What Is a Daily Double Bet?
If the payout for a single win bet is not too exciting for you, then you should try taking it up a notch with a daily double. This type of wager requires you to pick the winners of two consecutive races that are part of the Daily Double program. The payoffs for this kind of bet are much higher compared to normal win, place, and show bets.
Compared to other exotic bets in horse racing, daily double is much easier to grasp. Still, if you’re a beginner, you’ll need someone to show you how it works.
Daily Double Bet in Horse Racing — the Basics
The concept of a daily double bet is simple — you ‘only’ need to predict the winners of two races, which usually take place consecutively on the daily double program. This might sound easy in theory, but it takes a lot of skill and luck to pull it off.
Picking a single winner can be tricky enough without the additional burden of having to predict back-to-back winners. That’s why daily double presents a challenging task even for the most proficient bettors.
This is reflected in the potential payout, which is much higher than for single win bets, and that’s the main lure of daily double wagers for horse racing bettors.
It’s important to point out that there are usually only a couple of daily double races throughout the day. For that reason, sportsbooks will try to include as many evenly-matched races as possible in their daily double program, making it even more difficult for you to predict the winner.
Also, the races set up for the daily double program usually feature a particularly high number of horses, which, again, adds greatly to the difficulty of winning the bet.
We’ll show you now how a daily double bet works on an example. Let’s assume that you picked a 4-6 daily double bet for a specific track. To win this wager, you need horses #4 and #6 to win the first and the following race, respectively.
Different Types of Daily Double Bets
There are a couple of variations of the daily double bet. The differences between them are reflected in the order of the races, while the core principle remains the same — you have to correctly predict the winners of two races to win the bet.
- Early daily double: This is a wager on the first two races of the day. You need to get both predictions right to receive a payout. The cost and the potential payoff is the same as with other types of daily double wagers.
- Late daily double: With late daily double, you’re betting on the winners of the last two races in the daily double program. The cost of the daily double ticket is $2.
- Special daily double: On rare occasions, daily double races may belong to two different daily double programs. And sometimes, the daily double races can take place over multiple days.
Is It Possible to Win a Daily Double with Just One Leg Correct?
In rare situations, you could get paid even if you predict correctly just one leg from the daily double bet. This happens when no one manages to forecast both legs from the daily double race that you placed wagers on. Since there is no pool for the winning combination, the track has to pay something to bettors for their investment.
For example, let’s say that you picked horses #4 and #6 to win the first and the second race. The #4 wins the first race, but the second race goes to horse #7, which was a heavy underdog, and no one placed a bet on it to win the second race. In this case, the racetrack (or the online sportsbook) will pay out to those that predicted #4 would win the first race, regardless of their picks for the second race.
Daily Double Payout
The amount of money you can win from a daily double bet is determined by the parimutuel system where the payoff odds depend on how the bettors placed their wagers. So theoretically, betting on two favourites could land you the same profit as betting on two underdogs.
The payouts in the parimutuel wagering are calculated based on the total number of winners, the total number of tickets sold in the betting pool, and the percentage the track (or the sportsbook) takes from the prize pool. Fewer winning bets make for a bigger payoff, and vice versa.
