At tracks where there is paramutual gambling, how are the payouts determined when there is a dead heat? If 2 horses tie for first is the payout whatever the win odds were for both, or is the amount split?
The tracks aren’t going to lose money. They combine the win pools bet on each horse to win and payout from that amount.
Your payout is then determined by the size of the pool and the odds.
You can find laws on google, but you need to use the proper spelling which is paramutuel.
If there is a dead heat, all the money bet to win is divided in half and the parimutual payoff is calculated for each horse, similar to the way the place money is determined. I believe that the money in the place pool goes into the win pool, but I’m not sure.
The track does not lose money from a dead head. The only time a track loses money on parimutual betting is when there is a “minus pool” to show. That usually happens when there are a small number of horses in a race (five, since there is no show payoff for fewer horses) and one horse is a prohibitive favorite. The track is required to pay at least $2.10 for any winning bet, so if bettors dump a lot of money on the big favorite, the track could be liable for more money than was bet.
I’ve seen it spelled paramutual, and parimutuel. But never paramutuel
The proper spelling is parimutuel. It comes from the French words meaning “mutual stake”.
In the event of a dead heat, the win pool is treated like the place pool in an ordinary race. (This is not the same as saying that the pools are mixed, however; they are not.) The track takes its take off of the top of the win pool, and the remaining money is divided in half. Each half is then further divided by the amount of money bet on each winning horse, with the payout rounded down to the next ten cents on the dollar. The rounding error is called “breakage” and reverts to the track, in addition to the “track take”.
When there is a dead heat for first place, therefore, the win and place payoffs will be very similar. They will not usually be identical, because the win and place pools remain separate and the two horses will not usually attract the exact same percentage of the action in each pool.
Is that actually the law? Then mathematically isn’t it possible for the track to lose money on a tie?
What if only 2 guys bet $2 each on the 2 horses that tied for first.
If the track must pay $2.10 per bet, don’t they lose 20 cents then on this race?
Another question: What happens if absolutely nobody bet on the horse that wins? Where does the money from the win pool go to? Does it get pushed down to the place pool?
What if nobody bet on any of the horses that come in first-second-third & fourth?All the money being bet on the loser horses(improbable I guess, but still possible) What happens to the pools from the win/place/show/perfecta/trifecta/superfecta? Would the track just keep it or transfer it to the next race or what?
First, I misspelled my correction of the misspelling. :smack:
The first situation described would be a minus pool as described by Reality Chuck.
If nobody bets on a horse that wins, the people who bet on the second place horse to win get the payout.
If there were no bets placed on any horse that finished in the money, all the other bettors get their money back.
If you want to read one state’s rules, here is a link to Ohio’s
The Track Stewart has the power to cancel all bets for whatever reason. I was at a dog track once where all bets were canceled after the race. There was a brief electrical outage during the race and it had affected the speed of the lure.
I’ve seen races where nobody had bet on any of the first 3 dogs in a superfecta combo.Whoever had wheeled the #7 dog into the fourth position won. The final winning combo was ALL-ALL-ALL-7