Tote dividend converter
Convert a Tote dividend into the fixed-odds equivalent, and see what your actual return on a given stake would have been.
Decimal equivalent
9.80
Fractional equivalent
44/5
Implied probability
10.20%
Return on your stake
£49.00
The Tote is a different animal
A fixed-odds price is an offer the bookmaker is making to you at the moment you back it — whatever happens afterwards to the market, your price is locked. The Tote works the other way round: every stake on a given pool is added together, a deduction is taken, and whatever remains is divided among the winning tickets. You do not know what the dividend will be until the race is over and the pool has been counted. The figure announced is quoted as the return per £1 staked — so a £9.80 win dividend means a £1 ticket pays back £9.80, including the original stake.
Converting a Tote dividend to a fixed-odds price is arithmetically trivial: the dividend per £1 is the decimal odds. Nine-pounds-eighty to the pound is 9.80 decimal, or 44/5 fractional, or roughly an 8.80/1 profit ratio. What you lose in knowing the price in advance you sometimes gain in the dividend itself, particularly on outsiders in big-field handicaps, where the Tote will quite often beat the starting price comfortably.
That comparison — Tote dividend versus SP — is where the pool betting genuinely earns its keep. On heavily-backed favourites the fixed-odds price will usually be the better bet, sometimes by a wide margin. On longshots, on horses that drifted late, and on anything that won a race most people had not bothered with, the pool can produce dividends that no high-street bookmaker would ever offer. Keeping half an eye on post-race Tote figures over a season will teach you a great deal about where the value actually lies in British racing.