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In horse racing, a handicap is a race in which each horse is allocated a weight according to its official rating. Once a horse has run three times, it is assigned an official rating, which is a numerical representation of its ability, in the eyes of a team of handicappers at the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), and becomes eligible to run in handicap races. The merit of each subsequent performance is assessed and, as result, an official rating may be revised up or down or stay the same.

Official ratings, a.k.a. handicap marks, determines in which races horses are eligible to compete and, moreover, are intended to give each horse an equal chance of winning, at least in theory. Of course, two-way or even three-way dead-heats do occur, but it would be fair to say that handicapping horses is, at best, an imprecise science. Most handicap races are restricted to horses with ratings in a certain range, but within each range racing is competitive and, as such, an attractive betting medium for punters.

In Britain, 60% of all races, Flat or National Hunt, are handicap races and most horses spend most of their careers running in such races. On the Flat, notable handicaps included the Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster, the Wokingham Handicap at Royal Ascot and the Ebor Handicap at York, while ‘over the sticks’, the Greatwood Hurdle at Cheltenham, Grand National at Aintree and Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown Park are similarly high-profile handicap contests.

‘BF’ is an abbreviation that appears on some, but not all, racecards and stands for ‘Beaten Favourite’. Where present, it usually appears immediately to the right of name of the horse in question – possibly alongside other abbreviations, such as ‘C’, for ‘Course’, and ‘D’, for ‘Distance’ – and simply indicates that it was officially sent off favourite, at starting price, on its most recent outing, but failed to win.

Starting price reflects the odds offered by bookmakers at the ‘off’ of each race and the starting price favourite is the horse available at the shortest odds. Those odds are typically determined by the previous form of the horse and that of its rivals – in other words, the perceived competitiveness, or strength in depth, of the race in the eyes of bookmakers – and the actual amount of money bet on said horse.

In Britain, across the main discplines of horse racing, that is, Flat and National Hunt, regardless of class, distance, going or anything, approximately 35% of starting price favourites win. Thus, 65% do not win and are denoted as beaten favoruites on their next outing. Notable recent examples of beaten favourites include Doom, trained by William Haggas, who was turned over at odds of 1/25 in a match at Ripon in September 2023 and Tree Of Liberty, trained by Kerry Lee, who equalled the record for the shortest-priced loser in British National Hunt history when beaten at odds of 1/20 in a three-runner novices’ chase at Ludlow in March 2022.

The history of horse racing is awash with tales of lucky punters who have won hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of pounds for relatively modest stakes. However, at the other end of the scale, there have been a few high rollers, or whales, as they are also known in casino parlance, for whom staking (and sometimes losing) six or seven figure sums was nothing unusual.

The late Kerry Packer, the Australian media tycoon famous for founding World Series Cricket in the late seventies, was an inveterate gambler, who had his fair share of ups and downs. In 1987, Packer co-owned Major Drive, the winner of the Sydney Cup at Randwick Racecourse, but nonetheless conspired to lose a reported A$7 million on the hot favourite for that race, Myocard, who eventually finished second.

A decade later, though, the boot was on the other foot. In 1997, Packer reportedly staked nearly A$1.5 million on the Melbourne Cup winner, Might And Power, thereby sharing in excess of A$6 million with his friend, property developer Lloyd Williams. Lo and behold, the pair were back again in 1998, winning an estimated A$10 million on Jezabeel.

More recently and closer to home, ‘Fearless’ Freddie Williams laid his nemesis, Irish billionaire John Patrick ‘J.P.’ McManus, a bet of £600,000/£100,000 about Reveillez, the winner of the Jewson Novices’ Handicap Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in 2006. As recently as 2023, as reported in ‘The Sun’, Star Sports laid an unnamed punter bet of £83,636/£230,000 about Constitution Hill in the Champion Hurdle, also at the Cheltenham Festival.

The simplest and arguably the most common type of bet placed on horse racing is a straight win bet, or win single. As the name suggests, a win single is a bet on just one horse, which must win to produce a return.

However, for punters who enjoy betting at long odds and/or in large fields, each-way and place bets may provide a ‘safety net’ in the event that a selection runs well, but not quite well enough to win.

A each-way, or win and place, bet is, as the name suggests, a two-part bet, or two bets in one. The first bet is a win bet and the second bet is a place bet, which produces a return if a selection finishes second, third or fourth, depending on the number of runners in the race. Indeed, in some of the major handicaps of the season, the Grand National being the prime example, some bookmakers may offer enhanced place terms and pay out on horses that finish fifth, sixth, seventh or further down the field. Of course, being effectively two bets, an each-way bet costs double the stake of a straight win bet.

Unlike an each-way bet, a place, or place only, bet is a straight single bet on a selection to finish in the first two, three or four, depending on the number of runners. Place betting odds are a fraction of the win odds, though, so can produce a disappointing outcome is a selection does actually prove good enough to win.