A relatively new addition to the Tote’s fun and exclusive range of bet types is the Tote Survivor. With the Survivor being far less established than the Tote’s better-known options such as Exacta or Trifecta, many punters still do not know exactly how it works. Fortunately, we are here to help as we will cover exactly what the Survivor is, how it works and the best strategies for using it.
With this unique bet type, the objective is to pick as many consecutive winners as possible from a list of six races (all from the same meeting). After the first race, any person who fails to back the winner will be eliminated from contention. This process repeats for the following races until only one player is remaining and this player then takes the entire prize pot for themselves.
You may be wondering at this stage, what happens if all remaining players fail to make a correct selection for the next race? In this case, the prize pot will simply be shared between those that had managed to reach that leg. So if five customers are remaining by race four, and they all lose following a real upset in the race, the prize pot would be split five ways. Like with any Tote bet, prize money is split in proportion to the size of the bet.
The prize pot is also split proportionally should more than one customer call all six races correctly. Although this seems a highly unlikely thing to happen, you have to bear in mind that a Survivor bet allows you to back more than one horse per race. Thanks to this, the chance of a clean sweep becomes a little more realistic, although still extremely challenging.
Why Choose a Tote Survivor Bet?
Perhaps the biggest appeal of the Survivor bet is that it’s quite a bit different from anything else. An elimination-style wager adds a real element of competition and entertainment to races with even a small stake. It is also more forgiving than simply placing an accumulator on a day’s meeting as with this you must get them all correct. On the other hand, with a Survivor bet, it may be that you can win the pot just by calling the first few correctly even if your later selections end up losing.
Most punters that take part in the Survivor challenge just use it as a fun side bet, rather than being where the majority of their betting money goes. Its fairly limited popularity at present also means you have a credible chance of success as there are not too many entries you will be competing against. This does mean though that you rarely stand a chance of winning a particularly large pool. Compared to other prize pots available, the ones for the Survivor tend to be among the lowest.
Aside from just being a bit of added fun, the Survivor bet is a genuinely good option if you are confident calling the first few races on the card but less so about those towards the end. If you can survive the first few races, then you will put yourself in a very decent position to claim the prize pot, either solely or shared. If the reverse is true and you are unsure about how the first couple of races might finish but you are more confident about the rest, a Quadpot bet is a far better option (back a horse to place during races 3 to 6).
The only other thing to note about the Survivor bet type is its availability. Unlike other Tote bets, which you can find across race meetings, this is not the case when looking to place a Survivor wager. Instead, you may only find that one meeting during that day has a Survivor prize pot, usually the biggest one taking place. This is partly because Survivor does not attract much in the way of betting volume at present. By concentrating the modest activity that it does attract into one meeting, it avoids diluting it and creating several extremely small prize pools.
How a Tote Survivor Bet Works
You can place a Survivor bet from as little as £0.50 once you have picked at least one horse from each of the six legs. If you were to pick just one horse for each race, this would give you a one-line bet (so 1x your stake). As mentioned previously though, you can pick more than one horse across any combination of the six races. If you were to pick three horses in the first race, two in the second, and one for the remaining four, this would end up being a six-line bet. This is because you need six ‘lines’ or bets, to cover all the possible combinations you have selected.
Say for the first race we wanted to back horses 3, 4 and 5, in the second our picks were 6 and 7 in the the last four races we went for horse number 1 each time. This would effectively mean backing the following combinations, hence the 6x:
- 3-6-1-1-1-1
- 3-7-1-1-1-1
- 4-6-1-1-1-1
- 4-7-1-1-1-1
- 5-6-1-1-1-1
- 5-7-1-1-1-1
Because of the way these combinations add up, it does not take much before you have a very large-line bet. If, for example, you picked three horses across three races and one for the rest, you would be looking at an 18-line bet. As your total bet cost is the line value multiplied by the stake, bets can quickly become very expensive with so many lines. You can counter this by selecting a low stake value (minimum 50p) but remember that in the event of a shared prize pot, winnings are paid in proportion to the size of the winning part of a customer’s stake.
