Dead Heats

[Adam]

I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't know this after 14 years of using Betfair, but I guess there will be other people who didn't know either, so I hope someone finds it useful!

In a dead heat situation, your stake is divided proportionally between the number of winners in the market.

Let's keep it simple and say 2 winners, because there's never been a dead heat between 3 or more winners in horse racing as far as I know (at least in GB / IRE).

Normally, if you back a horse for £10 at odds of 5.0 for example, your profit if it wins would be:

10 x (5 - 1) = £40

I had assumed you would just divide your stake by 2 when calculating your profit., so:

(10 / 2) x (5 - 1) = £20

What actually happens is that you also lose half of your stake, so the calculation becomes:

(10 / 2) x (5 - 1) - (10 / 2) = £15

Not a massive issue unless you're betting at less than evens, in which case you end up losing money even if your bet wins! So changing the odds in the example above to 1.5:

(10 / 2) x (1.5 - 1) - (10 / 2) = -£2.50 (£2.50 LOSS)