Bookmakers, you won’t be all that surprised to learn, aren’t idiots. They know how to make money and one of the best ways of them doing so is by correctly pricing up the various outcomes of events that you can bet on. On that front, they tend to get it right far more often than they get it wrong, so if you’re betting on something with odds as long as 80/1 then you have to acknowledge that you’re not all that likely to win.
Just because something isn’t likely to win doesn’t mean that it’s never going to happen, however, as Leicester City fans know all too well from the club’s unlikely Premier League win at the end of the 2015-2016 season.
Payouts
The problem with bets with long odds is that it becomes tricker and tricker to work out the payout on them. You not only need to take into account the odds of your selection but also getting your stake back and therefore how much profit you’ll make if your bet is a winner.
Whilst we can’t look at every stake amount that you’re ever going to place, we can have a look at a few different selections to see how much you’d be paid out and what sort of profit you’d make for each of those selections in the event that your selection ends up winning:
| Stake Amount | Payout | Profit |
|---|---|---|
| £1 | £81 | £80 |
| £2 | £162 | £160 |
| £5 | £405 | £400 |
| £10 | £810 | £800 |
| £25 | £2,025 | £2,000 |
| £50 | £4,050 | £4,000 |
| £100 | £8,100 | £8,000 |
Each Way Payout
Whilst it is relatively easy to figure out the payout on straight Win bets, the same can’t be said for Each-Way ones. That is thanks to the fact that bookmakers treat an Each-Way selection as one bet when it’s actually two. There is a bet on the Win and another on the Place, so you end up paying double your stake. On top of that, bookies also pay out on the Place part of Each-Way bet at a fraction of the original odds, with the exact amount depending on numerous things including the event, the number of participants and whether there is an offer involved.
Here we’ll have a look at how much you’d be paid out by a bookmaker in the event that your selection won or placed in the thing that you’re betting on. We make the presumption that the payout will be made at 1/4 of the odds for the Place and that you get your stake back in full with a Win and you get the Place part of your stake back when your selection has placed.
| Each Way Stake Amount | Total Bet | Win Payout | Place Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| £1 | £2 | £102 | £21 |
| £2 | £4 | £204 | £42 |
| £5 | £10 | £510 | £105 |
| £10 | £20 | £1,020 | £210 |
| £25 | £50 | £2,550 | £525 |
| £50 | £100 | £5,100 | £1,050 |
| £100 | £200 | £10,200 | £2,100 |
Examples
When it comes to examples of events that have been won by selections with odds of 80/1, it’s fair to say that there haven’t been all that many over the years. That doesn’t mean that there have been zero, however. In fact, what it means is that when something has won with such long odds it has very much caught the imagination of the press and of the public. There is no better example of that than the victory of Rich Strike in the Kentucky Derby in 2022. It was noteworthy for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it was the longest winner of the Derby in the race’s history.
What makes the win even more remarkable is the fact that Rich Strike wasn’t even supposed to be running in the race, only drawn into it after Ethereal Road was scratched from it the day before. Not that any of that disturbed the horse or its rider, Sonny Leon. The pair rode a fantastic race, finishing ahead of the 4/1 favourite Epicenter, whilst another long-shot, 35/1 Simplification, came fourth. The fact that Rich Strike was more than twice the price of Simplification tells you everything you need to know about the ridiculous nature of the win in one of American horse racing’s most famous events.