When making your selections, the Tote website clearly states how many selections you have picked per race (underneath the race time) so you know if you have made a mistake. Clicking the slider in the top left corner reveals a short written overview of each horse should you want a little more information. The final point to note is that rather than backing a named horse, you can simply choose the unnamed favourite if you would rather. This is a popular choice when the betting market appears quite volatile.
If you select this, your selection will be whichever horse starts the race as the favourite based on the official starting price (SP) odds. If there are joint or even co-favourites, your bet will cover the horse with the lowest racecard number out of them.
Rules
The Survivor bet is quite simple to understand and there are not too many associated rules relating to it either. Below are the main rules that impact, or could potentially impact your stake.
- Tote Deduction Rate – The Tote takes a 20% deduction from the total sum of Survivor bets with the remaining 80% handed to the winning player(s). Only Tote Win bets (19.25%) have a lower deduction rate, making this relatively good value
- Non-Runners – If your selection includes a non-runner, they will be replaced with the starting price favourite rather than the entire bet being voided. If there are joint favourites, the horse with the lower racecard number will be chosen. If there are no starting prices returned, the substitute horse will be the one named first in the Racing Post betting forecast
- Void/Abandoned/Walkover Races – If any Survivor leg is abandoned, void or a walkover, all selections for the leg will be marked as successful providing it is not re-run later the same day. For a dividend to be announced, at least one leg of the Survivor bet must take place. Should no legs feature on the scheduled day, all Survivor bets will be voided and stakes returned
- Change to Race Order – In the unlikely event that the order of the race changes from what was originally advertised on the official racecard, the order shown in the racecard will be used for Survivor bet purposes
- Dead-Heats – Should two or more horses share first place in a race, they will all be deemed as successful
- Finishers – If no horses finish the race, all selections for that event will be classed as successful and all remaining players will move on to the next leg
Strategy
A Survivor bet is a fun side bet that can add a little more entertainment to your betting experience particularly if you are watching the action live. In terms of how to approach it though, we believe there are two main routes you can go down.
Multiple Lines at the Minimum Stake (50p)
For most Tote markets, having lots of lines with a low stake is not a tactic we would recommend. This is because if one of your lines does end up being a winner, the low stake often means the payout is small as payouts are proportional to the stake size. The Survivor is different though because the prize pot is often won by an individual, rather than being split between multiple winners as is usually the case. If the entire prize pot goes to one person, the amount they bet is entirely irrelevant as they will claim the entire pot regardless.
This puts the emphasis on simply staying in the game and the way to do this is by increasing your coverage (for example two horses for three races). You should not just back the top two runners for these races though as they will be too popular. If the first or second favourite ends up winning, too many other punters will stay in the game. This is why in addition to a pick with a high chance, you should be backing a horse further down the betting. If the lower odds pick wins, you survive and live to fight another race, but if the outsider triumphs, this will wipe out a huge chunk of the competition.
The only point to note about this approach is that you want to limit yourself to around 8 lines (x £0.50) due to the small size of the total prize pot. If you only stand to win a maximum of £150, you might not want to be spending £20 on your total bet.
Start with Likely Winners, Increase Odds Later
The last thing you want on a Survivor bet is to fall at the first hurdle and be out of contention immediately. As it is very possible there will be a winner before the final, sixth race, you do not want to be adding multiple selections for this race. If you are going to pick multiple horses, it makes much more sense to do it on the first couple of races as these are the ones that will always matter. If you want to stick with just a one-line bet, for the first couple of races do not pick too adventurous a horse. Your job is purely to stay in the game so just focus on the horse you think has the best chance of success.
Later on, you can then start to diverge a little from the more obvious picks. Not because they are less likely to win in later races, but because sticking with them every race is a common tactic. This means you’ll only ever be likely to win a small dividend at best because the prize will be shared with several others. Picking longer shots though, you might win less often but the times you do win, you’ll be much better rewarded.