Forecast and Tricast in the UK: Picking the Top of the Photo Finish

Picking the Order Where Show Bets Stop Being Useful

The first Tricast I ever landed was at Pontefract on a wet Wednesday afternoon in 2014. £1 stake, three horses in the right order, £318 dividend. The Tricast pool that day was small, the three horses I had picked were not heavily backed, and the variance worked spectacularly in my direction. The dividend was approximately 318 times the stake, on a race where my reasoning had been roughly the same as for a normal each-way slip – just pushed one step further into specificity.

That story is not typical of how Forecast and Tricast betting plays out across a Wednesday afternoon. Most £1 Tricast tickets do not return £318; most do not return anything. The product’s appeal is structurally similar to that of the Tote multi-leg pools – long-tail variance, high possible dividends on small stakes, and a kind of intellectual engagement with the race that goes beyond simple win or each-way slip placement. The product rewards careful order-of-finish thinking in a way that few other British racing-betting products do.

Forecast and Tricast are the British names for what most international racing markets call Exacta and Trifecta. The mechanics are similar to those internationally familiar products with the key difference that the British versions are calculated on dividend formulae derived from the starting prices of the placing horses rather than from a pari-mutuel pool in the American style. The difference matters for how dividends are calculated and how the customer can plan their stakes.

The Forecast: First and Second in the Right Order

A standard Forecast bet – sometimes called a “Straight Forecast” – requires the customer to pick the first and second horses in a race in the correct order of finish. If the customer’s selections finish first and second in that exact order, the bet wins. Any other outcome – including the same two horses finishing in the wrong order – settles as a loss.

The dividend on a Forecast bet is calculated by the Computer Straight Forecast (CSF) formula, which uses the starting prices of the placing horses, the field size, and various race-specific factors to compute a dividend per £1 stake. The CSF formula has been the British racing industry’s standard dividend calculator for decades, and the resulting dividends are published officially after each race.

A worked Forecast example. A 12-runner handicap with a 6/1 favourite winning and a 12/1 second-favourite finishing second. The CSF dividend on a £1 stake might be £58 – the exact figure depends on the field size, the prices of the other runners, and the specific dividend formula in use. The dividend would have been higher if either or both of the placing horses had been priced longer; lower if they had been priced shorter.

The Reverse Forecast – sometimes called the “Combination Forecast” – covers both possible orders of finish between two horses. A £1 reverse forecast on horses A and B effectively places two £1 forecasts: one on A first and B second, and another on B first and A second. The total cost is therefore £2 per reverse forecast, and the bet wins if the two named horses finish first and second in either order. The reverse forecast is the structural equivalent of placing two separate forecasts to cover both possible orderings.

The dividend on a Reverse Forecast is calculated as a single CSF dividend on whichever order actually finishes, applied to the £1 stake on that specific ordering. The customer does not double the dividend by placing a reverse forecast – they double the stake to cover both orderings, with only one of the two orderings actually winning. The expected return on a reverse forecast is therefore lower per pound staked than a straight forecast on the more-likely ordering, but the win rate is higher because the bet is live on either ordering.

Reverse and Combination Forecasts

The Combination Forecast extends the reverse-forecast logic to more than two horses. A combination forecast on three horses covers all possible first-and-second orderings between those three horses – six combinations in total (A-B, A-C, B-A, B-C, C-A, C-B). The cost is therefore six times the unit stake, and the bet wins if any two of the three selected horses finish first and second in any order.

The combination structure scales aggressively with the number of selections. Four horses produce 12 combinations; five horses produce 20 combinations; six horses produce 30 combinations. The escalation is a function of the permutations of pairs from the selected horses, and the cost-per-coverage ratio becomes unfavourable quickly. Most customers who use combination forecasts limit themselves to three or four selections in any single race.

The strategic case for a combination forecast is when the customer has a strong view about a small group of horses being likely to finish first and second but no strong view about which specific ordering will result. A handicap where three or four horses are clear pre-race favourites and the rest of the field is significantly less competitive is the structural test case – the combination forecast covers the realistic orderings while controlling the ticket cost.

The dividend on a winning combination forecast is the CSF dividend on the specific finishing ordering, applied to the unit stake on that ordering. A £1 combination forecast on three horses costs £6 in total and pays only the CSF dividend on the actual finishing ordering – typically £30-£100 on a 12-runner handicap depending on the prices of the placing horses. The net return is the dividend minus the £6 ticket cost.

One operational detail worth flagging: combination forecasts are available on most major UK operators but not all. Some online operators have streamlined their slip-flow products and offer only straight and reverse forecasts, with combination forecasts only available through the operator’s customer-service team or through specific advanced-betting interfaces. The Tote and the racecourse betting rings continue to offer combination forecasts as a routine product.

