Biggest Tote Jackpot & Scoop 6 Wins

Tote JackpotIt’s a tricky bet to get right, which is why there are so often rollovers and big prizes to be split amongst eventual winners, but the Tote Jackpot is a fun bet to make and it doesn’t have to cost very much at all.

The pot is split into £1 units but you can make a bigger bet if you like, it just means you will claim more of the eventual pot if you end up making a successful bet.

The absolute minimum you can bet is £1 at some bookies but just 50p at the Tote itself, and the eventual stake does need to be a multiple of 0.50 so you couldn’t bet £1.55, for example.

The bet is available every day except Saturday when the Scoop6 runs instead, and the object of the Tote Jackpot is to correctly predict the first 6 winners at a specific meeting, chosen by the Tote.

Given the difficulty and frequency of rollovers, when the prize is eventually won it can be very big indeed.

The Sccop6 is a very similar bet that runs just once a week, on a Saturday, and is known for it’s large jackpots. These build up because the Scoop6 is an incredibly difficult bet to win.

The 6 races you need to predict the winners of can be from any number of meetings taking place on the day chosen by the Tote, but are picked to be deliberately difficult. They will either have very large fields, or fields full of horses without much experience making them difficult to judge.

The Scoop6 costs £2 to play, includes a win fund and a place fund so it’s a bit like making a Tote Jackpot and a Tote Placepot bet in one, and the funds roll over if no one wins them, which can create quite a lot of excitement after a number of win-less weeks create 7 figure payouts.

Biggest Tote Jackpot & Scoop 6 Wins

Date Bet Type Meeting Dividend Stake Payout
08/03/2011 Tote Jackpot Exeter £1,445,671.71 £2.00 £1,445,672
24/05/2014 Scoop 6 Catterick/Goodwood/Haydock £1,342,600.00 £2.00 £1,342,600
04/04/2015 Scoop 6 Haydock/Kempton £762,121.00 £2.00 £762,121
01/11/2014 Scoop 6 Ascot/Newmarket £750,920.00 £2.00 £750,920
10/03/2018 Scoop 6 Hereford/Sandown/Wolverhampton £735,915.20 £2.00 £735,915
19/01/2019 Scoop 6 Haydock/Taunton/Navan/Ascot £643,903.00 £2.00 £643,903
29/09/2018 Scoop 6 Newmarket/Haydock £533,218.70 £2.00 £533,219
02/09/2017 Scoop 6 Chester/Sandown/Beverley £532,717.40 £2.00 £532,717
04/04/2008 Tote Jackpot Aintree £510,955.60 £1.00 £510,956
17/01/2015 Scoop 6 Ascot/Haydock/Lingfield £448,236.00 £2.00 £448,236
16/04/2016 Scoop 6 Ayr/Bangor/Thirsk £422,641.50 £2.00 £422,642
01/03/2014 Scoop 6 Newbury/Lingfield/Doncaster £411,959.00 £2.00 £411,959
25/04/2009 Scoop 6 Sandown/Ripon £310,408.39 £2.00 £310,408
05/08/2010 Tote Jackpot Haydock £113,054.10 £1.00 £226,108

How to Make a Tote Jackpot Bet

Tote Jackpot

In the UK, there will only be one meeting with a Tote Jackpot bet available (this is not necessarily the case in Ireland), so you do not have to select a meeting as a first port of call.

You just need to navigate to the jackpot bet itself in order to get going, and although the process here will be slightly different on different sites, it really isn’t difficult to find.

From there you hop from race to race and make your selections until you are happy, then set your stake and place your bet.

It’s a very simple process, it’s the research before choosing your horses that takes the time, although some people do approach it more like a lottery and make their selections very quickly.

It is possible to choose more than 1 horse for each race if you really can’t make your mind up, but just be aware that this will increase the number of ways your bet could win and thus increase your stake respectively.

