Forecast and tricast bets explained

What is a forecast and a tricast in horse racing?

A forecast is a bet on the first two horses home in a race, and a tricast asks you to name the first three, in the exact finishing order. Get the order wrong and the bet is dead, even if you picked the right horses. That's the trade-off: harder to land than a straightforward win or each-way bet, but the returns can look eye-catching because you're combining two or three results into one.

Unlike a normal win bet, where you're paid out at the fixed odds you took (or the starting price), forecasts and tricasts are settled from a dividend worked out after the race, based on how the market moved and how the runners finished. That's the single biggest thing to understand before you have one: you're not betting at 5/1 or 20/1 in the way you would on a win bet, you're betting on a formula.

Straight forecast, reverse forecast and combination forecast

A straight forecast is the simplest version: you pick horse A to win and horse B to finish second, in that exact order. If B beats A, or a third horse sneaks into the frame, you lose. A reverse forecast covers both orders — A first and B second, or B first and A second — for double the stake, since you're effectively placing two straight forecasts. It's a sensible option when you fancy two horses to fill the first two places but aren't confident which one gets there first.

A combination forecast (sometimes called a combination tricast for three horses) extends this idea to more selections. Pick three horses in a combination forecast and you're covering every possible first-two finishing order among them — six bets in total from three horses, or more again if you go to four or five selections. The cost rises quickly because you're paying for every permutation, so it suits punters who have a strong view on a small group of horses but no real preference for the exact order they'll finish in.

The tricast works the same way as the straight forecast but for three places: name the first three home, in order, from a single race, and you need all three correct with no swaps. A reverse or combination tricast exists too, following the same logic as above, but the number of permutations — and therefore the cost — grows fast once you're covering three or four horses across three places.

How the payout is actually worked out

This is where forecasts and tricasts differ from almost every other bet type. Instead of odds agreed at the time you place the bet, the return is calculated after the race from a dividend, similar to how the Tote works. The pool or formula takes into account the industry starting prices of the horses involved and the size of the field, then produces a dividend per £1 stake once the result is known.

As a plain illustration: imagine a straight forecast where the winner was a well-backed favourite and the second horse was a rank outsider. Because the pool reflects the surprise of that second-place finish, a £1 forecast might return, say, £15 or £20 — not because anyone offered you 15/1, but because the dividend formula rewards the unexpected part of the result. Swap it around, with a well-fancied second favourite following the favourite home, and that same £1 forecast might only pay £3 or £4. Same bet type, wildly different payout, because it's driven by how the race actually unfolded rather than a price you locked in beforehand.

Tricasts work the same way but with a third result folded into the calculation, which is why they can occasionally produce very large-looking returns for very small stakes — three unconsidered horses filling the frame in a big field can generate a big number. It's also why you'll never see a tricast dividend quoted before the race; it simply doesn't exist until the photo's confirmed.

Why field size matters so much

The number of runners has a direct effect on how realistic these bets are. In a five-runner race, there are only 20 possible orders for the first two horses and 60 for the first three, so a forecast or tricast is a relatively modest ask. In an 18-runner handicap, the maths explodes — hundreds of possible first-two combinations and thousands of possible first-three orders — which is exactly why big-field tricasts occasionally throw up large dividends from small stakes, and exactly why they're so hard to land with any consistency.

This is worth sitting with before staking anything. A forecast or tricast in a small field with an odds-on favourite and a clear second favourite is a very different proposition from the same bet type in a competitive 16-runner handicap. The bet name is identical; the actual difficulty is not.

When forecasts and tricasts are worth having — and when they're not

Forecasts and tricasts can make sense when you have a genuine, well-reasoned view on how a small group of horses will finish relative to each other — not just which one wins, but the shape of the finish. Smaller fields, races with a clear pecking order, or races where you're confident the form horses will dominate the frame but unsure of the exact order, are the scenarios where a reverse forecast or combination bet earns its stake. They're a poor fit for large, messy handicaps where predicting one winner is hard enough, let alone the exact order of three.

This is where doing some homework on the runners pays off, rather than just picking names you like. At The Racing Bot, every runner in a race is scored across 15 measurable signals — form, pace, class, market movement and more — and every pick is logged in a public, backtested record you can go back and check. That kind of structured view of a race is far more useful for judging whether a forecast or tricast is a reasonable bet than gut feel alone, because it helps you separate races with a genuinely predictable shape from ones that are wide open.

The honest summary: forecasts and tricasts aren't a shortcut to easy money, and nobody can promise you a return from them. They're a specific tool for a specific situation — when you can read the shape of a race with some confidence — and they reward patience and selectivity far more than they reward having a bet in every race going.