One of the highlights of our annual trip to Cheltenham for Gold Cup week is the ritual, prior to the first race of doing the placepot.
Like it says on the tin, the Tote Placepot is a bet where you have to pick a horse to be placed in each of the first six races on the card. Minimum stake per line is 10 pence and you can pick as many in each race as you like. Or your wallet allows.
If the favourites are placed in every race, at a big meeting you might get a dividend of 20 quid (even predicting the favourites at Cheltenham is far from straightforward). If only one of the favourites fails to place, suddenly it's on for young and old. My mate Tom's biggest ever day on the punt was New Years Eve at Newton Abbot where the placepot paid £973 for a pound stake. And in those days, beer was 20 pence a pint!
So why no placepot here? I'm sure many people play the Big 6 and I know the Victorians love their quaddies. But given the constant invention of new ways to punt, isn't the placepot an obvious omission?
