Ian JohnWhen it comes to betting, horseracing remains (along with soccer) the most popular sport for punters to bet on across the wide range of UK betting sites. Certainly at 
the two featured sites on No Deposit Poker (Bet365 Sport and SkyBet) horseracing remains a key ingredient of the sites daily betting offering.
We have in the recent past taken a closer look at the top horse racing offers available at sites like Bet365 and SkyBet, so we are not going to go over old ground once again. Instead, in this article, we are going to focus on the bets that are the most popularly made on the Sport of Kings.
With the Cheltenham Festival just completed and the Grand National on the horizon, not to mention a fantastic Flat Season ahead, now is a great time to have a look at the sport if you are newcomer to it and take a look at the bets that most other horseracing punters make every day of the week.
We’ll start with arguably the simplest of all bets you can make on any sport. The simple, To Win bet.
Bet 1 – The To Win Bet
This is perhaps the bet that almost all people begin with when they first begin gambling on any horse race. The bet is simply for your chosen selection to win the race. If it does then you’ll be paid out at the stated odds (unless, the starting price is greater, in which case you’ll always get the best odds thanks to Bet365’s Price Promise).
The odds of the selections in a horse race are governed by many different factors including the horses form, breeding, jockey, trainer, weight, age, draw, the going of the course and much more.
With this bet, if your selection wins, then you win, however if the horse finishes in any other position, then your bet is lost and you lose the stake.
Bet 2 – The Each Way Bet
Perhaps the second most common bet placed by new punters is the Each Way bet. This is similar to a To Win bet in that it is based on a single selection, but with the Each Way bet, you are not just backing the horse to win, but also to finish inside one of the paying places in the race (this can either be 2nd only, 2nd or 3rd, 
or in some races, 2nd, 3rd and 4th).
The number of paying places depends on the number of runners in the race, usually around 8 or more runners means the top 3 will be paid out, with races of significantly more runners (such as the Grand National) can see each way bets paid out on the top four finishers.
An each way bet is actually two separate bets (called lines). The first is placed on your selection to win (half your stake goes on this bet) and the second bet is on your selection to finish in a paying place (the other half your stake goes on this bet).
Therefore a £5 each way bet on a horse, would cost you £10 as there are two lines to cover. A £5 bet on the horse to win and a £5 bet on the horse to finish in a paying place in the race.
If your horse wins, then you win both portions of the bet. If they only place however, then you only win the place portion of the bet (and thus receive a reduced payout). Place bets are usually only paid out at a quarter or 1/5th of the stated odds.
Each way bets are popular in races such as the Grand National where it is possible for very long odds horses to finish in one of the paying places, thus offering even small each way bets the chance of a decent return.
Bet 3 – The Double And Treble Bets
Double and Treble bets are very similar bets, with the only difference being that a double consists of two selections and a treble consists, unsurprisingly, of three.
These bets are available when you add two or three selections to your bet slip and then want to back all of them to win on a single bet. By that, you are stating that you need all of your selected horses to win their respective races in order for your bet to win.
These bets can offer a huge return for even a relatively small stake. For example, if you backed three horses at 5/1 to win their races and placed a £5 bet on that. If all your selections win, then you would return £1080 in total, a profit of £1,075.
However, if just one of your selections fails to win, then your bet loses. Bets of a similar nature consisting of four or more selections are called accumulators (see Bet 5 in the list below).
Bet 4 – Forecast and Tricast Bets
These are bets made on a single race using multiple selections of horses from that race. In a Forecast bet, you are predicting which of the 
two runners in a race will finish first and second in the correct order, while with a Tricast bet, you are predicting the horses finishing first, second and third in the correct order.
You don’t use the standard betting slip to make a Forecast or Tricast bet. Instead at the foot of the race detail is a simple form which you can select your horses on to finish 1st and 2nd or 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the case of a Tricast.
You can select the Any Order bet, which means your selections can finish in any order, however this is similar to an Each Way bet as it means all combinations of possible finishes must be covered by the bet. In the case of a Double, this is two possible outcomes (A wins and B comes 2nd, B wins and A comes 2nd), however with a Treble this increases to six possible outcomes and thus six bets need to be covered.
Picking longer odds horses will increase the value of total bet dividend you win for Forecast and Tricast bets, however these can be very difficult bets to land with any regularity, especially for novice punters.
Bet 
5 – Accumulator Bets
Finally, the last of the five most popular horseracing bets you can make is a simple accumulator bet. As touched on before, this is a very similar bet to a Double or Treble bet, operating under the same rules, only with four or more selections added to the bet.
The more selections you add, the greater the potential yield of your accumulator bet if it wins, however it does mean that you have to accurately predict the winner of several races without getting a single selection wrong. This is very difficult to achieve on a regular basis.
Accumulator bets are a good example of low risk/high reward bets where punters can wager a small amount of money but win potentially huge amounts in the unlikely event of their accumulator bet coming off.
If you are a relative newcomer to horseracing betting and want to start off simply, then these five bets are a great place to start wagering as they are available across all top UK sports books including SkyBet and Bet365 Sports.
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