Now you have read the parimutuel betting definition, you’ve probably got questions. In parimutuel betting, you don’t know the price of your pick until after the race (although there are occasionally morning lines which provide rough guidance). With fixed odds, bettors take an agreed price or can choose the starting price (SP). This is how parimutuel wagers differ from fixed odds betting. However, if the favorite doesn’t win, then those few bettors who wagered on the winner receive payouts that are potentially bigger than the fixed odds prices.įinal payouts can’t be determined until the betting pool closes and the race is off. The more popular a pick, the shorter the odds, and thus the smaller the payout. The odds are then calculated based on the amount of money that has been staked on each possible outcome. Taxes and commission, like the house takes in casinos, are taken out of the total amount bet. All wagers from a particular betting market – typically an individual horse race – go into a betting pool. A system of wagering that is different to fixed odds sports betting, parimutuel comes from the French pari mutuel, which roughly translates as mutual betting.
Also called pari mutuel and sometimes hyphenated as pari-mutuel, parimutuel betting is easy to understand.