The Tricast: First, Second and Third in Sequence

The Tricast extends the Forecast structure to three horses, requiring the customer to pick the first, second and third horses in the correct order of finish. The probability of correctly predicting three positions in order is structurally much lower than predicting two, and the dividends reflect this difficulty – a £1 winning Tricast on a competitive handicap regularly returns £200-£1,000 depending on the prices of the placing horses and the field size.

The Tricast dividend is calculated by an extension of the CSF formula known as the Computer Tricast (CT) formula. The CT formula uses the starting prices of the three placing horses, the field size, and various race-specific factors to compute a dividend per £1 stake. The published CT dividends are the official record after each race and serve as the basis for settlement at every UK operator.

A worked Tricast example. A 14-runner handicap with a 4/1 favourite winning, an 8/1 second-favourite finishing second, and a 25/1 outsider finishing third. The CT dividend on a £1 stake might be £680. The same Tricast on horses priced at shorter SPs would return a lower dividend – perhaps £150-£250. The dividend scales aggressively with the prices of the placing horses, particularly the price of the third-placed horse, because longer-priced third-placed runners reflect outcomes that fewer customers anticipated.

The Combination Tricast – sometimes called the “Tricast Permutation” or “Permed Tricast” – covers all possible orderings of three or more selected horses for first, second and third. A combination tricast on three horses covers six orderings (the same as a three-horse combination forecast in terms of permutation count, but applied to three positions rather than two). The cost is six times the unit stake on three horses; combination tricasts on four selections cost 24 unit stakes; on five selections, 60 unit stakes.

The Tricast is most commercially significant on competitive handicaps and on big-field big-event races where the prices of the placing horses are likely to produce substantial dividends. The product is less attractive on small-field non-handicaps where the placing horses are likely to be the short-priced market leaders and the CT dividend will be correspondingly modest. The structural fit for the Tricast is therefore handicap racing with field sizes of 12+ runners.

The Tote runs its own pool-based version of the Tricast – the Tote Trifecta – which uses pari-mutuel dividends rather than CT formula dividends. The Tote Trifecta dividends are determined by the actual pool composition rather than by a formula based on starting prices, and the resulting dividends can be significantly different from the CT dividend on the same race. Sophisticated customers sometimes compare the two products on a single race to identify which structure offers better expected value.

How a Tricast Sits Next to a US Trifecta

The American Trifecta is the structural cousin of the British Tricast, with the key difference being the pool-based dividend calculation. American Trifecta dividends are determined by the actual pari-mutuel pool, with all stakes pooled and divided equally among winning tickets after the operator’s takeout. The CT-formula structure used in British Tricasts is replaced in the American product by direct pool mathematics.

The practical difference is that American Trifecta dividends are more variable than British Tricast dividends on a per-race basis. A US Trifecta on a heavily backed favourite, second-favourite and third-favourite finishing in that order might pay a relatively low dividend because many customers backed those exact orderings; the same race in Britain would settle on the CT formula and pay a dividend determined by the starting prices rather than by customer behaviour.

The structural advantage of the British formula approach is predictability. Customers can estimate the likely Tricast dividend before placing the bet by reference to the starting prices and field-size factors that feed the CT formula. The American pool-based approach makes the eventual dividend genuinely unknowable until the pool closes and the winning tickets are counted – a feature that appeals to some customers and frustrates others.

“I Am Maximus winning was one of our worst possible scenarios so we weren’t thrilled by the outcome.” That assessment from Jack Shelley, then Deputy Director of Racing at William Hill, was made about the 2024 Grand National rather than about Tricast betting specifically, but the underlying logic applies. A heavily-backed placing combination in a race produces customer-friendly settlements that bookmakers and pool operators alike find expensive. The CT-formula structure in British racing is partly a defence against this kind of mass-customer-favouring outcome – the formula ensures that dividends reflect the structural unlikelihood of the result rather than the actual betting behaviour on the race.

The 2025 UK racing-betting market context places these exact-order products in their proper proportion. Remote horse racing GGY for the year ending March 2025 was £766.7 million, of which Forecast and Tricast bets account for a relatively small proportion – substantially less than win and each-way bets but materially more than the more exotic operator-specific products. The exact-order family sits as a genuine third tier of the UK racing-betting menu, used regularly by a specific subset of customers and occasionally by the broader audience on big-field handicaps and major events.

The broader operator-side picture in 2026 – the promotional structures that surround these products, the way Best Odds Guaranteed interacts with exact-order bets, and the role of price boosts in the wider operator promotional menu – connects directly to the most consistently valuable piece of operator fine print on the British racing calendar. I’ve worked through the detail of how that promotion actually settles in the analysis of Best Odds Guaranteed in the UK.