Adding just one more horse in a single race won’t have too much impact (turning a £1 stake to a £2 stake), but adding an extra horse in each of the 6 races might surprise you:

  • £1 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = £64

The prize fund is made up of money that was not won on previous jackpots, and money taken on that days’ jackpot, but it also has a minimum limit of £10,000, so the Tote will make up the amount if it is under that number.

Once the first race begins betting on the Jackpot is closed and you will need every single horse you selected (or at least 1 in each leg if you selected more than 6 horses) to win their race.

If one leg lets you down then your bet is lost.

How to Make a Scoop6 Bet

Tote Scoop6 Logo

Each Saturday, the Tote picks 6 races from the different meetings taken place to create the Scoop6.

The punter must pick 6 horses that they think will win their races, and pay their £2 stake. Again, it is possible to pick extra runners to increase your chances of winning, but the costs begin to mount the more horses you add.

The process is the same as making any other Tote style bet in practical terms – you just click on the horse/s you want to back from one race to the next, then confirm the bet once you are happy with the amount you are staking. It’s possible to go back and make edits before the bet is confirmed.

The Tote don’t ‘top up’ the Scoop6 funds like they do with the Jackpot, but to be fair they don’t usually have to as plenty of people bet on it. What they will do though, is seed the funds with a set amount after it has been won, so it is worth playing for again the next week and isn’t starting from nothing.

All the money taken from punters each weekend is counted up, then 30% goes to the Tote, with the remaining 70% being split up between four funds. One of them is the Starter Fund, which is held back to offer out as prize money after one of the below funds has been won.

Winnings are paid out as dividends, with 3 different funds available:

  • Win Fund
  • Place Fund
  • Bonus Fund

The win fund is usually the largest amount getting half of the remaining money from the pot after the Tote’s deductions, the place fund gets half again, while the bonus fund gets the leftovers.

This is fair enough since the win fund can only be won by correctly predicting all 6 winners of the races, which is quite a feat, and the place fund is given out to anyone who has 6 predictions that all place.

The bonus fund can only be won by the previous week’s winner (if there was one). They have to correctly guess the winner of one race picked by the Tote the following weekend, so it’s a lightning needing to strike twice sort of situation; it’s almost never won.

What is the Difference Between a Tote Jackpot Bet and the Scoop6?

Tote Jackpot vs Scoop6 Difference

The two bets are very similar on the face of it, but there are a lot of differences too.

For a start, the Jackpot is available every day except Saturday and the Scoop6 is only available on a Saturday, while the Jackpot focuses on the first 6 races from a single meeting, whereas the Scoop6 includes races from multiple meetings.

The Scoop6 is arguably more difficult to win too, since the races that are included are specifically chosen to make the bet more challenging. The races in a Tote jackpot bet may feature well raced horses with plenty of form to study, or races with smaller fields, both of which make them easier to call. The Scoop6 will usually feature at least a couple of races with 15-20 runners, and the others will probably be made up of horses which are largely untested – although they do tend to throw in the odd race that could be considered ‘easier’.

Whatever they give you to work with, it’s not uncommon for only be a few bets to be left alive by the second or third race.

The big difference that makes the Scoop6 so appealing, is that not only are all of the races televised with pundits commenting on how many Scoop6 entries are still in the running, but the win funds are almost always worth more than those of the Tote Jackpot.

Not only that, but a single £2 stake gives you the possibility of winning the win fund or the place fund, so it’s a bet with two chances for one stake. It also has more depth, because say you win the Scoop6 when the pot is low and take home around £25k – compared to the 6 or 7 figure wins that occur you might be a bit disappointed. However, you still have a shot at the Bonus Fund, which may not have been won for months, and has grown to be worth £200k.

Put simply, the Scoop6 is more of an event. It’s given more attention and is more exciting to follow, thanks to pots that can be worth millions.

The Tote Jackpot can pay out big money too of course, it’s just not quite as diverse a bet, and since it is available every day does not attract the same sort of attention, making the pot lower a lot of the time since both bets are about liquidity.