You've decided to back the horse you like using your bookmakers fixed odds product.
The price you bet is the price you'll get if the horse wins right? Well, not quite!
There are sometimes deductions due to a horse being removed from the market. Deductions will not apply to best of four, mid tote or regular tote betting as the pool of money will auto adjust before the race begins but it will affect fixed odds bets.
Before we identify what a deduction is we need to understand the correlation between the odds on a runner and the implied market percentage those odds represent.
The odds are basically a mathematical representation of a horses percentage chance of winning. Referring to the table below you can see that decimal odds of $3.50 represent a 28.57 chance of that horse winning. Understanding the odds/percentage correlation will come in handy when you look at deductions.
What is a racing deduction?
Loosely put, a deduction is the bookmaker taking a percentage off the fixed price of a runner due to one or more runners in the race being scratched after your bet was placed.
Why are they allowed to do this you ask? Well, if you have a 10 horse race and you back the second favourite at $5 the night before a race, then there are 5 scratchings including the favourite on the morning of the race, that would dramatically increase your horses chance of winning right? That's why the bookmaker has deductions, to allow it's customers to bet before final scratching time and to protect against crazy liabilities and inflated prices on horses.
The lower the odds on the runners that have been scratched, the higher your deduction will be. That's because, if the $2.50 favourite is scratched your runners chances of winning increase dramatically compared to that if the 100-1 longshot is scratched.
How do you spot deductions?
This gets a bit tricky as it varies from website to website. TopBetta and Ladbrokes will show it next to the scratched runner in terms of a cents amount that rounds to 100 or $1.
If it says 10 cents next to a scratched runner then you know you'll cop a 10% deduction.
On some sites such as Sportsbet it's a bit tougher to find and you need to click the 'Show Deductions' button at the bottom of the market.
In conclusions, deductions play a big part when you are expecting lots of scratchings in a market.
So as a punter, you should be cautious betting early on wet tracks, on days with heavy rain forecast or into races with lots of dual acceptors.
Stay tuned for more horse racing betting articles including horse racing tips!
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