What a year of betting actually costs

It still loses, Pascal, and here is the honest version: backing the favourite over jumps returns -7.76% to starting price across 10,216 bets, so for every £100 staked you get about £92.24 back, with the favourite landing 37% of the time. The reason it loses is the one thing your reasoning ignores: jumpers fall and pull up. Over hurdles and fences your horse can be going best of all and still hit the deck or be eased at the second-last, and a faller is a losing bet, your full stake gone, win or lose. Add the bookmaker's margin baked into every price on top of those lost stakes and a steady leak is exactly what you get. One honest correction, though: an earlier figure on this page overstated the damage, because a settlement bug wrongly counted winnerless races as losses, which made the jumps favourite look like the worst favourite bet of the lot. Once that is put right it is nothing of the sort, the Flat favourite (-9.39%) and the handicap favourite (-8.89%) are both worse, so this is one of the less-bad favourite bets, not the steepest. It is still a loss, mind, and measured to SP with no commission, so in the real world it bleeds a touch faster.

It is not a net, Pascal, it is two losing bets stapled together: across 27,676 each-way bets on the favourite the return is -8.60% to SP, so for every £100 staked you get back about £91.40. Here is why it loses. Each-way is really two stakes, a win bet and a place bet, and the place part only pays a fraction of the odds, usually a fifth or a quarter. Favourites are short-priced, so on a short favourite that place fraction often hands back barely more than your stake, sometimes less, while the bookmaker's margin, the overround, is baked into both halves. The bet lands often, more than three in five, which is exactly what makes it feel safe, but placing at cut odds never covers the times the favourite runs nowhere or, over jumps, falls and loses you the lot. The frequent small returns hide a steady leak, not a profit.

Pascal is half right and that is the trap. The favourite does win most often, roughly a third of all races, but "wins most often" is not the same as "makes money". The bookmaker bakes a margin into every price, so even a fairly judged favourite pays back less than it should on average, and plenty still get beaten or, over jumps, fall and pull up so you lose those stakes too. Back the favourite in every race and you pay that margin every single time, which is why this loses 8.79% to starting price across 27,676 bets: stake £100 and you are left with about £91.21 over the long run. It is among the least painful of the basic bets, but it is still a steady leak, and measured to SP with no commission, so in the real world it bleeds a little faster.

It loses, and harder than backing the favourite: backing the second favourite in every race returned -11.96% to starting price across 27,674 real bets, so for every £100 staked you got about £88.04 back over the long run, a steeper leak than the favourite's -8.79%. The reason is simple. The second favourite isn't mispriced, it's just the next-shortest horse in the field, and the bookmaker bakes the same margin, the overround, into its price as into every other runner. You're not finding value, you're paying the house edge on a horse that wins barely more than one race in five, far less often than the favourite, so the extra few points of odds never come close to covering the run of losers. Picking a "sensible" runner doesn't remove the tax built into the odds, it just hides it.

It loses heavily. Backing the highest officially-rated runner in every race returned -15.78% to starting price across 24,455 bets, so for every £100 you staked you got back about £84.22. The trouble is that the rating tells you who the handicapper thinks is best, and the whole betting public can read that same number off the racecard, so the horse is already short in the market and its price has swallowed all that quality. You are paying full whack for information that is free to everyone, and the bookmaker's built-in margin, the overround, takes its cut on top whether you back the best horse or the worst. On top of that the top-rated runner wins only about 19 in 100 of these races, nowhere near often enough to cover a long run of beaten favourites. Knowing who is good is not the same as getting paid for it.

You are not covered, you are paying the bookmaker's margin fifteen times over. A Lucky 15 is fifteen bets in one (four singles, six doubles, four trebles and a four-fold), and every leg is a favourite, which on its own loses about 8.8p in the pound once you count the fallers and pulled-up horses as the losing bets they are. The singles already leak that margin, and the multiples are worse, because tying favourites together multiplies the house edge instead of adding it, and one beaten favourite kills every multiple it sits in. Stack all that up and the Lucky 15 on four favourites returns -17.55% to Starting Price, so for every £100 staked you get back about £82.45. One winner returning your stake feels like a save, but that is the bet quietly handing the bookie roughly £18 in every £100 over time. Backing favourites does not beat the margin, and folding them into fifteen bets just lets you pay it fifteen times.

It does not give you the same shot, and the numbers say so plainly: a random runner returned -21.53% to starting price across 27,676 bets, so for every £100 staked you got back only about £78.47. That is about two and a half times as bad as backing the favourite, which loses about 8.79%, because a random pick wins just 13 times in every 100 races. The reason is two things working against you. First, every price on the card carries the bookies' built-in margin, the overround, so the odds always add up to more than 100% and the average runner is priced to lose. Second, a blind pick lands on a longshot far more often than the favourite, and longshots are the worst value of all (the favourite-longshot bias), so you pay the house edge and the bad-value tax at once. No homework means no edge, just a faster leak.

It loses, and heavily: four favourites in an accumulator comes out at -30.79% to Starting Price, so for every £100 staked you get back only about £69.21. Here is why. A favourite is no near-certainty, it wins barely a third of the time, and even backed on its own to SP it already loses 8.8p in the pound because the bookmaker's margin is baked into the price. When you multiply four of those prices together you multiply that margin four times over too, so the four-fold carries a far bigger built-in edge against you than any single leg. All four favourites must win or the whole slip is dead, and the run of days where just one gets turned over swamps the rare day they all land, which is exactly why the loss is this deep.

This is the worst single bet on the whole page. Backing the longest price in every race returned -34.70% to starting price across 27,676 bets, so for every £100 staked you got back about £65.30. The outsider is long for a reason: it wins just 3% of the time, far less often than even its big price suggests. Bookies pad those huge prices with extra margin, the favourite-longshot bias, so the rare winner never comes close to paying for the long, long run of losers in between, and over jumps a lot of these no-hopers fall or pull up and you lose those stakes too. The dream is real, the maths is brutal, and the maths wins.

It loses, and it is the worst slip on this whole page: over the sample it returned about -62.08% to SP, so for every £100 staked you got back roughly £37.92. Here is why. A single random horse already loses about 21.5p in the pound, because every price carries the bookie's margin and a blind pick has no judgement to offset it. Stack four of those legs together and you do not add that leak, you multiply it, four bets at a bit over three-quarters back compounds down to about £37.92 back, and all four horses must win or the whole thing dies. The rare big winner is real, but it is far rarer than the multiplied price makes it feel, which is exactly why the random four-fold is the bookmaker's favourite slip and the fastest way on this page to empty your pocket.