What Is Dutching? The Complete Guide to Dutch Betting

Bookmaking and sports betting, in general, can get quite confusing for beginners. There are all sorts of different types of bets and ways to wager your money online, and not all of them may be the best fit for a particular discipline. This is why learning more about the different strategies and opportunities to increase your chance of winning bets is so important.

Keep in mind that the outcomes of sports events are still random. Even learning about all of the betting strategies won’t guarantee a profit. It can, however, make it more probable.

In this article, we’ll be taking a detailed look at dutch betting, more commonly known as “dutching”. Aside from guiding you through making such wagers, we’ll provide you with some tips for your betting strategy, as well as take a brief look at the history of this popular bet type. After reading this, dutching at the bookies might become your new favourite form of betting!

What Is Dutching In a Nutshell

Put simply, dutch betting entails putting your money on multiple selections within a single event. This is achieved by splitting your bet into even parts and allocating them to each selection. No matter which selection wins in the end, you’ll make the same amount of profit. Your money is lost if none of your selections come to fruition.

While dutching is most commonly used in horse racing and football bets, most bookmakers and betting exchanges allow for dutch bets to be placed on most sports in their offer. It’s considered to be an advanced betting strategy. Still, we believe that it can be highly beneficial to newcomers, as it is a good way of minimizing risks and squeezing more enjoyment out of their gambling.

Origins of Dutch Betting

The origins of the dutch bet go back a long way. Contrary to what you may think, it has nothing to do with the Netherlands. It is commonly accepted that the technique was conceived by none other than Al Capone’s accountant, Arthur Flegenheimer, better known under his alias, Dutch Schultz. He ran betting rackets at the racetrack and created the system to incentivize more bettors to use his services, promising a much more profitable way of gambling by evenly spreading one’s bet across a few selections.

Brief Guide to Dutching

While you may not have heard of dutching until coming across this article, chances are you’ve already encountered this technique at your favourite online betting exchange or bookmaker. With the rise of online sports betting, it is no longer necessary to know all the names and intricacies of bet types to place them. This is a double-edged sword, as people new to sports betting apps can often lose money by not understanding the repercussions of placing a particular type of bet.

Most often, people unknowingly place dutch bets when betting on a single football match. In most betting apps, you can tap on two of the three possible outcomes. If you like to place bets on football, you’ve likely engaged in dutch betting without even realizing it. All you had to do was bet on the result being either a draw or a victory of one of the teams, and the odds would get split automatically between the two outcomes.

Different Types of Dutching

Although, at its core, all dutch bets allow placing your money on more than one selection. There is much more to it than meets the eye. Bookmakers differentiate between three types of dutching. You should familiarize yourself with them to see which strategy is the most useful for each one of your new bets. We’ll use horse racing examples to help you picture the differences.

Simple

As the name suggests, this is the most straightforward dutching strategy. Say you want to place £20 on a single race and want to split your bet between two different horses to maximize your chances of coming out on top. If the odds on both horses are the same, your stakes will remain equal, i.e. you’ll place £10 on each horse, and your potential profit will be the same regardless of which one of them wins the race.

Reduced stakes work to offset the risks of betting on horses with lower chances of winning. With the same bet placed on horses with different odds, your stake will be reduced to adjust for the potential outcome, and you’ll end up placing the majority of your stake on the “safer” selection, and the rest will go to the horse with riskier odds. The stakes are split so that no matter which of your selections wins, your winnings will remain the same.

Set Profit

This is an interesting bet to pursue. Instead of pre-selecting the amount of money, you’ll bet on the horses, your stakes are determined by the exact profit you want to get out of the bet. Let’s say you want to make £30 out of a horse race where horse A and B have the same chances of winning. Your total stake will be determined so that regardless of which one of them wins, you’ll get that £30. The more selections you choose to bet on, the larger your stake because the bookmaker adjusts it to ensure that potential winners will still net you the same profit.

Set Amount

Much like in the case of a set profit dutch bet, the set amount option works in such a way that lets bettors pre-determine the exact amount of money they want to place on a race. In a simple dutch betting scenario, you’d have to reduce your stake to play a bet on multiple outcomes with different odds. Instead of adjusting your total stake to suit the odds, a set amount bet will have the stakes on each particular selection altered to avoid deviating from the amount you’re willing to spend. This may result in some irregular numbers when it comes to your potential profit, but it is definitely worth considering if you don’t want to overspend.

Is There an Optimal Betting Strategy?

While pundits and bettors spend hours debating the objective “best” strategy for dutching, the truth is that there isn’t one. It all depends on the particular discipline you’re betting on, the amount of money you’re willing to devote to the bet, as well as your risk appetite. The main purpose of a dutching is to spread out your risk evenly to increase your chances of coming out on top.

If you’re beginning your adventure with online betting, we’d recommend being cautious and sticking with the set amount of bets. Once you understand the dynamics of dutch betting better with this type, you might want to see what opportunities may come your way with set profit and basic bets.

A good idea is to go dutch by placing a regular bet on one outcome at one bookmaker or betting exchange and another one with a totally different provider. That way, aside from dutching, you’ll also game the betting market by using the most attractive odds possible by diversifying.

The Bottom Line

Dutch betting is an excellent way of minimizing risk and increasing the likelihood of profitable outcomes over multiple bets on the same event. While it may be a “safer” method than other types of bets, you still need to remember that it does not guarantee a win. We recommend using a dutching calculator app for some of the more complex bets.

Finally, regardless of whether you’re betting on football, horse racing, or something completely different, don’t try to make your money back if you lose! Keep a cool head and stay on the lookout for attractive future bets instead of jumping on a random one to make up for your losses. Good luck!