Quaddie betting: how a quaddie works, what it costs and how it pays

How does a quaddie work?

A quaddie (short for quadrella) is a bet on the winners of four races. The TAB describes it as "selecting 4 winners from 4 races at a race meeting selected by TAB", and you "must select at least one runner in each race/leg". The four legs are shown above the runners when you open the bet type.

It is a tote bet, so there is no fixed price. All quaddie bets go into one pool, the TAB takes its commission, and what is left is shared among the winning tickets. You can put more than one runner in any leg, and every runner you add multiplies the number of combinations you are paying for.

Costing a quaddie: runners per leg, multiplied

The number of combinations in a quaddie is the runners in leg 1 x leg 2 x leg 3 x leg 4. Each combination is one possible set of four winners. At a $1 unit, the cost in dollars equals the number of combinations.

The growth is multiplication, not addition, which catches people out. Adding one runner to a leg that already has three raises the cost of the whole quaddie by a third, because that leg goes from 3 to 4 and the total is multiplied by 4/3. In our calculation, going from 3 x 3 x 4 x 5 to 3 x 3 x 4 x 6 lifts the combinations from 180 to 216.

Picking a single runner in a leg keeps the cost down, but if that runner loses, the whole ticket is gone.

Flexi quaddies

A 180 combination ticket at $1 a combination costs $180. Flexi lets you set your outlay and take a percentage of the dividend instead. The TAB's flexi rule is: percentage = your outlay / the cost of the bet at $1 x 100. The TAB says flexi is the default for quaddies on its app; to bet with flexi off, use tab.com.au.

These dividends are examples. The TAB pays flexi percentages to two decimal places, which is why $36 over 216 combinations shows as 16.66% rather than 16.67%. Its flexi rules also need a minimum investment of 50 cents, in multiples of 50 cents, and a percentage of at least 1%. On 625 combinations that means at least $6.25, which in 50 cent steps is $6.50. The full method is in our guide to flexi betting.

Pundit tip: a flexi quaddie only makes a profit if the $1 dividend is bigger than your number of combinations. On a 180 combination ticket, a $150 dividend is a "win" that pays back less than you spent, whatever your outlay.

How the quaddie pool pays

The TAB's help page explains the pool with a round example: if punters bet $10,000 on a quaddie and there are 23 winning $1 bets, the pool is divided by 23 and each winning $1 bet gets $434.78.

The real pool has commission taken out first. The TAB lists a 20.50% commission on quaddies and early quaddies, and 25% on the Big 6. In our calculation, after a 20.50% take, $7,950 of that $10,000 would be left to share, or $345.65 per winning $1. That commission is the house edge of the bet: on average, $79.50 of every $100 in the pool comes back to winners. For what the tote takes from other pools, see tote vs fixed odds.

Because the pool is shared, the dividend depends on how many other punters found the same winners. A quaddie won by four favourites is likely to have many winning tickets; one with a long-priced winner in a leg may have few.

Scratchings: the substitute rule

A quaddie does not refund a scratched runner. The TAB's scratching refunds page says multi-leg bets such as the Running Double, Daily Double, Quaddie and Big6 placed online or by phone "will receive the nominated substitute". The TAB's Victorian Totalisator Betting Rules define it:

• Rule 9.2(a): if a selection is scratched from a quaddie, the investment is "deemed to be invested on a Substitute Selection".
• Rule 9.3(a): the substitute is the runner with "the greatest relative amount of money invested on it" in the TAB's win pool once betting on that race has closed. In plain terms, the tote favourite.
• Rule 9.3(c): if two runners are equal, the one with the lowest number is the substitute.

So if your only runner in a leg is scratched, your ticket now carries the favourite in that leg. If you already had the favourite, you hold it twice. Fixed odds bets handle scratchings very differently, through cents in the dollar cuts covered in our guide to scratching deductions.

Dead heats and abandoned legs

Two more rules from the TAB's Victorian tote rules settle the odd cases:

• Dead heat in a leg (rule 12.6): if a dead heat means there are two or more winning combinations, the pool is divided into as many equal parts as there are winning combinations, and each part is shared among the punters on that combination. If you had both dead heaters, you hold two winning combinations. Our guide to dead heat rules covers dead heats in fixed odds and multis.
• Abandoned leg (rule 10.6): if a leg is cancelled, abandoned or declared a no-race, all selections in that leg are deemed winners. If every leg is cancelled, bets are refunded.

Quaddie, early quaddie and Big 6

The TAB also offers cash out on tote quaddies and early quaddies (excluding Hong Kong), but says cash out is not guaranteed to be available. Once you confirm a quaddie on the app, it cannot be cancelled.

Building a quaddie you can afford

1. Set the total you are willing to lose before you look at the form.
2. Choose how many runners each leg really needs: a race with a standout may need only one, an open race may need four or five.
3. Multiply the legs to get the combinations, and check the flexi percentage that your budget buys.
4. Ask whether a likely dividend is bigger than your combination count. If it is not, the ticket can win and still lose money.

The same multiplication drives every exotic: our first four calculator shows it for a single race, and our beginner's guide on how to bet on horses covers the basics. More bet types are in bet types explained, and if your quaddie spend is growing week by week, our gambling help page lists free support.

Related reading

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