Pools Betting: Everything You Need to Know

They say there’s strength in numbers, which rings especially true in the world of sports betting. Instead of relying on betting odds, you and other bettors can gather together to form a sports lottery pool with a fixed entry price. If you’re looking to put down a reasonably small bet and come out with a big payout, pools betting might be the perfect fit for you.

Pools betting is where the stake from every participating player is grouped together into one cash pool. It is then divided among those who correctly predict the pool’s results. Participating in one such type of betting is a fairly straightforward matter that offers you the potential to earn great rewards. We’ll show you what it takes to join a pool at a betting site and which sports you can bet on in this way.

Forming the Basics for a Pool

Betting pools rely on an accruing pool of prize cash instead of offering players fixed-odds returns. When you place your bet, your stake enters the prize pool. There are no odds; the payout depends on the number of people who bet in the pool, the amount they bet with, and what sports events they bet on. There is a separate pool for every bet type.

The term pool signifies a number of matches or sports events in which a player has to choose the outcomes. The jackpot is the amount split between players who predict the correct results. Hence, with a pool of four players, each player gets a 25% share of the jackpot if everyone predicts outcomes correctly. And if only one player guesses the outcomes of the pool betting online, they take 100% of the jackpot.

Each pool varies depending on the sport and the number of matches, races, or events in general. Every sports event that goes into the pool is called a leg. Therefore, if a bettor needs to guess the outcome for winners in three separate horse races, that’s called having three legs.

One way online pools betting can offer very lucrative money rewards is permutation betting, otherwise known as perming. Betting participants can choose several outcomes on any available leg to increase their chances of winning.

Sizing Up the Pool

Let’s sum up perming in an easy-to-digest example for those participating in sports betting pools. Imagine you’ve staked money in a horse racing pool with three legs. You might be pretty sure what the outcome will be for the first two horse races, but you don’t have a clue as to the third race’s results. In that case, you could choose one horse in the first two legs and select two horses in the third leg.

In the last race, you form two lines by perming two different tickets. A line represents one selection in a leg made by the player. You’ll have one line in each of the first two legs and two lines in the last leg.

Of course, a player can make more than two selections per leg across many legs. But they have to pay for each line they make separately. Thus, if a bettor makes two selections in the first leg, four in the second, and one in the third leg, they’d multiply each selection. In our case, that would be 2 X 4 X 1 = 8, or six lines they’d have to pay.

Perming can be a great tool for achieving success in sports betting pools. However, you have to be mindful of the increased cost of betting on multiple lines. At some sports betting casinos, the most common stake is £2 per line, with place pools that cost £1. At other casinos, the stake is much more expensive.

Sports and Pools

Pool betting exists for a whole range of topics, like celebrity gossip, politics, and even crazy stuff like baby birth pool betting. But it’s most commonly used for sports betting, especially in football and horse racing. Various sports in pool betting use different scoring methods.

Football Pools

Back in the day, players sent football pool entries via agents or the post. Today, the most popular football pool game is Treble Chance – otherwise known as Classic Pools – played on football wagering sites. The cash prize pool in this game can go up to £3 million.

The betting pool rules for this game include players selecting 10, 11, or 12 football matches that are offered to them to get a draw. In this draw, every team involved has to score at least one goal. The player with the most correct predictions, or the best pool betting result, gets the highest pool prize. If there are two or more players at the top with the same number of correct guesses, they share the highest prize pool amongst themselves.

There is a unique prize worth £3 million when a player or players correctly choose nine draws of 1-1 or higher, also called score draws, if they are the only score draws selected on the coupon. In other words, score draws are football matches when both teams score the same number of goals (at least one). However, thanks to the points-based scoring model, players can claim vast cash prizes in several ways on a football betting app or site.

The football pools betting model of scoring used in Classic Pools gives three points to score draws and two points to no-score draws (matches with no scored goals on either side). One point is awarded for both home and away wins.

