If you place a bet on the Tote, who do you think you are betting against? For most of its customers, the answer today would probably be much the same as it was when Winston Churchill helped to set up the UK’s pool-betting operation nearly a century ago. The Tote is there for recreational, relatively small-scale punters, and racegoers in particular, who want a fiver each-way for an interest, or a few quid in the Placepot in the hope of a decent return at the end of the afternoon.
And while hardly anyone on a day out at the races is bothered about the mechanics of Tote betting, one key point is generally understood: there’s no bookie. Instead, all the cash goes into the pool, the Tote takes a cut off the top and then divides what is left by the number of winning units to get the dividend.
