Tote Placepot Explained

A Placepot, also known as a Tote Placepot, is one of the most popular pool bets on horse racing betting sites, as this type of bet offers punters a chance to win large payouts from relatively small stakes.

Tote betting is a pool betting system, which collects the total amount staked on a particular type of bet & race. The total stake then goes into a prize pool which is shared amongst the winners after deductions are made. To win on the Tote Placepot, punters will need to correctly pick a horse to place in each of the six chosen races. You can pick any number of horses from each race, but the more horses you add, the more the bet costs.

The most famous Tote Placepot is the Scoop 6 placepot (read our guide on it here), which is a once-a-week horse racing betting pool that runs every Saturday, and occasionally on Friday evenings.

History of Tote Betting

The Tote is a British bookmaker that was founded back in 1928 by the UK government, to provide a safe alternative to illegal off-course bookmakers.

Under the brand Totesport, the Tote had over 500 betting shops and was the only organisation in the UK allowed to run pool betting on horse racing up until 2008. The Tote was sold to Betfred in July 2011, but most recently sold to the UK Tote Group in October 2019.

Now, Tote betting is accepted in thousands of betting shops across the UK and several online bookmakers.

Placepot Betting Explained

Most of the top UK bookmakers will have a section dedicated to Tote betting. Here you can find all of the day's meetings that offer toteplacepot bets, and other tote betting types.

How to Place a Tote Placepot Bet

In Tote Placepot, you can choose more than one horse from each race, but, you will have to pay for every line within the bet.

For example, if you choose 3 selections in Race 1, 1 selection in races 2-5 and 2 selections in Race 6, the total number of lines would equal 6.

3 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 2 = 6

To pay for this bet, you would need to pay 6 times the unit stake of the bet. If this was £1, your overall stake would be £6.

Most bookmakers accept a minimum overall stake of £1. If there are 10 lines in a Placepot, the unit stake can be as low as £0.10.

To place a bet:

• Pick your bet type, in this case, TotePlacepot
• Then pick the meeting you want to bet on
• Pick one or more horses (to place) for each of the six races.
• Choose your stake, and place the bet

How Does Placepot Betting Work?

Toteplacepot bets operate on races that have 4 or more runners on several UK betting sites.

The number of places in a race varies with the number of runners:

• 4 runners or less, you have to select the winner
• 5 - 7 runners is 1st & 2nd
• 8 - 15 runners is 1st, 2nd & 3rd
• 16+ is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th

Deductions

Winnings are calculated by dividing the total stakes in a pool (minus deductions %) by the number of winning tickets. The dividend is paid to the pound, so you get the amount listed in the dividend for every pound you staked.

For example, at the 2019 Cheltenham Festival, one punter managed to land £182,567.80 off a £2 Placepot. The total amount in the pool was £958,481,10, and it was shared by just 10.50 winning tickets. This gave a dividend of £91,283.10 to a £1 stake, giving the punter a massive £182,567.80 off a £2 Placepot.

The deduction percentages for the prize pools vary depending on which bookie you use. For example, William Hill deducts 27% out of the final pool amount.

When Betfred owned Totesport, they took 28% of the final pool amount.

William Hill's deduction percentages: