CHELTENHAM FESTIVAL ODDS
Latest Cheltenham Festival odds and betting for every race at the Cheltenham Festival. Quickly compare the festival odds from the biggest bookmakers.
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Cheltenham Festival Races
Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide
DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY EARLY – IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT
Although the first day of the festival usually has at least two or three short-priced favourites, it’s important not to get carried away early on with your Cheltenham betting. There will be plenty of turn-ups and you want something left in your betting bank by the time they set off for the last race on Friday.
DO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE COMPETITION AMONG BOOKMAKERS
The festival is the biggest week of the year for bookmakers and they will be falling over each other to woo punters with special offers and concessions. Best Odds Guaranteed and extra each-way places are now commonplace, but there will also be a range of other money-back and free-bet offers floating around. Take advantage of this and visit our Cheltenham Free Bets page to compare the best offers before placing your Cheltenham bets.
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE FANCIED RUNNERS FROM SMALLER STABLES IN THE HANDICAP CHASES
Corach Rambler, Global Citizen, Coole Cody and Chambard were all winners of handicap chases at the festival last season, and none of them could be considered to be from one of the power yards. Runners from smaller stables are well worth noting in handicaps.
DON’T BE AFRAID OF BACKING MORE THAN ONE RUNNER IN A RACE
The festival hosts the most fiercely contested races of the season and last season’s meeting threw up plenty of big-priced winners, including 50-1 outsider Commander Of Fleet in the Coral Cup and 40-1 shot Chambard in the Kim Muir, so consider splitting your stake in some races and backing more than one horse to increase your chance of picking a winner.
DO FOCUS ON JESSICA HARRINGTON’S FANCIED RUNNERS
Jessica Harrington is a trainer to follow at the festival, with her 11 winners from 96 runners showing a level-stake profit of £0.75. However, this figure improves significantly if you focus only on her runners sent off a 10-1 or shorter – there have been 35 of them and nine won, returning a level-stake profit of £27.75.
DON’T OVERLOOK THE PRELIMINARIES
It’s always worth taking note of how horses appear to be handling the occasion – some of them spoil their chances before even jumping off. This is the biggest meeting of the whole season and attendances will be huge, so some horses take the preliminaries better than others, and it’s for that reason on-course markets are shaped in the ten minutes leading up to each event.
DO USE RACE TRENDS TO NARROW THE FIELD
Due to advanced training methods around the turn of the millennium trends got turned on their head. Time has passed by again, though, and ten-year-trends are on the comeback trail. After all, trainers are creatures of habit. The Coral Cup is just one example in which applying strict criteria can pay dividends. For instance, a quick glimpse shows hurdlers with no more than four runs that season have dominated in recent times – 2019’s 28-1 winner William Henry had just the one coming into it and 2020’s scorer Dame De Compagnie two. It’s a big help in whittling down large fields. If you’re unable to burn the midnight oil, don’t miss Kevin Morley’s piece in the Racing Post each day highlighting standout trends.
DON’T SWAY FROM BACKING YOUR OWN OPINION
If you fancy a horse, stick to your guns. The entire jumps season revolves around the festival and the form is all out there. There’s absolutely nothing worse than jumping off one due to overthinking things, or being afraid of a big price, only to see it hose up.
Hunting the best odds at Cheltenham
While odds are quite literally the hard numbers of betting, making the best of them is more art than science. Getting the best odds about your selections depends on several factors, including your own approach to betting and the types of horses you tend to back. As such, any advice that can be given has been earned from years of personal experience and your sweet spot will only be found through similar means.
Accordingly, it is always a good idea to watch markets and how they develop wherever possible. That goes for the evening before the Cheltenham Festival markets right the way along to comparing on-track Cheltenham betting with what is happening on the exchanges. As with anything in racing, the lessons drawn are all the better if you are familiar with the horses involved. That said, many of the factors in reading the markets boil down to reading the humans actors involved – to paraphrase a quote so beloved by horsemen, the horse cannot affect what price it is.
If bookies are offering prices now, what is in it for them? If someone wants to get a wedge on, when would they do it? What signs might be there that today is The Day, when it is all fancied to come together at Cheltenham? Judging the odds market is something that even the best bettors get wrong more often than other factors. You will back a few that go off five times the price and are never involved. The satisfaction of being an early adopter more than makes up for these moments, though, and even though it stings to see your 8-1 bet get chinned eight hours later as 15-8 favourite at the festival, the fact you read the market so deftly soon comes along as a bit of an anaesthetic.
A word of warning, though: do not mistake this cold comfort for any sort of compensation. It is surprisingly easy to find yourself looking for horses who will go off shorter than current odds, rather than those that actually represent good value. The two often overlap but are ultimately distinct. Never lose sight that winners are the currency of betting and that beating the market is comparable with nothing more important than grabbing a bargain in the sales.
Read more by purchasing Racing Post Betting Guide for the festival