Cheltenham Betting Guide

by Darren Brett
Our Cheltenham betting guide has been written to help you to enjoy the festival. This page contains facts and info about the festival as well as facts and cheltenham tips on some of the overall bets.

Cheltenham Festival Facts

Background information and facts about the biggest national hunt festival on earth!

Some 500 horses will take part in racing over four days, competing for over 3 million in prize money.



They will be watched by over 230,000 spectators at the course who will consume around 200,000 pints of Guinness!

These spectators will be joined by hundreds of bookmakers who will take around £25 million in on course cheltenham betting turnover. Thats around £1 million a race!

The meeting was extended to four days in 2005 to help accomodate the four major Championship races, six other Grade One events and host of quality supporting races which form the Olympics of jump racing.



In 2009 an additional race was added to the final day of the Festival. The sixth race on the Friday of the meeting is now a Conditonal Jockeys Handicap Hurdle over 2 and a half miles.

For 2011 a handicap chase was added to the first day. In addition to this the opening race on Day Three, The Jewson Chase, will no longer be a handicap and will now be a championship novice chase over 2m 5f.

This brings the total number of races due to be run at the Festival to 27.

In addition a charity race takes place on the Thursday of the Cheltenham festival meeting to raise money for Cancer Research. Riders for 2013 include Sky Sports broadcaster Alex Hammond. Via our sister site OLBG we are pleased to be sponsoring professional gambler Mark Holder to ride in this race.

Check out the latest tips on all the festival races on our Cheltenham tips page

Number of Irish Winners Betting

At least 10,000 racegoers travel over from Ireland for the annual pilgrimage and they havent been disapointed with 24 of the last 72 winners coming from the Emerald Isle! In 2011 the Irish returned home with their biggest ever success with 13 winners! But 2012 saw just 5 Irish winners, their lowest since 2007.

How many Irish winners will there be in 2013?

Cheltenham Festival Novelty and Fun Bets

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power are the specialists in this area and often come up with lots of fun novelty bets. Last year they were betting on how many pints of Guinness would be consumed during the four days of the festival.



How many pints of Guinness will be sold at the racecourse?

In 2006 between 190,000 and 199,999 were sold, but the Irish did get a lot of winners!!

PADDY POWER'S GUINNESS SPECIAL

Paddy Power's famous Guinness betting is back for Cheltenham 2013.

How many pints of Guinness will be consumed at Cheltenham Racecourse over the 4 days?

The following odds were quoted by Paddy Power
last year

12/1 Less than 175,000 Pints of Guinness
10/1 175,000 - 185,000 Pints of Guinness
6/1 185,001 - 195,000 Pints of Guinness
9/4 195,001 - 205,000 Pints of Guinness
3/1 205,001 - 215,000 Pints of Guinness
4/1 215,001 - 225,000 Pints of Guinness
5/2 Over 225,000 Pints of Guinness

Cheltenham Festival Going

Its looking like the ground could be softer than normal in 2013. The following odds were available from Paddy Power last year at the start of March.

Ground for 1st race:

2/5 Good to Soft, 2/1 Good, 6/1 Soft, 50/1 Heavy, Any Other Going 100/1