Each Way Betting For Beginners…
Each Way betting is the most popular form of betting. Think about what bet most people do on Grand National day — they always tend to go Each Way!
Each-Way betting can be difficult to understand if you’re new to betting, but it’s actually easy once it’s explained properly.
Think of an each-way bet that has simply two bets. The win bet and the place bet. When you see it that way, it’s easy to see why an each-way bet is double what a single bet is. Imagine you have a £10 each way bet — this costs £20 and it's broken down to £10 on the win and £10 on the place.
This is pretty straightforward to understand, and where most people struggle to understand each way betting is the bookmaker place terms. Because these can be different with every bookmaker and also changes depending on the number of runners in the race.
How Each Way Betting Works
Each Way betting becomes easy when you know the terms, and what rules there are. In a nutshell, the place part of your bet will change depending on how many runners there are in the race. You may have heard the term “bad each-way race” this is a phrase punters use because there might be eight runners in the race, which is three places but if there were only seven runners there would be only two places for example.
Let’s look at how the each-way terms are broken down. There are two ways to look at them, graded races (Group 1’s for example) and handicap races (your average midweek races):
Graded Each Way Terms:
· 2 to 4 runners = win only
· 5 to 7 runners = two places
· 8 or more runners = three places
The major change between graded and handicap races is that there can be 16 or more runners in a Group 1 but it’s still only three places.
Handicap Each Way Terms:
· 2 to 4 runners = win only
· 5 to 7 runners = two places
· 8 to 15 runners = three places
· 16 or more runners = four places
The last variable for understanding how many places you get in the race is to see are the bookmakers offering any “extra place” offers. This is where the bookmakers give a big advantage to the punter. You might have 14 runners but get five places with a bookmaker. This is a very profitable loophole to exploit, as explained in the video below:
The last thing you need to know about each way betting is the bookmaker terms. This is actually one of the most important factors as it shows you how much profit you can make. The place terms can range between 1/3 and 1/6 of the odds. An easy example might be ¼ place terms and backing a horse at 4/1. You divide ¼ into 4/1 and you get 1/1 which is evens. The most common place terms is 1/5 of the odds.
The general rule is:
· 5 to 7 runners = ¼ odds
· 8 to 15 runners = 1/5 odds
· 16 or more runners ¼ odds
These terms vary wildly depending on the bookmaker, so do check out what their place terms are before betting!