Cheltenham punter landed over £180,000 from just £2 bet with Tote Placepot
The Cheltenham Festival often provides winners at big odds, but one lucky punter collected over £180,000 from just a £2 bet - without selecting a winner.
Before the world was tipped upside down, the 2019 Festival had a few shocks on the card - but none as big as the shock one racegoer got when he took his £2 Placepot ticket up to the window to collect his prize.
The punter chose six horses to place and they all did just that - landing him a huge windfall from a small stake.
He explained: "It wasn't until the second-last race that my friend said I was still in with a chance. The lady behind the counter's face just dropped. I asked her how much and she very discreetly showed us the amount."
Other Placepot winners that year included two punters who each claimed £36.513.56 from a 40p share, having played in 10p unit stakes.
There were also a number of 10p and 20p winners who took home just over £9,000 and £18,000 respectively.
There were plenty of huge shocks on the card with only one favourite getting into the first three on the opening day.
It was race four, the Champion Hurdle, which blew the pool apart in 2019.
Only 4% of tickets made it through after the short-priced favourite Apple’s Jade failed to fire and second favourite Buveur D’air was unable to stay on his feet, handing an unlikely victory to Espoir D’Allen at odds of 16/1.
He was followed home by Melon at 20/1 and huge outsider Silver Streak at 80/1 to cause a massive 1-2-3 upset.
So you can see why the is often described as the UK’s most enjoyable racing pool bet, with the opportunity to win big, for small stakes, without backing a winner!
What exactly is a Placepot?
Tote Placepot is often the first bet of the day. You simply have to pick a horse to place in each of the first 6 races of a meeting.
With an average Placepot dividend of £7,376.54 to a £1 stake at the Cheltenham Festival in the last five years, the Placepot is the ultimate pick for small stakes, big possibilities.
The more people who play the Placepot at a given meeting, the larger the pool will be. And the fewer of them who find the winning combination across the six races, the bigger the winning dividend will be.
It is not only the potential juicy pay-outs that make the Placepot a great bet. If you're looking to enjoy a day of racing, the Placepot can keep you entertained all afternoon as you search for horses to be involved in the finish.
The minimum stake per line is just 1p (minimum total ticket 50p) at , meaning big permutations (multiple lines) are affordable, allowing you to back a number of horses in each race to increase your chances of winning.
You can expect the biggest Placepot pools of the year at the Festival, reaching up to £1million per day.
Where can you play the Placepot?
The best option is to play the Placepot with Tote, the home of the Placepot.
This festival are giving
PLUS when playing directly at or via the Placepot app you will receive a 10% boost on your winnings thanks to Tote+.
and the Placepot App provides handy hints and tips by Racing Post Spotlight, Tote Ambassadors Danny Mullins and Richard Johnson. Once your bet is on, you can enjoy the racing with free streaming and track progress by seeing how many tickets are left in the pool after each race, and what your potential pay-out might be.
Free Placepot Offer Key Terms: Daily free Placepot to the value of £1 in Tote credit. Redeemable against Cheltenham placepot bets only. Tote Credit cannot be withdrawn, exchanged or substituted and expires at midnight each day of the Cheltenham Festival (15 – 18 March 2022). Daily opt-in required. Tote+ Key Terms: Tote+ is only available if you place your bet directly via tote.co.uk or the official tote app. All pools where Tote+ applies are denoted by the inclusion of the ‘tote+’ symbol. Only applied to dividends of 1.20 or above. Tote+ bets will be settled at a value which is 10% bigger than the standard tote dividend. Full T&Cs apply. 18+. BeGambleaware.org
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Other places to play the Placepot include:
- At one of the tote kiosks on racecourses across the country including at Cheltenham
- Most top online or high-street bookmakers
How to play the Placepot smarter
- Try perming your placepot
“Perming” your placepot simply means choosing more than one horse in each race. Whilst this increases your stake it also increases your chance of winning.
You only need one of them to make the places in each race to win the placepot, but you can also win multiple times in the same bet if you manage to get more than one placed in any of the races.
To calculate your total stake, just multiply the number of selections in each leg. For example:
- Leg 1: 3 selections
- Leg 2: 2 selections
- Leg 3: 1 selection
- Leg 4: 3 selections
- Leg 5: 2 selections
- Leg 6: 1 selection
3x 2 x 1 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 36 lines.
- Banker Legs
The attraction of the Placepot to most bettors is the “small stake, big win” possibility and they therefore want to keep the number of selections per race and total stake to a reasonable amount.
Picking just one horse in a race (leg) allows you to keep your total lines down and potentially use more selections in another more competitive leg. Look to find a race where there is a horse you simply can’t see finishing outside the places. There should be a few of them at Cheltenham this year - Shishkin, Honeysuckle, Allaho, to name a few. If you’ve found one you really can’t see not placing don’t waste extra lines on these races, there’s no bonus points for picking a 20/1 shot when the short-priced favs wins, so stick to your guns if you think you’ve found a banker.
- Target Vulnerable Favourites
On the other hand, leaving out vulnerable favourites is the key to unlocking the big dividends the Placepot has to offer. Put simply, the more favourites fail to place, the bigger the dividend is going to be. This is because the biggest share of the money in each race will be riding on the favourite.
Leaving vulnerable favourites out of your bet can keep you in the pot when the majority have had their bet torpedoed by the most popular horse in the race running badly.
At the festival the biggest placepot payouts come when short priced favourites are beaten in the big Grade 1’s. Leg/Race four is the Championship race (Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, Stayers Hurdle & Gold Cup) each day of the festival and has been the leg which most often blows the pool apart to produce dividends of over £1,000. So, if you think one the hotpots in these races could have an off day, it could make your day.
- Don’t get hung up on field size
It seems intuitive to think the more runners in the race, the harder it is to get through the leg, but not once at the festival has the race with the biggest field size been responsible for the largest knockout in the bigger placepots. Instead it’s the races with the smallest and second smallest fields who’ve been the most influential on the final dividend.