Horse racing bet calculator
Two sums every horseplayer does at the window. The first turns the odds on the board into what a win bet pays. The second counts the combinations in a box, so you know what the ticket costs before you call it.
- Payout if it wins, at these odds
- $7.00
- Profit
- $5.00
- Chance the odds imply
- 28.6%
- Total cost of the ticket
- $24.00
- Combinations
- 24
What it shows
A horse at 5-2 pays $7.00 on a $2 win bet: $5 of profit for every $2, plus the $2 back. At 9-5 it's $5.60. I'd treat those as the floor. The board rounds odds down to the steps it shows, so the payout is usually that or a little more, and the track rounds the final figure down to the dime. The horse racing odds guide works through a pool to show why.
The box sum is pure counting, and it's the one I'd want done before I reached the window. A trifecta box on four horses covers every order of three of them, 24 combinations, so at $1 a combination the ticket costs $24. Add a fifth horse and it's 60 combinations, $60. A superfecta box on five horses is 120.
The mistake people make
Reading the odds as a price you've been given. They aren't, and I wouldn't bet as if they were. Horse racing odds come from the pool, and they keep moving until the gate opens, so the 5-2 you saw at the paddock can be 2-1 at the off. The other one is boxing too many horses. Every horse you add multiplies the cost, and a trifecta box that cashes for less than the ticket cost is a losing bet that happens to feel like a win. I'd rather box three horses I like than six I can't separate. The horse racing betting guide goes through the bets on the card.