Two of the most popular sites when it comes to Virtual Sports betting are Betway and 10Bet, both sites offer a nice range of 
Virtual Sports to play and there is an overlap between what the two sites offer. One sport available to bet on Virtually at both sites is horse racing.
Now you may think that one Virtual Horseracing offering is the same as the next but when a site subscribes to a Virtual Software service, they are free to personalise it as they see fit. That not only means personalising the display (by adding advertising for their own company by example) but also by deciding which betting markets to offer on that sport.
Now in the real-life betting industry, the types of bets you can place with bookmakers on horseracing are pretty uniform. Sure, there may be the odd unusual bet that you can only find at one or two online bookies, but for the vast majority of racing bets, you can place them with almost any horse racing betting provider.
In the Virtual Sports world though that is not always the case and this is best shown by looking at the different bets that Betway and 10Bet offer their customers for Virtual Horseracing. We wlll start with the latter as their offering is more like the bets you would find on a standard online betting service for real world horse racing.
10Bet Virtual Horseracing
With 10Bet Virtual Horseracing you get the same style of presentation that you get with Betway, that is crisp, clear graphics, realistic sound and a basic but effective commentary on the race that uses the horses number rather than its name. You also get a selection of different races with different numbers of runners and a race starts every three minutes on the site.
For each race you get a selection of horses to pick from and the form for each horse along with the jockey’s silks are also shown alongside their number to make them easier to identify in the race. The form, although randomly generated, does seem to play a key role in deciding the odds for a horse with horses with more wins likely to be a much shorter price than a horse without a win.
10 Bet Markets
With 10Bet you can place the following bets with Virtual Horseracing:
- Win bet
- Place Bet (equivalent of an Each Way bet) which wins if your horse finishes in the stated places in the race (usually this is the top three finishers).
- Forecast/Tricast Bets
It is this final section of bets which sees the most difference between 10Bet and Betway, chiefly as Betway don’t offer 
these bets but offer something similar, yet different.
Forecast/Tricast bets are where the punter tries to select which horse will finish first and second in the race (in the case of Forecast bets) or first, second and third in the race (in the case of Tricast bets).
You can either try to guess the correct order of the horses spot on by selecting 1st, 2nd (and 3rd) for your Forecast/Tricast bet, or for more flexibility you can cover all combinations of your selection (that is the three horses finishing 1st, 2nd or 1st, 2nd and 3rd, in any order, by clicking the Any selection instead).
The Any selection however means your bet stake will need to be higher as it covers all possible lines. This means 2 lines for a Forecast bet and six separate lines for a Tricast bet.
Why is that? Well in a Forecast bet, you select two horses and if you are to cover all possible combinations of a winning bet for those two horses you need to cover horse 1 winning and horse 2 coming second, plus horse 2 winning and horse 1 coming second.
For a Tricast bet, you extend this to three horses, which means you could have the following possible winning combinations for horses 1, 2 and 3:
- 1, 2, 3
- 1, 3, 2
- 2, 1, 3
- 2, 3, 1
- 3, 1, 2
- 3, 2, 1
Therefore, you need to cover six possible winning combinations with your bet, so your total bet will be six times your unit stake.
These bets are popular bets on real life horse racing betting too and can result in a sizeable win even for a relatively small stake bet.
Betway Markets
As we have mentioned previously, Betway tend to do things a little differently when it comes to their horseracing betting service for Virtual Sports. They do not offer a Forecast/Tricast betting option but instead they have simplified their service to allow you the following bets:
- Race Winner
- Each Way (first three places at 1/5 of the odds)
- Top 2 Finish Bet
- Top 3 Finish Bet
So instead of the Forecast/Tricast betting option and the Place bet, Betway offer a more standardised Each Way betting option on their Virtual Horse Racing, but then they also offer bets on whether the named horse will finish in the top two, or the top three positions of the race.
This is a different type of bet to Forecast/Tricast betting as instead of betting on two or three horses to finish in the top two or three, you are betting on just one horse doing so. This of course increases your chances of success with this bet markedly, but the down side of that is that the odds offered on runners for this bet get shorter with the more positions you cover with your bet.
How much do the odds change? Well let’s look at three real life examples from a Virtual Horseracing race on Betway to show you:
To Win
- Pitch and Putt – 13/5
- Wideload – 9/2
- Near Miss – 5/1
- Sack Race – 6/1
- Knockabout – 15/2
- Good Thing Dotty – 9/1
- Different Gravy – 11/1
- Russian Attack – 14/1
- Go on Jimmy – 50/1
Top 2 Finish
- Pitch and Putt – 10/11
- Wideload – 9/5
- Near Miss – 2/1
- Sack Race – 12/5
- Knockabout – 3/1
- Good Thing Dotty – 4/1
- Different Gravy – 5/1
- Russian Attack – 6/1
- Go on Jimmy – 25/1
Top 3 Finish
- Pitch and Putt – 1/3
- Wideload – 4/5
- Near Miss – 10/11
- Sack Race – 11/10
- Knockabout – 6/4
- Good Thing Dotty – 2/1
- Different Gravy – 13/5
- Russian Attack – 100/30
- Go on Jimmy – 14/1
What this clearly shows you though is one Virtual Horseracing game is not necessarily the same as another and while some sites may offer some bets, other sites for the same virtual sport, may well offer something different. It is down to how you prefer to bet to decide which is the best option for you.
