Tote Jackpot Explained: How the Jackpot Bet Works

The Tote Jackpot is the hardest of the everyday Tote bets to land and, for that reason, one of the most talked about. You pick the winner of six races, every one of them has to win, and if your ticket gets through you share the pool with everyone else who did the same. When nobody manages it, the money rolls on to the next day. This guide explains how the Tote Jackpot works: who runs it, the rules on non-runners and abandoned races, how the dividend and carry-forwards are worked out, and what a perm really costs.

We don’t publish daily Jackpot picks or name “today’s” Jackpot meeting, which changes every day. Everything below comes from the Tote’s own published rules and guide, so you can judge any ticket for yourself.

What is the Tote, and how is pool betting different?

Before the Jackpot itself, it helps to answer a simpler question: what is the Tote? It’s the UK’s pool betting operator. It began as the Racecourse Betting Control Board, a statutory body created by the Racecourse Betting Act 1928. The Tote was sold to Betfred in July 2011 and then, in October 2019, to UK Tote Group, a consortium of racehorse owners, breeders and other investors.

Pool betting in one paragraph

With tote betting explained in its simplest form: every stake on one type of bet goes into a single pool. The Tote takes a fixed percentage off the top (the deduction), and the rest is shared between the winning tickets. The Tote’s rules call these “pool” or “pari-mutuel” bets, where the return depends on “the money staked in the pool and the eventual number of winning bets”. There’s no maximum win, because, as the rules put it, the size of the pool is the natural limit.

A fixed-odds bookmaker works the other way round. You take a price, say 5/2, and that price is locked in when you bet. The bookmaker’s profit is built into the odds themselves rather than taken from a pool. Our guide on how to bet on horses covers the fixed-odds side.

How does a tote win work?

The totewin pool is the plainest example. All the stakes on every horse to win one race go into the pool. The Tote deducts 19.25%, leaving 80.75% as the net pool. That net pool is divided by the total staked on the winner, and the result is rounded down to the next 10p to give the dividend, declared to a £1 stake.

Here is an illustrative race, not a real result:

• Gross win pool: £10,000.
• Net pool after the 19.25% deduction: £10,000 x 0.8075 = £8,075.
• Total staked on the winner: £1,500.
• Calculated dividend: £8,075 / £1,500 = £5.3833.
• Rounded down to the next 10p: a declared dividend of £5.30 to a £1 stake.

A £1 win ticket returns £5.30 (stake included), which is the same as decimal odds of 5.30. Two minimum dividends apply: a calculated figure above 90p but under £1.10 pays £1.10, and 90p or below pays £1.02. In the win pool, a horse withdrawn before coming under starter’s orders is void and your stake is refunded. Keep that in mind, because the Jackpot treats non-runners quite differently.

What is a Tote Jackpot?

So, what is a Tote Jackpot? It’s a six-leg pool bet in which you must find the winner of every leg. The Tote’s guide describes it as picking “the first six winners at a single, pre-chosen Tote Jackpot meeting every day”. The formal rules are slightly broader: the aim is to select the winner of “each of six races across one or more meetings as nominated by Tote”, and one Jackpot pool operates each day unless the Tote says otherwise. In practice, check the races on the Jackpot card before you build a ticket.

Winners only, no place cover

This is what makes jackpot horse racing bets so tough. A horse that finishes a close second is worth exactly the same as one that is pulled up: nothing. There are no each way terms and no consolation for five out of six. Your ticket survives a leg only if one of your horses wins it.

Minimum stakes and the prize pool

The Tote’s Jackpot guide gives a minimum stake of 1p per line and a minimum total stake of 50p at tote.co.uk. The rules add that minimum stakes apply “at the point of sale”, so a racecourse Tote window or another outlet may set its own. The same guide says that from Monday 16 March 2026 the Jackpot carries a minimum £5,000 prize pool. Pool guarantees can change, so check the current figure on the Tote’s site.

Tote Jackpot rules: non-runners, abandoned legs and dead heats

The Tote Jackpot rules below come from the Tote betting rules (the version effective from 24 January 2024) and the Tote’s Jackpot guide. The Tote can amend its rules, so check the current version before you rely on any detail.

Non-runners go on the SP favourite

In the Jackpot a non-runner is not void. The rules say non-runner selections “are replaced by the starting price favourite”. If there are joint or co-favourites, the horse with the lowest racecard number is used. If the favourite itself is withdrawn too late for the market to re-form, the horse with the shortest returned starting price takes its place, again with the lowest racecard number breaking any tie. Our guide to what SP means in horse racing explains how that favourite is decided.

You can also back the unnamed favourite on purpose in any leg. The Tote accepts these bets and settles them on the SP favourite.

Abandoned, void and walkover legs

If a leg is a walkover, is void or abandoned, or has no official result, and isn’t re-run that day, the pool is settled on the remaining legs. Every selection in that leg “is deemed to have been successful”, provided at least one leg takes place. If none of the six legs is run, the pool is void and all stakes are refunded. The same treatment applies if a leg has no finishers at all.

Dead heats

The rules say dead heats for first place “count as equal winners” in the Jackpot pool. If you have either of the dead-heating horses, your ticket goes through that leg.

Quick reference

Situation	What the Tote’s rules say
Your horse is a non-runner	Moved to the SP favourite
Joint or co-favourites	Lowest racecard number
Leg abandoned, void or a walkover, not re-run that day	Every selection in that leg counts as a winner
No legs run at all	Pool void, stakes refunded
Dead heat for first	Both horses count as winners
No finishers in a leg	Every selection in that leg counts as a winner

How the Tote Jackpot pool, deduction and carry-forwards work

Nobody knows what a Jackpot will pay until the sixth race is over. The dividend depends on the size of the pool and on how many other tickets come through with yours.

The 29% deduction

The Jackpot carries the Tote’s heaviest deduction on a standard horse racing pool: 29%, leaving a net pool of 71%. The gross pool is everything staked plus any money carried forward. If the pool is guaranteed and the stakes fall short, the guarantee becomes the gross pool.

How the dividend is declared

The net pool is divided by the total winning stakes. That figure is rounded down to the next 10p and declared to a £1 stake. The Jackpot section of the rules sets a minimum dividend of £1.10. Winners are paid in proportion to their stakes, so a 10p winning line receives a tenth of the declared dividend.

What happens when nobody wins

There are two cases:

• No winning tickets at all: the entire gross pool is carried forward to the next Jackpot pool.
• Less than £1 of winning stakes in total: the winners are paid as if the whole net pool were the dividend, and the unwon balance is carried forward.

The deduction is only taken when money is won, so in the second case the Tote adds the deduction back to the unwon balance before it rolls over. The rules also say any guarantee “is disregarded for the purposes of carry-forwards”, so a guarantee top-up doesn’t roll on.

An illustrative dividend example

These figures are made up to show the arithmetic. They are not a real Jackpot result.

Case 1, the pool is won:

• Gross pool: £60,000.
• Net pool after the 29% deduction: £60,000 x 0.71 = £42,600.
• Winning stakes in the pool: £23.40 (for example, 2,340 winning 1p lines).
• Calculated dividend: £42,600 / 23.40 = £1,820.51.
• Rounded down to the next 10p: a declared dividend of £1,820.50 to a £1 stake.

Case 2, the pool is only part won:

• Same £60,000 gross pool and £42,600 net pool, but only £0.40 of winning stakes.
• Because that’s under £1, the net pool of £42,600 is the dividend.
• Paid out: £42,600 x 0.40 = £17,040.
• Unwon net balance: £42,600 minus £17,040 = £25,560.
• Adding the deduction back: £25,560 / 0.71 = £36,000 carried forward as gross pool to the next Jackpot.

We checked both: £23.40 x £1,820.50 = £42,599.70, just under the net pool because of the rounding down, and £36,000 x 0.71 = £25,560.

Jackpot perm: what it costs and how lines pay

Very few players pick one horse in every leg. A jackpot perm covers more than one horse in some legs, and the Tote’s rules give the method: multiply together the number of selections in each leg. That product is the number of lines, and you pay your unit stake on each one.

Perm cost table

We worked out every row by multiplying the selections per leg, then the lines by the unit stake, and checked each product twice.

Perm (selections per leg)	Lines	At 1p a line	At 10p a line	At £1 a line
1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1	1	1p (below 50p minimum)	10p (below 50p minimum)	£1
2 x 2 x 1 x 1 x 2 x 1	8	8p (below 50p minimum)	80p	£8
2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2	64	64p	£6.40	£64
3 x 2 x 2 x 1 x 3 x 2	72	72p	£7.20	£72
3 x 3 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3	324	£3.24	£32.40	£324
3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3	729	£7.29	£72.90	£729
4 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 3 x 4	864	£8.64	£86.40	£864

The workings for the bigger rows: 3 x 3 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 324; 3 multiplied by itself six times = 729; 4 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 3 x 4 = 864. The 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 row at £1 a line (£64) matches the example in the Tote’s own guide.

How many winning lines can you have?

Here the Jackpot differs from the Placepot. In a Placepot several of your horses can be placed in the same leg, so a perm often lands more than one line. In the Jackpot there is normally only one winner per leg, so a perm usually has at most one winning line, however many horses it covers. Extra horses raise your chance of getting through; they don’t multiply the payout.

There are three exceptions, all from the rules above:

• Dead heat: if you have both dead-heating horses, that leg gives you two winning lines.
• Abandoned leg: every selection counts as a winner, so three horses in an abandoned leg means three winning lines.
• Non-runner on the favourite: if one of your horses is a non-runner and you also have the SP favourite, both lines end up on the favourite. If it wins, you have two winning lines.

Working out your return

Your return is the dividend multiplied by your unit stake in pounds, then by your number of winning lines. Take the 3 x 2 x 2 x 1 x 3 x 2 perm at 10p a line (£7.20) and the illustrative £1,820.50 dividend above, with one winning line:

• One 10p line returns £1,820.50 x 0.10 = £182.05.
• Profit after the £7.20 stake: £182.05 minus £7.20 = £174.85.

If the third leg had been abandoned, the two horses you had in it would both count, giving two winning lines and £364.10 back (though an abandoned leg also lets more tickets through, so the dividend itself would likely be lower).

Jackpot vs Placepot

Both are six-leg Tote pools, and players often confuse them. The difference that matters is winners against places.

	Jackpot	Placepot
What each leg needs	The winner	A placed horse
Races	Six nominated races, one pool a day	Typically the first six races of each meeting
Pool deduction (Tote rules)	29%	27%
Winning lines per perm	Usually one at most	Often several
Non-runners	Moved to SP favourite	Moved to SP favourite

Because a placed horse is far easier to find than a winner, Placepots are landed much more often and pay less. The Jackpot fails far more often and rolls over when nobody wins, which is how the occasional large pool builds up. Our Placepot guide covers the place terms and perms in detail. The Tote also runs the Scoop6, which is likewise built on six winners but has its own pool structure and a 30% deduction under the rules.

Is it better to bet on the Tote?

There’s no single answer, and anyone who gives you one is simplifying. What you can do is compare the costs.

What percentage does the Tote take?

It depends on the pool. Under the Tote’s rules for UK horse racing:

Tote pool	Deduction	Net pool
Win	19.25%	80.75%
Place	20%	80%
Exacta, Trifecta	25%	75%
Placepot	27%	73%
Jackpot	29%	71%
Scoop6	30%	70%

The rules also allow the Tote to run a pool at a lower deduction for promotions, which it says it will advertise. If you’re curious how US pools work on the same principle, our guide on how to bet a trifecta explains the track takeout.

Comparing with a bookmaker’s margin

A bookmaker doesn’t publish a deduction, but you can measure the margin from the prices. Convert each horse’s odds to an implied probability and add them up. Take an illustrative five-runner market at 6/4, 3/1, 4/1, 6/1 and 8/1: the implied chances are 40%, 25%, 20%, 14.29% and 11.11%, which add up to about 110.4%. That 10.4% over 100% is the overround. Our odds calculator does the conversion for any price.

Very roughly, a 110.4% book hands back around 90.6% of stakes in the long run (100 / 110.4), compared with 80.75% in the totewin pool. But bookmaker margins vary from race to race and between the favourite and the outsiders, and Tote dividends can beat the SP on a horse the pool has ignored. For a single win bet it’s worth comparing both. For a six-winner bet like the Jackpot there’s no fixed-odds equivalent with the same pooled payout, and the 29% deduction is the price of the rollover chance.

Strategy notes that stay honest

No system beats a pool with a 29% deduction over time. What you can do is build tickets that cost what you planned and stand apart from the crowd when they land.

Respect the maths of six winners

Six winners in a row is a long shot. As an illustration that ignores any margin, if each of your six choices had a 30% chance of winning, the chance of all six is 0.3 multiplied by itself six times, or 0.000729, which is about 1 in 1,372. Perming improves those odds leg by leg, but every extra horse multiplies the cost of the whole ticket.

Bankers and cover

A leg where you pick one horse is a banker, and it keeps the cost down. A beaten banker ends the bet, though. Many players bank on short-priced horses in small fields and spend their lines on big-field handicaps, where the winner is hardest to find. If you’re not sure why handicaps are so open, see what a handicap horse race is.

Favourites and the dividend

If six favourites win, a big share of the pool comes through with you and the dividend shrinks. Getting one beaten favourite right is what tends to separate a ticket from the crowd. That’s a reason to oppose a weak favourite, not to oppose every favourite.

Do the homework

Read the form for every leg, check the going and the trip, and set your total budget before you open the perm. The jargon on the racecard is explained in our horse racing terms glossary, and our overview of betting sites sets out how the Tote compares with bookmakers and exchanges.

Can a calculator work out a Jackpot return?

Not in advance. A fixed-odds tool like our bet calculator multiplies the prices you took, and the Jackpot has no prices until the dividend is declared. What you can work out beforehand is the cost, using the perm table above. Once the dividend is out, multiply it by your unit stake and your winning lines.

The Jackpot needs six winners and most tickets lose, so losing runs can be long. Set your budget before racing, bet only what you can afford to lose and never chase losses. Gambling responsibly.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Tote Jackpot?

A Tote Jackpot is a pool bet where you need the winner of all six nominated races. Stakes go into one pool, the Tote keeps 29%, and the rest is shared by the winning tickets. If nobody finds all six winners, the pool rolls over to the next Jackpot.

How does a tote win work?

A tote win bet pays from a pool, not at fixed odds. The Tote keeps 19.25% of the win stakes, divides what remains by the money on the winner, and rounds down to the nearest 10p. That figure is your return for every £1 staked, including the stake.

What percentage does the Tote take?

The Tote takes between 19.25% and 30% on its UK horse racing pools, depending on the bet. The win pool is the cheapest at 19.25%, place is 20%, the Exacta and Trifecta 25%, the Placepot 27%, the Jackpot 29% and the Scoop6 30%.

Is it better to bet on the Tote?

Sometimes. The Tote can pay more than the SP on a horse the pool has overlooked, but its 19.25% win deduction can cost more than the margin built into a bookmaker's prices. Compare the Tote's projected return with the fixed price before you bet, and use the Tote for pooled bets bookmakers don't offer.

What happens to a non-runner in the Tote Jackpot?

Your selection is switched to the starting price favourite of that race rather than being made void. With joint or co-favourites, the one with the lowest racecard number is used. So a non-runner keeps your ticket alive only if the favourite then wins the leg.

Can a Jackpot perm have more than one winning line?

Usually not, because each race normally has just one winner. You can land two or more lines if a race ends in a dead heat between two of your horses, if a leg is abandoned, or if a non-runner of yours moves onto a favourite you also picked.