Betting Terms A to Z: The Irish Punter's Glossary
The five terms punters look up most: a NAP is a tipster's best bet of the day; SP is the official starting price a race goes off at; BOG (best odds guaranteed) pays the bigger of your taken price and the SP; ante-post means betting before final declarations, stake at risk; and a non-runner is a declared horse that does not start. Everything else is below, A to Z.
Racing and betting run on a private language: NAPs and jollies, steamers and drifters, bets struck on the nose or each-way at SP. This glossary defines every term you will actually meet, in a sentence or two each, A to Z.
Betting vocabulary is old, oral and mostly unexplained - racecards, tipping columns and bookmaker rules all assume you already speak it. This glossary covers the terms that actually appear on slips, racecards and betting sites: the tipping shorthand, the bet types, the settlement rules and the market slang. This page is strictly the betting side; for casino play, our guide to online casinos in Ireland and our Irish casino reviews explain the terms each operator uses.
A
Accumulator (acca): one bet on four or more selections in which the returns of each leg roll onto the next. Every leg must win; one loser sinks the lot. The multiplying odds are the appeal, the all-or-nothing settlement is the catch - the full maths is in our multiple bets guide.
All-weather: racing on an artificial surface (Polytrack, Tapeta) rather than turf, which keeps fixtures running through winter. Form often does not transfer neatly between surfaces - worth checking before backing turf form on the all-weather.
Ante-post: betting on a race before its final declarations, at bigger prices but usually with the stake lost if your horse does not run. The counterweight to non-runner no bet.
B
Banker: a selection treated as near-certain, often used as the anchor of multiples or a Placepot. When a pundit says a race contains their banker, it is their bet of the meeting.
Best odds guaranteed (BOG): a concession paying the bigger of the price you took and the starting price. Take 8/1 in the morning, watch it go off at 12/1, get paid at 12/1.
Betting exchange: a platform where punters bet against each other rather than a bookmaker: you can back (bet it happens) or lay (bet it does not), and the operator takes a commission on winnings.
Board price: the live price displayed in a betting shop or on-course boards at a given moment. Take it and it is fixed for your bet, unlike SP.
C
Canadian (Super Yankee): a full-cover multiple on five selections: 26 bets (10 doubles, 10 trebles, 5 four-folds, 1 five-fold). No singles, so it needs two winners to pay anything.
Cash out: settling a live bet early at the bookmaker's offered value, locking a smaller profit or cutting a loss before the event finishes. The offer embeds a margin, so habitual cashing out is expensive.
Co-favourite: one of three or more horses sharing the shortest price in the market. With exactly two, they are joint favourites.
D
Dead heat: two or more selections tying for a position that cannot be separated by the photo. Standard settlement divides your stake by the number of dead-heaters and pays the divided stake at full odds.
Double: one bet on two selections, the winnings of the first rolling onto the second. Both must win.
Drifter: a horse whose price lengthens (drifts) in the market before the off - 4/1 out to 7/1 - usually signalling weak support. The opposite of a steamer.
E
Each-way: two bets in one - win and place - at double the stake. The single most misunderstood bet in racing, unpacked in full in our each-way betting guide.
Evens (even money): odds of 1/1: win and you double your money. The dividing line between odds-against and odds-on.
Extra places: a promotion paying more places than the standard each-way terms on selected races - five, six or more on big handicaps. Pure added value for place bets.
F
Favourite: the horse with the shortest price in the market - the market's collective best guess, right roughly a third of the time in typical fields.
Fold: counts the legs in an accumulator: a four-fold has four selections, a five-fold five. "Fold" on a slip always means all legs must win.
Forecast (straight forecast): a bet naming the first and second finishers in exact order. A reverse forecast covers both orders at double the stake.
Form: a horse's recent results, printed as the digit string beside its name on the racecard (1 = won, 0 = unplaced, P = pulled up, F = fell). Reading it is the basic skill of racing punting.
Full cover bet: a multiple combining every possible double, treble and upwards from a set of selections - Trixie, Yankee, Canadian, Heinz, Goliath. Add the singles and it becomes a Patent or Lucky series.
G
Going: the official ground condition, from heavy through soft, good and firm. Many horses handle only certain going, which is why the description moves prices when it changes.
Goliath: the biggest standard full-cover bet: eight selections, 247 bets. A small unit stake becomes a serious outlay - 247 × the stake.
H
Handicap: a race where each horse carries weight set by the handicapper to equalise chances, making for bigger fields and better betting races. The official rating decides the weight.
Hedging: betting the other side of your original position - laying it on an exchange or backing rivals - to lock in profit or cap a loss before the result.
Heinz: a full-cover multiple on six selections: 57 bets, named for Heinz's "57 varieties". A Super Heinz covers seven selections in 120 bets.
I
In-running (in-play): betting after the event has started, at prices updating live. Exchanges and sportsbooks both offer it; a few seconds of broadcast delay is the in-running punter's constant handicap.
J
Joint favourite: one of exactly two horses sharing the shortest price.
Jolly: slang for the favourite. "The jolly bolted up" = the favourite won easily.
L
Lay: to bet against an outcome - acting as the bookmaker on an exchange. Lay a horse and you profit if anything else wins, but you are liable for the backer's winnings if it does.
Lengths: the distance margins between finishers, one length being roughly a horse's body. Winning distances feed into form reading and ratings.
Lucky 15 / 31 / 63: full-cover bets with singles on four, five and six selections (15, 31 and 63 bets). One winner still returns something - the reason the Lucky 15 is Britain and Ireland's favourite Saturday bet. Fully worked through in our Lucky 15 guide.
