THE TOTE
There’s a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation surrounding the tote (also known as totalisator, or parimutuel system), so let me clear it up for you knuckleheads.
What even is the tote?
Many a post has been made by all the comedians when one gets up by a whisker on a Tuesday night and pays $347.50 on the UBET tote. It’s always something intelligent and original like “it’s only a rort if ya not involved” or “Queensland Racing hahahaha”. Try and stick with me while I explain why you’re talkin’ out your arse and you’re not as funny as you think.
Firstly, what are fixed odds?
Allow me to very briefly explain how fixed odds work, so that you can understand the difference. All the armchair experts can skip this part, because you already know everything.
A fixed odds market relies on the bookie doing the form and giving each runner a rating, and deciding what chance that runner has of winning. The odds are then set accordingly, and once you place your bet, that’s it. It’s locked in. Fluctuations in the price after you’ve put your bet on don’t affect you, your bet is on at the price you got.
For example, if the bookies decide that a horse has a 1 in 2 chance of winning a race, the fixed odds price for that horse will be set at $2.00 (probably slightly lower than $2.00 to ensure they make a profit). The price for that horse may then go up or down depending on whether it is fancied or unwanted by punters. If you were to put $10 on that horse to win at $2.00 as soon as the market opened, and that horse wins, you’d get a tidy $20 return.
Easy enough to understand, right?
How does tote betting work?
Parimutuel betting systems, or the ‘tote’ (abbreviated from the word ‘totalisator’) as it’s most commonly referred to in Australia involve pooling all the money that you lot wager on an event, with all dividends based on the amount of money that has each runner is holding.
Put simply, the most fancied horse in a race would return the smallest dividend, while the despised outsider would return the highest. The tote operator or bookie takes a percentage of the pool, guaranteeing a profit for themselves, regardless of the result of the race
When placing a bet on the tote, you’ll often be shown what the approximate dividend will be should your bet get up, but it’s really important to keep in mind that this is based on the amount of money each runner is currently holding, and it WILL fluctuate up until the closure of the market, which is at the start of the race.
Here’s an example if you’re still not following:
We’ll use the classic example of a race of 4 horses.
Horse A
Horse B
Horse C
Horse D
For this example, let’s pretend that you manage to talk your Mrs. into letting you leave the house when your chores are done. She gives you some shrapnel out of her purse, and you head down for a punt with the lads.
There’s eight of you there and you all pick your horses. two of you like Horse A, three of you like Horse B, two of you like Horse C, and only one of you likes Horse D. Each of you put $5 on your runner. Let’s also pretend that it’s only the eight of you putting a bet on with the tote for this race.
So you chuck your little bets on, and each horse is now holding the following amount of money:
Horse A - $10
Horse B - $15
Horse C - $10
Horse D - $5
As you can see below, the return for each horse winning the race, is dependent upon the amount that is being held by that horse. In this example, the tote operator has taken 10%.
Now of the $40, the operator (TAB in Australia) takes their 10% takeout leaving $36 in the pool. (The actual takeout is closer to 18% here in Australia - although don’t quote me on it).
Here you can see that if I had my $5 bet on Horse C, and it got up, my dividend would be $3.60, and my return would be $18.
This is because the entire pool of $40 (minus the 10% house take) gets split up between myself and my mate that also backed Horse C.
($40 POOL) - ($4 HOLD) = $36
and
($36 POOL AFTER TAKEOUT) divided by (NUMBER OF BACKERS IS 2) = $18 per backer
That means that for a $5 bet, we’re paid a $3.60 dividend because $18 / 5 = $3.6
What about exotics?
For you exotic punters, the concept is exactly the same. Your dividend is dependent on the amount of money wagered in the pool, and how much is riding on your chosen combination. Replace the runners in the table above with four different exotic combinations, and you’ll see that it works just the same.
Should I bet with the tote or take fixed odds?
This isn’t an easy question to answer. TAB and most bookies offer both options these days, and it can be tough to decide which to take. Often the corporates will off a ‘best tote’ market which will pay you out based on the highest dividend from the various totes running across Australia which can be a bit of value. However, this can also make things even more complicated when trying to decide on fixed odds vs. tote. Everyone who knows their way around a TAB machine will have their own strategy, so you’re pretty much on your own to work out how you want to play it.
Put simply, as a very general rule of thumb, if you find a runner that you think is well over the odds, especially if it’s in double digits, get on it and secure the fixed price as soon as you can. Chances are, whatever secret information you think you have, a thousand other pricks have it too and you’re not that special, so get in while you can, and before the price firms significantly. On the contrary, if you see a runner that is neglected in the market, but you think it can run a good race, it can pay to back it on the tote and scoop up as much of that pool as you can.
Yeah but what about those ridiculous odds, can I quit my job and back roughies on the tote for a living?
I’m getting there, calm down.
Also, no.
You see it all the time, bewilderment, elation, outrage, when one rattles home at Ipswich dogs and as soon as the tote dividends flash up after the race, you see that the fucken thing paid over $300. Every prick is all of a sudden lamenting publicly that they didn’t have a piece of it and that the race had to be rigged for a $300 chance to get up.
There’s a very simple explanation for this, and it’s not that TAB are handing out free money to roughie backers. Now that you (hopefully) understand how the tote works, it shouldn’t be difficult, even for you, to understand how this can happen.
Say it’s 2pm on a Tuesday so there’s two fifths of fuck all in the pool for the dog race at Ipswich, a few hundred bucks. One 85 year old codger with a nose the size of my fist is living it up in his local TAB and chucks $1 on something he thinks has a funny name. It gets up. Now, because there’s nothing doing in the pool, and he’s the only one brave enough to back a 50-start maiden, he scoops up the whole pool to himself, netting a nice $300 return on a $1 bet. A very lucky afternoon for him, and every prick is blowing up the Punt Hub group with a variation of “wish I had $50 on that fucken thing”.
But if you did, your dividend wouldn’t be anything close to $300 now, would it? If you were lucky enough to be the only one backing the winner, your dividend would be $6. A good return on a $50 bet, but a $300 dividend, it is not.
That’s it.
CONCLUSION
Not that exciting is it, now pigs?
Hopefully this helps a little bit, and you’ve got some more understanding now around how the tote works and why you occasionally see those crazy dividends on screen.
Good luck finding a winner on the tote!
LOVE YA GUTS!
MR