Tote World Pool Betting Explainer: How To Bet On Multi-Million Pound Racing Pool

Tote are one of the biggest horse racing betting brands in the world and their online site provides customers with lots of different ways to bet. 

This includes the World Pool which gives you a chance to make predictions for horse races when it comes to meetings taking place across the planet and there are some big prizes up for grabs.

As the strapline goes, you can “Bet With the World” thanks to the World Pool, with this concept being the creation of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. 

Along with the UK and Ireland, there are 20 nations who form part of this pool and they includes Hong Kong, United States of America, Australia and France.

With so many big betting nations placing bets on the same markets, it means a bumper pot can often be available for the customers who prove successful. It’s been described as the “EuroMillions of horse racing” for obvious reasons.

As far as the UK arm of World Pool is concerned, this is governed by Tote. That means you will need to be a customer with Tote in order to get involved. 

When you sign up to Tote, you can claim £20 in horse racing credits by simply betting £5 and you also have the opportunity to play regularly through the World Pool.

The World Pool is not available every single day but focuses on the days where there is a high-profile meeting taking place. This means high interest not just in the UK but also further afield. 

The high interest in various countries means huge betting turnover and the chance to win a larger amount by betting in international pools.

How Many World Pool Days Are There?

At present, there are 17 World Pool days when it comes to British and Irish horse racing.

This was the case in 2022 and it might even be a bigger number in the coming years, although this means that customers are regularly able to log into their Tote betting app and wager money on their preferred selections as part of a global pot.

The World Pool days include Coral-Eclipse Day, QIPCO King George Diamond Day, the first three days of the Qatar Goodwood Festival, the first three days of the Welcome to Yorkshire Ebor Festival, Longines Irish Champions Day at Leopardstown and QIPCO British Champions Day.​

Here is the full list of World Pool Days for 2022:

• World Sports Betting Cape Town MET - Kenilworth, South Africa, Saturday 29th January
• Dubai Super Saturday - Meydan, UAE, Saturday 5th March​
• Dubai World Cup - Meydan, UAE, Saturday 26th March 
• QIPCO 2000 Guineas Day – Newmarket Rowley Mile Racecourse, Saturday 30th April​
• Cazoo Oaks Day – Epsom Downs Racecourse, Friday 3rd June​
• Cazoo Derby Day – Epsom Downs Racecourse, Saturday 4th June​
• Five days of Royal Ascot – Ascot Racecourse, Tuesday 14th to Saturday 18th June ​
• QIPCO King George Diamond Day – Ascot Racecourse, Saturday 23rd July​
• The first three days of the Qatar Goodwood Festival - Goodwood Racecourse, Tuesday 26th to Thursday 28th July​
• The first three days of the Welcome to Yorkshire Ebor Festival – York Racecourse, Wednesday 17th to Friday 19th August​
• Longines Irish Champions Day – Leopardstown, Saturday 10th September 
• QIPCO British Champions Day – Ascot Racecourse, Saturday 15th October

On these World Pool days, there is the opportunity to place a wide range of different Tote bets on each racecard. The prize pools will differ according to the bet type, although it’s great to have a wide choice. 

This includes Win, Place, Forecast, Trifecta (first, second and third in correct order), Quinella (first two in either order), Swinger (two in the first three) and Treble.

Turnover across World Pool events have been reported at over £190 million for 2022 so far, with the 2021 Derby being a World Pool event for the first time. 

The pool grew from £1.7 million to over £26 million as a result of this change and Derby winner Adayar paid £20.24 on the Tote compared to a Starting Price of 16/1.

How Can I Place Bets in the World Pool?

In order to be part of World Pool horse racing days, you need to be signed up with Tote. It takes just a couple of minutes to register a betting account and you can then choose to make a deposit using a bank card. 

This can be either Mastercard, Visa or Maestro, with customers needing to register the long number and expiry date.

Once you have linked a payment to your betting account, then you can go ahead and make a deposit. You enter the security code on the back of your card and the amount you want to deposit. 

The transaction can then take place and you have a funded betting balance with which to place horse racing bets.

On World Pool days, you can then bet on the horse races which interest you the most. You can see the race meetings where there is global participation and the amounts can reach eye-watering levels whether you are placing a win, place or forecast bet.

You will notice that World Pool bets are all focused on individual races rather than multi-leg bets such as Jackpot and Placepot. 

Therefore, it’s all about playing on a race-to-race basis and hopefully benefitting from a bigger return when you manage to predict a winning selection.

What Are the Best World Pool Day Betting Tips?

As Tote explain on their website, there are some shrewd ways of approaching World Pool Day. For example, there are sometimes customers in countries such as Hong Kong who will wager on familiar jockeys irrespective of the horse that they’re riding. 

It can lead to other runners being over-priced and the Tote pool is a good way of benefitting.

You should also look out for Tote+ which is also known as Tote Plus and these are races where an extra 10% is added to every winning dividend.

It can offer tremendous value and it’s often the case that you already have the better odds from this style of pool betting rather than the fixed odds you get with other bookies.

There is also the Tote Guarantee should the SP prove to be bigger than the price that you end up with on your racing bets. 

This can sometimes kick in when you’ve backed one of the selections at shorter betting odds, with this similar to the Best Odds Guaranteed promotion that some horse racing betting sites run.

The World Pool Likely to Give You Bigger Racing Odds

There are genuine reasons to choose the Tote as one of your horse racing betting sites. For starters, they don’t build any commission into winnings and that means that the payouts are consistently bigger than the fixed-odds UK bookmakers. 

Naturally, it can depend on the selections you are backing, although the price boosts often apply to bigger priced selections.

However, one of the big advantages to World Pool betting means that there is greater liquidity. If you are betting on a non-World Pool race, then a big staking punter can often distort the pay out on the same selection that you want to back. 

That is because the liabilities and overall price is affected by the size of each wager placed on a horse.

When it comes to a World Pool race, you are likely to see betting odds that more adequately reflect the probability of each horse winning. 

On British Champions Day in 2021, the Tote beat SP in five of the six races and this is an outcome that continues to reoccur for the big meetings.

Indeed, if you had placed a £1 bet on each winner when it came to the 17 World Pool days on British and Irish racing in 2021, then you would have achieved a 15% higher return compared with the industry SP. 

Similarly, the Tote+ Win price beat the SP 70% of the time on World Pool days last year.

For those customers who like to bet on some of the other markets, there is also a huge amount of liquidity that can exist here. In the exotic markets, the Exacta has regularly trumped the Standard Forecast and the price has been bigger 78% of the time. 

Even better is the fact that the Trifecta topples the Tricast on 82% of occasions for the World Pool events.

The 2022 Oaks and Derby Break World Pool Records

There’s little doubt that World Pool days are to be embraced by Tote betting customers and there’s an extra edge to be found from betting through the Tote on these occasions rather than place fixed-odds bets with other UK bookmakers.

The Oaks and Derby took place at Epsom Racecourse in 2022 and they happened to be the second and third World Pool days of the year. For the 14 races across the two days, Tote+ was in operation and the winning prices beat the Starting Price on eleven occasions.

Similarly, when it came to the Tote+ Trifecta (where a customer predicts the first, second and third in selected races), then this came out as a bigger price than the Tricast in six out of the nine races. 

This included the Oaks where the Tote+ Trifecta paid out £133.10 compared to the £44.90 that was paid out by the Tricast.