Dutching the Grand National – Multi-Horse Strategy

Most Grand National bettors pick one horse and stake their entire budget on it. In a race with 34 runners, an average winning price around 20/1, and a favourite win rate of roughly 15%, that approach means most people lose. The maths is unforgiving: even the best-fancied horse in the field has an implied probability of winning somewhere between 15% and 20%. Backing one horse is essentially accepting an 80% or higher chance of getting nothing back.

Dutching offers a structural alternative. Instead of concentrating your budget on a single selection, you spread the risk, share the reward — distributing your total stake across two, three, or more horses in proportions calculated to return the same profit regardless of which of your selections wins. If any one of your Dutched runners crosses the line first, you profit. The return per horse is lower than a single win bet, but the probability of collecting is meaningfully higher. In a race as open and unpredictable as the Grand National, that trade-off is often worth making.

What Dutching Means and When to Use It

The term Dutching is attributed to Arthur Flegenheimer — better known as Dutch Schultz — a 1930s American gangster who allegedly used the technique to guarantee profits from horse racing bets. The principle is simple: if you believe more than one horse has a genuine chance of winning, you calculate the stake required on each to produce an equal profit whichever one wins. The combined stakes across all your selections represent your total outlay, and the return is consistent regardless of which horse delivers.

Dutching works best when the race conditions produce a spread of live contenders at medium to long prices — exactly the profile of the Grand National. In a 34-runner handicap where the market rarely prices any horse shorter than 6/1 and most contenders sit between 10/1 and 33/1, the opportunity to cover three or four genuine chances at reasonable odds is structurally built into the race. According to Entain data, 82% of cash bets on the Grand National are staked at £5 or less — which means the typical punter’s budget is modest. Dutching makes that modest budget work harder by spreading it across multiple possibilities rather than concentrating it on one.

The technique is less effective in races with a dominant short-priced favourite. If one horse is 2/1 and the rest are 10/1 or longer, Dutching the 2/1 shot with a 10/1 outsider produces an awkward split: the bulk of your stake goes on the favourite, and the return from the outsider is minimal. The Grand National rarely presents this problem. Its open nature and large field mean the price distribution across contenders is spread widely enough for Dutching to generate meaningful returns on all legs of the bet.

Calculating Your Dutching Stakes

The formula for Dutching is straightforward. For each horse in your selection, convert its odds to an implied probability. For fractional odds, the formula is: denominator divided by (numerator + denominator). A horse at 20/1 has an implied probability of 1/21 = 4.76%. A horse at 14/1 is 1/15 = 6.67%. A horse at 10/1 is 1/11 = 9.09%.

Add the implied probabilities of all your selections together. If you are Dutching three horses at 10/1, 14/1, and 20/1, the combined implied probability is 9.09% + 6.67% + 4.76% = 20.52%. Your total stake is divided among the three horses in proportion to their individual implied probabilities. If your total budget is £20, the stakes would be: £8.86 on the 10/1 shot (9.09/20.52 of £20), £6.50 on the 14/1 shot (6.67/20.52), and £4.64 on the 20/1 shot (4.76/20.52).

If any of the three wins, your return is approximately £97.50 — a consistent profit of about £77.50 regardless of which horse crosses the line. The exact figures vary slightly depending on rounding, but the principle holds: equal profit, split stakes.

In practice, you do not need to do this by hand. Free Dutching calculators are available online — enter the odds for each selection and your total stake, and the calculator produces the correct individual stakes instantly. Some betting apps include a Dutching function built into their bet slip. The important step is selecting the right horses, not performing the arithmetic. The calculation is mechanical; the judgement is where skill matters.

One nuance: Dutching with more than four horses in the Grand National quickly reduces the profit margin to the point where it may not justify the complexity. Three selections at medium prices is the sweet spot. Four is viable if the prices are long enough. Five or more and you are effectively trying to replicate the bookmaker’s position — covering too many outcomes to generate an attractive return from any of them. Roughly half of all Grand National betting turnover comes from stakes of £5 or less, which means most punters’ budgets are better served by a focused Dutch of two or three live contenders than a scattergun approach.

Dutching vs Multiple Each-Way Bets

The alternative to Dutching that many Grand National bettors default to is placing separate each-way bets on several horses. The approaches look similar — you are covering multiple runners in both cases — but the maths is different and so is the outcome profile.

With Dutching, you profit only if one of your selections wins. If they all finish second through seventh, you lose your entire stake. With multiple each-way bets, you can profit from placed finishes even if none of your selections wins. The each-way approach is more forgiving — it produces smaller returns more frequently — while Dutching is more focused: no win, no return, but a larger payout when it hits.

The choice depends on your objective. If you want to maximise the probability of getting something back from your Grand National day, multiple small each-way bets across three or four horses, particularly at bookmakers offering extra places, will produce the highest frequency of returns. If you want to maximise the profit from a correct selection — and you have done the analysis to narrow the field to a few genuine contenders — Dutching concentrates your budget more efficiently by eliminating the place portion and directing every penny towards backing the winner.

There is also a hybrid approach: Dutch the win bets across your top two selections and place a separate each-way bet on a third horse at a longer price. This covers you for a win on either of your primary selections and gives you a safety net through the each-way place part on the outsider. It is slightly more complex to manage, but it captures the strengths of both methods.

Key Takeaway

Dutching the Grand National is a structured way to spread risk across multiple contenders while maintaining an attractive profit if any one of them wins. It works best with two to four selections in the 10/1 to 33/1 range — the zone where Grand National winners most often emerge. Use a Dutching calculator to set your stakes, focus your analysis on identifying genuine contenders rather than covering the entire field, and decide whether a pure Dutch or a hybrid with each-way elements best suits your budget and appetite for risk. In a race where picking one winner from 34 is inherently difficult, giving yourself multiple ways to win is not hedging — it is intelligent allocation.