Horse Race Betting – What’s it about?
Horse racing is a sport which has delighted fans for years; from Norse mythology to chariot racing in Roman times, horse racing has always been inextricably linked with betting. As a result of this people are willing to pay vast sums for a horse which they think can make them money. Online betting on horse racing accounts for a large percentage of bookmakers.When it comes to placing a bet on a horse there are different ways this can be achieved.
A few of the more popular ways to place a bet are standard betting and spread betting. A simple bet involves choosing a specific horse to back for which the odds appear attractive. A more complex form of betting is called spread betting which is similar to buying and selling shares on the stock market. The idea is to gather a certain amount of points which are attributed a fixed value by the spread betting company, this is usually a favourite of more adept gamblers.
Wagerers have various options for spread betting, these include gambling on the ‘favourites index’ where you can gamble on the amount of favourites which will win at a particular meeting; or the jockey index – which functions similarly, allowing to gamble on jockeys rather than the horses. According to where you live, horse racing can take slightly different formats – one of the most popular forms is ‘Thoroughbred racing’, and this is the form which is most prevalent in the United Kingdom.
What distinguishes one type of horse racing from another is the breed of horse involved; broadly speaking these can be separated in to 4 various groups; ‘Thoroughbreds’, ‘Standardbred’, ‘The Quarter Horse’ and the ‘Arabian’. Thoroughbred horses are bred to be able to traverse intermediate distances at a very fast pace and can be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds – thoroughbreds can be a lucrative business for owners. The distance of Thoroughbred races can vary, but they are usually between five and twelve furlongs; a furlong roughly equates to about an eighth of a mile. Something which sets horse racing in the UK apart from the rest of the world is the stringent rules on whipping the horse to make the horse run quicker.
The important thing to remember when placing a bet on a horse is that you are more likely to be the beneficiary of a payout if you bet with the everyone else. Bookmakers will try and lure punters into making bets on horses which are less likely to win by giving you odds which result in huge payouts.
