In Horse Racing, What Are Forecast and Tricast Bets?

Forecast & Tricast Bets

Horse racing betting remains hugely popular in the UK and two of the most popular multiple-selection bets you can make on a race are Forecast and Tricast bets.

In this post, we are going to examine what Forecast and Tricast bets are, how they work, how much they cost to put on per unit stake and how you can calculate your returns based on the odds offered on the selections you pick.

We will then also delve into looking at each way Forecast and Tricast bets and how they work.

Finally, we will sum up these bets for you in a series of quickfire FAQs. Including looking at how easy or difficult they are to land, when is a good time to use a Forecast or Tricast bet and when it is not such a good idea.

What are Forecast and Tricast bets?

It is actually very easy to explain what Forecast and Tricast bets are.

They are wagers on which runners in a horse race will come home in first and second place (in the case of a Forecast bet) and which horses will finish first, second and third (in the case of a Tricast).

Let’s explore each type of bet in a bit more detail using examples taken from bet365 Sport and its extensive horse racing section.

Locating the Forecast/Tricast Bets Section

To find the Forecast/Tricast betting section, simply click on any race you want to bet on at bet365 and then when the default Racecard page loads up, simply select the third tab in the list of bet types, which is Forecast/Tricast as shown in the screenshot.

This brings up a specific Forecast & Tricast betting page on which you can make your selections.

Placing a Forecast Bet

It is extremely easy to place a Forecast bet. From the list of runners in the race, you will notice that next to them under the Forecast Section you have three columns. 1st, 2nd and Any. Don’t worry about the ‘Any” option for now. We are going to focus on the first two selections only.

All you do to make your selections is from the list of runners, pick the horse you think will win the race and click the tick in the 1st column next to that horse. Then follow the same process by selecting the tick in the 2nd column for the horse you think will finish second.

When completed, your completed Forecast form should look something like this:

Forecast & Tricast Bets

You will notice that the green Add to Bet Slip button has activated. Simply click on this and you will add the bet to your bet slip, and it will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Forecast & Tricast Bets

In the screenshot above, you can see that the two options I selected, Irish Flame to win and Havana Party to finish second would return a straight Forecast bet at odds of 27.62. That means that if I placed a £10 bet on those selections and they did indeed finish 1-2 in the order I selected, then the successful Forecast bet would pay out £276.20.

However, any other 1-2 finish out of the 9 runners in the race would mean that the bet was a loser.

Placing a Tricast Bet

As you have probably guessed, there’s not too much difference between placing Forecast and Tricast bets, only that for Tricast bets, you also pick a selection to finish third in the race.

This of course increases the difficulty of landing the bet successfully, but the upshot of this is that you tend to get much better value odds.

For this bet we are going to use the same two selections we made to finish 1st and 2nd, Irish Flame and Havana Party.

Only this time, we are going to select them under the Tricast columns for 1st and 2nd. Then once we have selected these two options, we are going to add our third-place selection, which I have selected Dragons Will Rise.

Forecast & Tricast Bets

Once again, the Add to Bet Slip option as illuminated, so click on this to bring up the bet slip so you can place the bet.

Forecast & Tricast Bets

On the bet slip, you can see that adding that third selection Dragons Will Rise increases the potential returns from the 27.62 on the initial Forecast Bet to 164.45 for a Tricast Bet. The same £10 bet on this Tricast bet would therefore return £1644.50 if all three selections finish in the order stated.

So you can see, Tricast bets tend to offer much higher potential rewards than Forecast bets, but as you are predicting the finishing position of three horses, as opposed to two, they are also more difficult to land.

However, there is a way you can make your Forecast and Tricast bets easier to land. Remember the ‘any’ option we mentioned earlier?

The Any Option on Forecast and Tricast Bets – Combination Bets

You will recall we mentioned that Forecast Bets have three options, 1st, 2nd and Any and Tricast Bets have four options, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and Any. In this section we are going to focus on what that Any column selections mean.

You can imagine that the Any option is in effect an each way bet. It will allow you to cover the different options your selections could finish in the race in the bet.

So for example, if we looked at the Forecast Bet we originally placed, but this time used the two Any selections for Irish Flame and Havana Party with the same unit stake of £10.

What you will find on the bet slip is that you will have two different betting outcomes to cover. Irish Flame to win and Havana Party to come second, and Havana Party to win and Irish Flame to come second.

That means you would require 2x your unit stake, for a total bet cost of £20.

How much you would win depends on the order that the horses finish. If Irish Flame wins and Havana Party finished second, you would win £276.20. But if Havana Party wins and Irish Flame finishes second, you’d win £375.60.

This type of bet is called a Combination Forecast bet as you can see from the odds for the bet outlined below.

Forecast & Tricast Bets

For Tricast bets, it is the exact same process, only you are making three selections to finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the race.

As with the Forecast bets, the order these selections finish in will influence the size of the payout you win greatly.

But one thing to note here is that with three selections, there are six possible finishing orders for the three selections made for the bet. Namely: -

1st – Irish Flame, 2nd – Havana Party, 3rd – Dragons Will Rise
1st – Irish Flame, 2nd – Dragons Will Rise, 3rd – Havana Party
1st – Havana Party, 2nd – Irish Flame, 3rd – Dragons Will Rise
1st – Havana Party, 2nd – Dragons Will Rise, - 3rd – Irish Flame
1st – Dragons Will Rise, 2nd – Irish Flame, 3rd – Havana Party
1st – Dragons Will Rise, 2nd – Havana Party, 3rd – Irish Flame

At a £10 unit stake therefore, it would cost £60 to place this Combination Tricast bet. However, the amount you could win depending on the finishing order is also increased markedly.

1st – Irish Flame, 2nd – Havana Party, 3rd – Dragons Will Rise - £1,644.50 return
1st – Irish Flame, 2nd – Dragons Will Rise, 3rd – Havana Party - £1,568.20 return
1st – Havana Party, 2nd – Irish Flame, 3rd – Dragons Will Rise - £2,302.50 return
1st – Havana Party, 2nd – Dragons Will Rise, - 3rd – Irish Flame - £3,202.30 return
1st – Dragons Will Rise, 2nd – Irish Flame, 3rd – Havana Party - £2,129,20 return
1st – Dragons Will Rise, 2nd – Havana Party, 3rd – Irish Flame - £3,105.30 return

So, as you can see, using the Any options allows your selections to finish in the top two (Forecast) or three (Tricast) in any order and will still land you a win, provided all selections finish in the paying places. If one or more of your selections finished outside the paying places, your bet is a loser.

Frequently asked questions

Only a few sports offer Forecast and Tricast Bets, and they tend to be race based sports such as Horse Racing and Greyhounds.

Forecast and Tricast bets are very difficult to hit with any degree of regularity, especially in races which have a good number of runners.

Therefore, I’d tend to use these bets on races with eight or fewer runners and where one or two or three horses are the clear quality in the field.

Even then these bets can be very tricky to hit, but the set-up of this kind of race does make it more likely that the bet could be a winner, especially if you use the Any option rather than the straight forecast options for your chosen bet.

Forecast and Tricast betting is a good way to enhance your betting on horse racing, offering an exciting way to predict the outcome of a race with some potentially big returns on offer!