What You Need to Know About Pool Bets

Author: Neha Agrawal

Pool bets can take many shapes and sizes. They can be based on almost anything; from sporting events to new haircuts, to lottery numbers to horse racing. The two most common types of betting pools are Tote bets (horse racing) and the Pools (football). Tote bets for horse racing simply dictate that everybody puts their wagers down on a specific event, with a specific bet. Then all of the money in the Tote will be accumulated together, and when the outcome of the horse race is known, the money that has been pooled together will be paid out to those players who guessed the correct horse or horses.

The same principle applies to football pool betting. Players will send in their predictions to several football matches, either by stating that in a series of matches, this team will win, that team will draw, and this team will lose. They might also decide to play the draws, and say this team will have a score draw (1-1, 2-2, 3-3, etc) and this team will have a no score draw (0-0). Again, all the money is pooled together and the winning bets will then see all the money paid out from the pool to those players who predicted successfully.

Betting pools can also include lotteries, whereby a group of friend or family members all put in money every week into a pot to buy a series of lottery tickets. Should one person win the lottery with their ticket, then everybody in the betting pool will also get a share of the jackpot that the player has accumulated. These are more commonly known as syndicated lotteries, but they are essentially betting pools also.

Private betting pools are often run from places of employment, or buy a group of friends. Although technically not legal, these betting pools can be about anything and everything. Perhaps there is a pool going at your work that Susan will get her haircut on Thursday. You might think it Sunday so you put a fiver in, and your boss might think it Tuesday, and so he wagers on that. Whoever is closest to the actual day that Susan cuts her hair, will win the betting pool.

These are all perfect examples of gambling pools and how pooled bets work different than those you will find at bookies, which always have fixed odds, so you know exactly how much you are going to win. The bottom line is this. Pooled bets are cheaper to enter and generally offer more money than fixed odds wagering at bookies. If you want more for less than pooled bets could very well be for you.