What Is an Each-Way Bet?
How the Place Part Works
The number of places paid and the fraction of the odds you receive depend on the size of the field. For UK handicap races with 16 or more runners, most bookmakers pay one-quarter odds on the first four places. Smaller fields pay fewer places, and races with fewer than five runners are usually settled as a win-only bet, since the each-way part is invested to win instead.
Worked example
A £5 each-way bet costs £10 in total: £5 on the win, £5 on the place. If your horse wins at 10/1 with each-way terms of one-quarter odds and four places, you’d receive £55 for the win part (5 x 10, plus your £5 stake) and £17.50 for the place part (5 x 2.5, plus your £5 stake), for a total return of £72.50.
Bookmaker promotions on top of standard terms
Some bookmakers go beyond the standard terms on selected races. Paddy Power’s Each-Way Extra adds places on selected races, Bet365 regularly adds extra places on the biggest handicaps, and William Hill adjusts places and place odds by race type. None of them changes the basic mechanics above; they just extend them on certain races.
Related Bookmakers
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Paddy Power
Each-Way Extra adds places on selected races, so once you understand how each-way terms work, it is one of the easiest ways to get more value from them without doing anything extra.
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Bet365
Regularly adds extra places on the biggest handicaps, where big fields make the place part of an each-way bet most valuable.
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William Hill
Adjusts places and place odds by race type and field size, with extra places on featured handicaps, useful if you want to see the rules in this guide applied race by race.
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This guide explains how each-way betting works and is not advice to bet. Only ever stake what you can afford to lose.
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