Providing a brief history of parimutuel wagering and how it works.

Parimutuel betting has existed since the 1860s let’s take a look at History of Parimutuel Odds most race tracks adopted this form wagering.?p>

Originally developed in Paris in 1867 by Catalan impresario Joseph Oller. And also important to note is that this needed a fair amount of mathematical calculations and this lead to what we now know as the tote board. Toteboards were reported to have been fairly widely used throughout the United States not long after their introduction in 1927.

Previous to this all race tracks and sportsbooks had to work on a completely fixed odds system and although fixed odds are still found at some books, most bookies prefer the parimutuel wagering systems. In a fixed odds system the amount of payout for winners is determined ahead of time, whereas in a parimutuel system the payout cannot be determined until the betting pool is closed.

Parimutuel Odds

Parimutuel odds or parimutuel betting and wagering helps keeps betting for punters a bit more fair and also guarantees sportsbooks to make a fair profit to handle the action of bettors. This is a mutual betting system in that all bets on a particular race go into a pool and the track will take their “take out” or “vig” as some sports bettors or bookies like to call it is a set percentage of that pool from each race.

The taxes collected will also be a percentage of that pool depending on where the bookie or race track is located following whatever regulators in that part of the world depending on the licensing district.

The amount left in the pool is what is paid out to the betters that won depending on what the odds were when the pool closed at post time as well as whether the punter has bet win place or show.

Rather than try and explain the math we recommend you take a look at the wiki here for a better explanation./

Most racetracks you visit whether in person or one of the many online sportsbooks will provide you with a chart that will help you translate their published odds so you can fully understand when placing your bets.

The above is really only a brief history of parimutuel odds but has allowed a quick look into the background of this type of wagering and why it made logical sense for tracks around the world to to adopt this, and has also put the players on a more even ground.