The total score of each line is calculated, with a potential maximum of 24 points. The highest-scoring line in a specific week of competition obtained by any player is selected as a top dividend. Bettors with top dividends get a sizable part of the prize money pool. Massive football betting pools might have two and six dividends, with smaller portions of the cash prize pool divided among players.

Horse Racing Pools

One of the more popular pool betting models of scoring is Tote betting. The name comes from the Tote company founded by the UK government in 1928. Its goal was to regulate parimutuel betting on horse racing in Great Britain.

The government controlled this company until 2011, when it was sold to Betfred for £265 million. The UK Tote Group then bought the Tote from Betfred in 2019. Today, the company offers several pooled bets from its horse racing betting site: win, place, exacta, trifecta, quadpot, placepot, jackpot, and Scoop6.

A win is a simple form of Tote pool betting in the UK, where the bettor selects the horse they think will win the race. The minimum stake is £2 with the lowest payout.

A place bet is when a player wagers £2 or more that a specific horse will end the race in the placings (typically first, second, or third, but sometimes also fourth place). The race must have five horses or more to be eligible for place betting.

There will be one or two dividend places if it’s a race with five, six, or seven runners. Races with anywhere between eight and 15 runners might have between one and three dividend places. Massive horse races with more than 16 runners will have between one and four dividend places.

In pools betting, each way bets represent a mix of win and place bets. Bettors pick a horse that they think will either place or win then technically make two bets: one to win and one to place. They typically place a £2 bet: £1 for a win bet and £1 for a place.

With an exacta, online betting participants choose two horses that they think will finish the race in first and second place in the correct order. The minimum bet is £2 and there are two types of exacta bets. In a straight exacta, you choose the order in which the horses will finish in the first two places.

With a combination exacta, you select the first two horses, but not the order in which they will finish. This form of pool betting is similar to betting on two lines: in the first one, you choose horse Alpha to beat horse Beta, then in the second you select horse Beta to beat horse Alpha.

A trifecta has you picking three horses that you think will claim first, second, and third place by the end of the race, in the correct order. The dividends here are much more lucrative since it’s challenging to predict results for trifecta bets. Trifectas come in three types with a minimum bet of £2

A quadpot bet asks bettors to choose four horses to place (finish in the top three) across the first four races at a given race meeting. The minimum bet is 10 pence.

Tote pools betting wouldn’t be the same without the option of making placepot bets. Here, bettors select six horses that they predict will place in the first six races at that race meeting. It’s the same as quadpot, except it includes the first six races on the racecard. Placepot bets are highly sought after among bettors, since the minimum bet amount is 5 pence, and for that price they can often participate in the whole race card.

With jackpot bets, you need to choose six winners from jackpot race meetings that run on the same day, which the Tote nominates. The minimum bet is £2 and bets can be placed on any day except Saturday.

Scoop6 is a bet where you pick six winners from highly visible and popular Scoop6 race meetings conducted on a Friday or Saturday. These race meetings are often shown on television in the UK. The minimum bet for a one-line stake is £2.

Swing is a unique type of pool betting in which you select three horses that will finish the race in the first three places, in any order. This type of bet is particularly popular in the UK, as well as South Africa.

Finishing Touches

We’ve only included a fraction of bets based on the cash prize pool; there are also hockey and NFL betting pools, for example. Thanks to the fact that they don’t rely on betting odds, these types of bets offer something completely different to players. Because of this, pool betting often has excellent cash rewards that can easily match other sites that host betting offers.

FAQ

What does pool mean in betting?

A betting pool is spread across a number of matches, where a bettor has to predict the correct outcomes.

Can you still bet on the pools?

Ever since Littlewood Pools introduced this concept in 1923, pools continue to be popular with sports betting a century later.

How do the football pools work?

First, you complete your betting coupon by selecting 10 games that you predict will end in a score draw. You get three points for every match you select that ends in a score draw. Every game that ends with no goals, you get two points, and one point is given for a game where one team wins. Tally all the points up, and if you have 22 points or more, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with some cash prizes from your pools betting.