Speakeasies, prohibition, what’s all this got to do with dutching?

Well first of all lets explain the concept behind dutching. Used mostly in horse racing although it can be used in any sport where there is a market and more than two competitors, it’s basically to insure that if one of the horse race selections wins then a profit is made.

There are many occasions when you can’t quite decide on one selection or the other. And you instinctively know that which ever choice you make will lose. It’s sods law. At weekends and during the week at big race meetings handicap races invariably have large fields of 16 or more runners and even such methods as the Avon handicap system can’t narrow the field down to one. Although you can leave the race alone and concentrate on races with smaller fields there is always the temptation of the bigger prices that go with a large field of runners.

You could always back each equine fancy but that means running down your betting bank with unnecessary losers. For example if your normal bet is £50 per selection and you had three fancies in the race that would amount to £150 with at least two losers to begin with and if the other lost you might be somewhat distraught.

The answer then to this horse racing conundrum is dutching, best done with a calculator if you want to avoid bits of paper tossed across the room and clumps of thinning hair thrown upon the floor. There are many free calculators that can be used online or downloaded. Although there are more elaborate dutching calculators on the market if you are going to dutch on a regular basis.

The basic method is to allocate your total bet amount, say £50 and then enter the odds (in decimal format) for each horse selection. The calculation will then tell you how much you have to stake on each horse in order to make a profit.

For example.

Entering the total amount you have to spend as £50 (three horses) the following odds and allocated amounts would be:-

16/1 at £6.97

10/1 at £11.16

7/2 at £31.87

which would give you a return of £111.55 if any selection wins

and a profit of £61.55.

Of course you have to make sure you can take the odds you are entering into the calculator, large field nearly always have odds available before hand because it’s one of the most profitable for the bookmaker. It’s that simple. But even after all that you still might end up losing and going down the pub to drown your sorrows which might have been a better option in the first place.

Now where does illegal whisky and molls come in to all this. It’s widely thought or stated on the internet that the term dutching originates with Al Capone’s accountant but his name was Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, not Dutch and as far as we know not much of a horse race lover either but the molls might have been a different matter. For all of you with an eye for a chance the domain ‘greasythumbaccountants’ is still available on the net.

The term probably originates with ‘Dutch Schultz’, the notorious New Jersey gangster who specialised in the numbers game. It was his account partner Otto Berman who was a maths whizz and could calculate the odds necessary in order for Schultz to win on each bet and the fact that Schultz used to fix the games didn’t do him any harm. Except for the bullets that eventually killed.

So there we have it, if you want to bet on more than one horse in a race go dutch.