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Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide

With just a few days to go before the Cheltenham Festival begins, if you are new to Cheltenham Betting then now is the time to brush up on some betting facts so that you don’t miss out on the betting fun by not being aware of all the options that are available to you. Here we will describe all that you need to know about betting in order to join in the fun.

The simplest bet is to place a wager on which horse you think will be the winner of the race. You can easily see from the odds how much you will get back if you are successful. For instance if you bet £1 at odds of 3/1, you will receive back £4.00 which is £3 in winnings plus your original stake.

You might prefer to bet on your horse each way. With an each way bet you place one bet on the horse winning and another on it being placed. If it wins half your stake will pay out full odds as in betting on a winner, and the other half of your stake will pay out at a fraction of the odds, normally ¼. Although you win less, your chances of winning are much higher.

You might think that one horse will win and another will be placed, for instance in the Gold Cup you might think that Denman will win and Kauto start will finish second, A forecast bet is placed on the order in which you think the horses will finish. Special odds are offered for racing forecasts.

Matched betting is betting that one horse will outperform another one. With matched betting you are not predicting in which position a horse will finish, you are betting on whether or not it will outperform the other one. Again bookmakers offer special odds on matched bets.

There are a number of special bets with names like accumulators, Yankees, Lucky Fifteens and so on. These tend to be more specialist kinds of bets for experienced punters. They involve betting on a group of races simultaneously and can provide some exciting odds. In an accumulator the winnings of one race are placed on the next race and so on depending on how big the accumulator. Yankees and Lucky Fifteens are cover bets that are permutations that mean you will win if you pick a number of winners out of a number of selections and are probably best avoided until you are fully acquainted with the basic bets described above.

Read more: Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide