Reverse Forecast Betting Explained: Complete Guide to Forecast & Tricast Bets

Picking the winner is hard enough. Now imagine calling the runner-up as well, or the whole top three in the right order, and you can see why forecasts and tricasts put a glint in every racing fan's eye. A £1 bet can return many times its stake when the right horses fill the right places, and the biggest dividends arrive when outsiders crash the party.

The catch is the price of the ticket. A reverse forecast costs double your unit stake, a three-horse combination tricast costs six times, and a fourth horse takes that to 24. This guide walks through how every version works, what each one costs, how Tote and bookmaker payouts differ and where we think these bets earn their place.

If you'd rather let a machine do the arithmetic, our betting calculators will check your total in seconds. Knowing the sums yourself is still the best protection.

A forecast is a bet on the first two finishers in a race, whether that's a big Saturday handicap or a Monday night at Romford. Back the winner alone and you've placed a simple win bet. A forecast asks for first and second, which is harder to land and pays accordingly. There are two basic flavours, and the difference matters for your wallet.

Straight forecast

You name the horse (or dog) to finish first and the one to finish second, in that exact order. The runners below are made up, but the maths is real. Say you fancy Thunder Strike, the 2/1 favourite, to win and Silver Arrow, a 5/1 shot, to run second. A £1 straight forecast wins only if Thunder Strike wins and Silver Arrow follows it home. If Silver Arrow wins with Thunder Strike second, you lose. If Thunder Strike wins and a different horse is second, you lose too. One bet, one stake.

You don't know your return when you place it. Forecast dividends are declared after the race using the Computer Straight Forecast (CSF), which is worked out from the starting prices of the horses involved. Say it comes in at 12.58: a £1 stake returns £12.58, which is £11.58 profit plus your stake. Some bookmakers give a rough guide beforehand, but the declared dividend is what you're paid.

Reverse forecast

This is where most people start, and it fixes a very common problem: you like two horses but can't call the order. A reverse forecast covers both:

1. Thunder Strike first, Silver Arrow second
2. Silver Arrow first, Thunder Strike second

That's two bets, so a £1 reverse forecast costs £2. Read the slip total before you confirm, because this is the number that catches beginners out. If your pair fill the first two places, one of the two bets wins. With a dividend of 18.31, you'd collect £18.31 on a £2 outlay, a profit of £16.31.

It suits races where two horses stand clear of the field and the only question is which gets home first. Half your stake is always going to be a loser, and that's the fee for not having to choose.

Fancy three or four horses but can't split them? A combination forecast lets any two of your selections finish first and second in either order. The price of that freedom is the number of bets it creates, and the total climbs faster than most people expect.

Cost at £1 per line. We'll get to tricasts in a moment.

Take a competitive handicap with Red Storm, Blue Lightning and Green Dart in your sights. A £1 combination forecast costs £6. If Red Storm wins with Green Dart second, you're in. If Blue Lightning wins with Red Storm second, you're in again. Any two of the three in the first two places pays out, but only one line wins, and it pays the dividend for that particular order. If that dividend is 36.51, you collect £36.51 for your £6 outlay, a profit of £30.51.

The sweet spot is a wide-open handicap where you've narrowed the field to three live contenders. Add a fourth horse and the cost doubles, and the extra cover is only worth paying for if it genuinely improves your chance of hitting the frame. Most of the time, we'd rather stay at three.

A forecast asks for two places. A tricast asks for three: first, second and third, all in the right order. The difficulty jumps, and so do the potential dividends.

Straight tricast

One bet, exact order. Back Gold Rush to win, Silver Lining second and Bronze Beauty third, and they must finish precisely like that. Gold Rush winning with Bronze Beauty second and Silver Lining third is a loser.

To get a feel for the odds against you, picture an eight-runner race where every horse has an equal chance. There are 8 × 7 × 6 = 336 ways to fill the top three, so a correct straight tricast is a 1-in-336 shot before you've read a single line of form. Real races are never that even, and that's where proper homework earns its keep, but the number shows why landing a tricast feels so special. Dividends are declared after the race and depend on the prices of the horses that finish, so you can't know what you'll collect in advance.

Combination tricast

Like three horses for the places but can't call the order? A combination tricast covers every ordering of your selections: A-B-C, A-C-B, B-A-C, B-C-A, C-A-B and C-B-A. Three horses mean six bets, so a £1 combination tricast costs £6. Add a fourth horse and it's 24 bets and £24, as the table above shows.

Each winning line pays its own dividend, and the dividend depends on who finished where. A favourite winning with short-priced horses in the places usually pays modestly. An outsider winning with other big prices in the frame can pay handsomely. You're paying a premium for the cover, so we like to save combinations for races where the outsiders have a genuine squeak.

Forecasts and tricasts are bookmaker bets. Their cousins at the Tote are the exacta (first and second in order) and the trifecta (first three in order), and they run on a completely different system.

A bookmaker pays you the declared forecast or tricast dividend. The Tote runs a pool instead: every stake goes in, the Tote takes its deduction, and what's left is shared between the winning tickets. To keep the sums easy, imagine a £10,000 pool with a 25% deduction (real deductions vary by bet and meeting). That leaves £7,500. If there are 15 winning units, each £1 unit pays £500. Fewer winners means a bigger share, and a popular result means a smaller one.

That's why the Tote comes into its own when outsiders fill the frame. Few tickets include them, so winning tickets are rare and the dividends can dwarf the bookmaker's. It doesn't beat the CSF every time, though, so compare the two whenever you can.

We'd lean towards the Tote at the big festivals such as Cheltenham and the Grand National, where deep pools and open betting produce juicy dividends, and for moderate stakes, because a very big stake can drag the dividend down by changing the pool. The bookmaker looks better in small races with tiny pools, where the deduction leaves little for the winners, and in races dominated by short-priced favourites, where plenty of tickets share the spoils.

Here's the frustrating part. With a forecast or tricast you never know what you'll win when you place the bet, because the dividend only exists once the race is over.

The CSF

For bookmaker forecasts the dividend is the Computer Straight Forecast, worked out from the starting prices of the horses that fill the places. You can't reproduce it on the back of a slip, so the best you can do beforehand is estimate from the prices. The longer the prices of the first two home, the bigger the dividend.

A quick illustration: a CSF of £800 for a £1 stake means a £5 forecast returns £4,000 (£800 × 5), a profit of £3,995. That's rare, which is what makes those races so memorable.

Tote dividends

Pool the stakes, take off the deduction, divide by the winning units, exactly as above. It's why Tote returns swing around more than CSFs from race to race.

The practical takeaway is to price the race up before you bet. If your pair are both short-priced favourites the dividend will be small, and two win singles may do the same job for less.

Things don't always go to plan on the day, so it's worth knowing the rules before they matter.

Non-runners

If a horse you've backed is withdrawn, treatment varies by firm, so check the terms where you play. The common approaches are to void the bet and refund the stake, to revert to a win bet on the remaining selection, or to let the bet stand on the remaining runners. Combination bets are the friendliest here, because lines that don't include the withdrawn horse can still win. If non-runners shrink the field below the minimum a bet needs, the bet is usually voided and the stake returned.

Dead heats

A dead heat doesn't void your bet. You're still paid, though the return is usually smaller than it would have been for a clean finish.

Before we get into which bet suits which race, here's the scorecard. Lines are at a £1 unit, and the Tote bets are pool-based, so they have no fixed number of lines.

The more lines you buy, the more often you'll win something. You'll also lose more when you're wrong, and that trade-off runs through everything below.

Match the bet to the race and you'll sidestep the most expensive mistakes.

A straight forecast suits races where you hold a strong view on the one-two, often smaller fields with a clear favourite and an obvious chaser. It's the budget option at a single unit.

A reverse forecast fits when two horses look a cut above the rest and you can't split them. Fields of eight to twelve suit it well: enough uncertainty to pay a decent dividend, not so much that your pair are long shots.

Combination forecasts belong in competitive handicaps where three or four runners have similar ratings. Pay for the cover only after you've done the form.

Tricasts work best in big fields, where the difficulty creates the price. Go straight when you have a strong, specific opinion, and go combination when you have three you trust and no idea of the order. Steer clear of small fields with short-priced favourites, because you're paying for long odds that never arrive.

Tote exacta and trifecta shine at the big festivals, when outsiders finish in the frame and the pool is deep.

And if you're still finding your feet, start with win and each-way bets. Exotics reward form study, and firing them at every race on the card is a quick way to bleed money.

Good forecast betting is mostly about the work you do before the race and the discipline you show around it.

Race selection

Go where the uncertainty is. Competitive handicaps and big fields produce the biggest dividends, while novice races and low-class events throw up results nobody can predict. Races dominated by a short-priced favourite are rarely good value for a forecast. Better a few well-chosen races than every race on the card.

Do your homework

Recent form, going preferences, distance, race fitness, track bias and the jockey and trainer all matter. Our guide to jockey and trainer statistics is a good place to learn how to read the people behind the horse.

Watch the market

Moves in the betting often point to confidence, and starting prices feed the CSF directly, so a horse that shortens will trim your dividend. Compare the Tote and the bookmaker when you can.

Stake sensibly

Start small, work out the total cost before you place the bet, and risk only a small slice of your bankroll on any one exotic. Set daily and weekly limits, track your results and never chase losses. Our guide to staking and bankroll management goes deeper.

The gap between a fun flutter and a quietly expensive habit usually comes down to a few avoidable slips.

Not reading the slip total. A £5 combination tricast on three horses costs £30, not £5, because it's six lines at £5. It's the most common exotic error going, and the betslip total is there to stop you making it.

Betting every race. Exotics reward patience. A forecast on every race means paying the margin again and again on bets where you have no edge. Pick your spots.

Chasing losses. Upping the stake to get it back after a bad run is how a small leak becomes a flood. Fix your stakes before the first race and stick to them.

Playing small fields. A combination tricast in a five- or six-runner race wastes money: plenty of lines, short prices and little reward.

Skipping the form. Betting on names, hunches or a tip with no reasoning behind it isn't a strategy. Do the work or take a smaller bet.

Ignoring the rules and the Tote. Know what happens if your horse is withdrawn, and look at the Tote pools in the big races before defaulting to the bookmaker.

Letting combinations spiral. Four or more selections rarely justify the extra cost. Unless you've a very specific reason, three is plenty.

One last habit worth building: keep a simple log of bet type, stake and result. Within a month you'll see which bets are paying their way and which are just fun.

Forecasts and tricasts are just as at home in greyhound racing as on the turf, and in some ways the dogs make a gentler classroom. Most UK races have six runners, so there are fewer permutations to wade through, and the dogs race often, which makes recent form easier to follow. Minimum stakes are small too, so you can learn without a big outlay. Our greyhound racing betting guide covers the tracks and traps in more detail.

Traps are the big difference. With only six dogs the draw matters, and some tracks favour particular traps or running styles, so reading the circuit is half the job.

The bets themselves will feel familiar. Straight and reverse forecasts are the staples of a night at the dogs, and tricasts are widely offered. Combination tricasts are the odd ones out: short prices in small fields mean they rarely pay enough to justify their cost.

Watch racing from another country and the bets are the same; only the labels change.

The Tote at UK courses uses the exacta and trifecta labels too, which is why you'll often see both vocabularies on the same racecard.

Once the basics feel comfortable, two tricks are worth knowing.

A banker tricast

Certain about the winner but not about who fills the places? Put your banker first in every line. With A to win and B, C and D filling second and third, that's 3 × 2 = 6 straight tricast lines, against 24 for a four-horse combination covering every order. You keep the cost down by committing to the one horse you really trust.

Counting the lines

The number of lines in a combination tricast is the number of ordered ways to fill the top three places from your selections: selections × (selections − 1) × (selections − 2). Three horses give 3 × 2 × 1 = 6, four give 4 × 3 × 2 = 24, five give 60 and six give 120. A combination forecast follows the same logic for two places: selections × (selections − 1). Do that sum before you bet and there'll be no surprises on the slip.

Forecasts and tricasts sit where skill meets a very large helping of luck. Treated as the occasional treat they're great fun; treated as a system, they eat bankrolls. Here's how we'd approach them:

• Start with straight and reverse forecasts. Learn to call the one-two before you pay for the one-two-three.
• Read the total on the slip, every time. The number of lines times your unit stake is what you're really betting.
• Hunt in competitive handicaps and big fields. That's where the dividends live and where favourites aren't safe.
• Compare the Tote with the bookmaker in big races. Outsiders in the frame are the Tote's sweet spot.
• Keep combinations to three selections. A fourth horse doubles or quadruples the bill for a small gain in cover.
• Fix your stake before the first race. Small, steady and never chased.

Do that, and these bets stay what they should be: a well-researched bit of fun on the side of your main betting, not the main event.

• CSF (Computer Straight Forecast): the dividend paid on bookmaker forecasts, worked out from the starting prices
• Exacta: Tote pool bet on the first two in order, the equivalent of a straight forecast
• Trifecta: Tote pool bet on the first three in order, the equivalent of a tricast
• Quinella: first two in either order (US and Australian term), close to a reverse forecast
• Dead heat: a tie for a finishing position
• Non-runner: a horse or dog withdrawn before the race
• SP (starting price): the official odds at the start of the race
• Unit stake: the base amount on each line of a bet
• Pool betting: all stakes are pooled, then divided among the winners

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