if your horse wins the race in question.

Calculating exactly how much profit you stand to make from a particular bet with fractional odds is quite simple, even when you have seemingly complicated odds such as 13/8. All you have to do is divide the left hand side of the odds by the right hand side, add 1 and multiple the result by your stake. This tells you what your total return from the winning bet will be, so if you deduct your original stake you would be left with the amount of profit you have made.

For example, if you place a bet of £12 on a 13/8 winner, you would get a return of 13 divided by 8 = 1.625 + 1 = 2.625 x £12 = £31.50. You staked £12 so your total profit in this scenario is £31.50 - £12 = £19.50.

Decimal odds
Decimal horse betting odds present the odds as decimal figures such as 2.00, 3.00 and 3.50. You will notice that the fractional odds described a moment ago only reflected the potential profit, and that we had to add 1 point to take into consideration our returned stake. Decimal odds automatically include the returned stake, so in order to calculate how much profit a winner would give you, all you have to do is multiply the decimal horse betting odds by your stake and then deduct your stake.

For example, if you place a bet of £10 on a winner at decimal odds of 3.50, you would get a return of 3.50 x £10 = £35 - £10 = £25.

Generally speaking, the lower the odds offered about a horse, the more chance it has of winning (according to the betting market makers and the betting public). You should still use horse racing form as your main guide to picking winners, but do consider looking at the odds as well to confirm the relative strength of your selection. If the market agrees with you (and the horse is among the first five in the betting) then a bet might well we worthwhile. However, if your selection is not among the first five in the betting, exercise caution and keep stakes to a minimum.

The Dutching system is a method of staking that allows you to bet on several horses in the same race and make a profit if any of those selections win. Because the Dutching system allows you to bet on several runners, you can deviate a little from our usual Race Selection advice and select horses at larger prices and in more competitive races – even in handicaps if that appeals to you.

For example, using the Dutching system when horse betting online you could bet £10 on each of three runners at 3/1, 4/1 and 5/1 in a 12 runner handicap race. This would give you a profit of £10 if the 3/1 shot wins, £20 if the 4/1 shot wins and £30 if the 5/1 shot wins. Obviously you would lose £30 if all three of your selections were to lose, but backing three horses in a 12 runner race means that you have a quarter of the field on your side – not a bad position to be in!

If you want to make sure that you make the same amount of profit no matter which of your horses wins then you need to adjust your stake to reflect the odds that you can get with your chosen bookmakers. We will assume that you’re sensible enough to avoid betting on horses priced at more than 10/1, so here is a table of odds for prices up to 10/1 that shows you how much you need to stake using the Dutching system to obtain a return of £100.

For example, if you wanted to use the Dutching system to bet on a 2/1 shot, a 7/2 shot and a 6/1 shot, you would stake £33.33, £22.22 and £14.28 respectively. This gives you a total outlay of £69.83, and no matter which horse wins you would get a return of £100, giving you a profit of £30.17.

Of course, you don’t have to use the Dutching system to stake for a £100 return. If you wanted to stake for a £50 return you could do so by dividing each of the indicated stakes by 2. Or if you wanted to stake for a £10 return you would divide the indicated stakes by 10.

Before you use the Dutching system you should always add your stakes together to make sure they total less than the desired return – it’s no good betting a total of £110 to get a total return of £100, because even if you won you’d lose £10! As always, it is your responsibility as a horse betting online enthusiast to make sure you’re happy with the risk and the potential gain involved in any bet.

Race selection can be just as important as horse selection in the world of horse betting online. That’s because horse races vary in levels of competitiveness, and picking winners in one type of race can be five or even ten times easier than picking winners in another type of race.

Consider your prospects of picking a winning horse from a field of 18 runners that will be taking place in a handicap and your chances of doing the same from a field of 6 runners in a non-handicap. Assuming for a moment that all of the runners had equal ability, your chances of picking the winner in the 18 runner race would be 5.5%. Your chances of picking the winner in the 6 runner race would be 16.67%. This one variable could therefore improve your horse betting online performance quite considerably, and that’s just on one occasion. If you give race selection some thought every time you set about the task of picking winners, the cumulative difference that this one simple habit could have on your overall profitability could be enormous.

There are many different types of horse race that we could define and discuss, but the good news is that we don’t have to. Instead, all we have to do is present a few simple rules that you can observe if you want to make the task of picking winning horses as easy as it possibly can be. The rules we are referring to are as follows:

Focus on Non-Handicaps
Handicap races give all runners the same theoretical chance of winning by making the horses with the best racing form carry more weight than the horses with inferior form. This makes picking winners a lot more complicated, so the first rule is to focus on non-handicaps where horses are not penalised for their past successes.

Focus on Small Fields
The fewer runners there are in a horse race, the more chance you have of correctly picking the winner. It therefore makes sense to focus on small fields. For example, you could choose to focus on races that have 5 to 12 runners and be very careful about betting on races with 13 or more runners.

Focus on Previous Winners
Although not all horses that won their most recent races will win next time out, if you focus on previous winners you will immediately enjoy an impressive winning strike rate. You should of course feel free to bet on horses that finished second or third last time out, but concentrating on those horses that won last time out is always sound advice.

Focus on Modest Odds
The odds available from bookmakers about horses reflect their perceived chances of winning, so if you concentrate on big odds you’re likely to find far fewer winners than if you focus on horses that are offered at modest odds such as those in the range 1/2 to 5/2.

Following any one of these rules will be useful, but following all of them can really help you to pick a slew of winners. It therefore makes sense to look for previous winners at modest odds in small-field non-handicap races if you want to make the most of your horse betting online activities.