Guides
Straight answers to the questions people actually ask about Cheltenham betting — each-way terms, ante-post risk, how odds work, and the rules that decide a bet.
Festival guide9 min
The four days, the 28-race programme, the four championship races and the 2025 rule changes that still apply — every fact traced to a source, and every gap labelled.
Betting guide6 min
What an ante-post bet is, what happens to your stake when the horse does not run, the September-to-March timeline, the arithmetic of non-runner risk, and a checklist to run before you commit months in advance.
Betting guide7 min
The standard place-terms scale, the Festival races where bookmakers add places, worked examples with every step of the sum shown, when each-way is and is not sensible, and the Rule 4 deduction table.
Beginner's guide4 min
A beginner's reference for reading a Cheltenham price — fractional and decimal odds, a conversion table, what the overround is and how to calculate it, SP, Best Odds Guaranteed, favourite notation, and what steamers and drifters are.
Explainer6 min
From ante-post to the Cheltenham roar — the racing and betting vocabulary you will meet on this site and in Festival coverage, defined in one or two plain sentences each.
Explainer5 min
The official going scale, what combined descriptions like "Soft, Heavy in places" mean, how the Old and New Courses differ, why March at Cheltenham is more often soft than not, and a checklist for reading going changes in Festival week.
Explainer4 min
The Ireland-versus-Britain scoreboard that runs through Festival week — how it is counted, the 2022–2026 results, the 2026 last-race arithmetic, and the reasons for Irish dominance that our data can actually support.