M
Market: the full set of prices on an event. A "weak market" moves sharply on small money; the "market leader" is the favourite.
Monkey: betting slang for 500 - £500 in the old London ring, €500 across a Dublin counter. A pony is 25, a ton 100, a grand 1,000.
Multiple bet: any bet combining two or more selections - doubles, trebles, accumulators and the full-cover family.
N
NAP: a tipster's strongest selection of the day, from the card game Napoleon. The most-searched term in racing - and answered in one line: it is the tip the tipster would stake their reputation on.
NB (next best): the tipster's second selection, one rung below the NAP.
Non-runner: a declared horse that does not start. Day-of-race bets on it are void and refunded; ante-post bets usually are not.
NRNB (non-runner no bet): terms guaranteeing your stake back if your selection does not run - standard on big races in the weeks before declarations.
Nursery: a handicap for two-year-old horses only.
O
Odds-against: odds longer than evens (2/1, 5/1): the profit exceeds the stake. Reflects an outcome the market rates less likely than not.
Odds-on: odds shorter than evens, written 1/2, 4/9: the profit is smaller than the stake. "2/1 on" means 1/2.
Off (the): the start of the race. "Bet placed before the off" is the boundary in most settlement rules.
On the nose: win-only, no place part. €20 on the nose = €20 to win.
Overround: the bookmaker's margin, visible as implied probabilities summing past 100%. A 110% book means roughly a 9% edge to the layer, spread across the prices.
P
Patent: a full-cover-with-singles bet on three selections: 7 bets (3 singles, 3 doubles, 1 treble). One winner guarantees a return.
Photo finish: a finish too close to call by eye, decided from the finish-line camera. Until the result is weighed in, payouts wait.
Place: finishing in the paid positions - typically the first 2, 3 or 4 depending on field size and race type. The second half of every each-way bet.
Placepot: a pool (Tote) bet requiring a placed horse in each of the first six races at one meeting - Tote Ireland runs the Irish pools. Small stakes, occasional four-figure dividends.
Pulled up (P): a horse deliberately stopped by its jockey mid-race, usually over jumps. Settles as a loser, not a non-runner.
R
Rag: slang for the complete outsider of the field - the biggest price in the race.
Ring: the on-course bookmakers' enclosure (the "betting ring"), historically where the market was made.
Round Robin: a Trixie plus three up-and-down single-stakes-about pairs: 10 bets on three selections. Rare online, still offered by traditional shops.
Rule 4: the standard deduction from winnings when a horse is withdrawn after you took a price, scaled 5c-90c in the euro by the withdrawn horse's odds. The full table and a calculator are in our Rule 4 guide.
S
Scratched: withdrawn from the race - the general term for any runner taken out after entries close.
Shortening: a price contracting (8/1 into 5/1) under market support. The horse is "being backed".
SP (starting price): the official odds at the off, compiled from the on-course and major online markets. The default settlement price for bets struck without taking a price.
Stake: the amount risked on a bet. In multiples, note unit stake vs total stake: a €1 Lucky 15 costs €15.
Steamer: a horse heavily backed into a much shorter price during the day. The market move itself is called a "gamble".
Stewards' enquiry: an official review of possible interference after the race. The result - and your payout - can change; "weighed in" confirms it is final.
T
Tissue: the odds compiler's pre-market price list - the "true" prices a bookmaker builds its opening show from.
Tote: pool betting: all stakes on a market are pooled, the operator takes a cut, and the pool is divided among winners. Dividends replace fixed odds; Placepot and Jackpot are Tote products.
Treble: one bet on three selections, all of which must win, each leg's return rolling onto the next.
Trixie: full cover on three selections without singles: 4 bets (3 doubles, 1 treble). Needs two winners to return anything.
U
Under starter's orders: the moment the starter takes control and the race formally begins for betting purposes. Withdrawn before it: non-runner. After it: a loser.
Unplaced: finishing outside the paid places - a losing place bet.
V
Value bet: a price bigger than the outcome's true chance implies - 3/1 about a horse you judge a 2/1 shot. Long-term profit in betting is nothing but accumulated value.
Void bet: a bet cancelled and the stake returned - non-runners on day-of-race terms, abandoned races, palpable errors. In multiples, a void leg reduces the bet (a treble becomes a double) rather than sinking it.
W
Win bet: the simplest bet there is: your selection finishes first or the stake is lost. The benchmark every other bet type is measured against.
Y
Yankee: full cover on four selections without singles: 11 bets (6 doubles, 4 trebles, 1 four-fold). Add the four singles and it becomes a Lucky 15.
Quick reference: the terms people mix up
| Term | Often confused with | The difference |
|---|---|---|
| Each-way | Two singles | Two equal stakes, one on the win and one on the place at reduced odds; €5 each-way costs €10 |
| Trixie | Patent | A Patent adds the three singles; a Trixie is doubles and a treble only |
| Tote | Fixed odds | Tote pays a share of a pool, so the return is not known when you bet |
| SP | Board price | SP is settled at the off; a board price is locked when you take it |
| Nap | Banker | A nap is a tipster's strongest pick; a banker is your own anchor in a multiple |
| Drifter | Outsider | A drifter is a horse whose odds lengthen, whatever its starting price |
Frequently asked questions
What does NAP mean in horse racing?
What does SP mean in betting?
What does BOG (best odds guaranteed) mean?
What is ante-post betting?
What does non-runner no bet (NRNB) mean?
What does NB mean in racing tips?
What does betting on the nose mean?
Related questions
Guides are for information only; slang varies by region and operators may define settlement terms slightly differently in their house rules. 18+. Gambling involves risk - please play responsibly. Content reflects the rules and market terms as of 18 September 2026.