In the olden days, when bookmakers first hit the high street, you would fill in a betting slip that seemed to be made up of two parts. One part was the top slip, which you would hand in to the person working behind the counter, whilst the second bit was a carbon copy that you could keep.
If you won your bet, you could return to your bookie of choice and claim your winning bet, complete with the carbon copy to prove that the bet was placed on what you wanted it to be placed on. With the advert of modern technology, things aren’t so simple.
Instead of you having a copy of the bet that you placed, most bookmakers take the original and either scan it onto a computer or else type the information into it. At that point the original, even if they gave it back to you, becomes pretty pointless.
Instead of being something that you can use to prove the bet you placed was what you’re saying it was, the paper is all but worthless. As a result, you need to make sure that you double-check or even triple-check your slip before you hand it over to the bookmaker and place your bet.
How To Write A Betting Slip
Before we explain why it’s so important to check your betting slip before you hand it over to the bookmaker, it is worth taking a moment to explain how to fill in a slip in the first place. The reality is that most modern punters will spend their time betting online rather than heading into a physical betting shop, so the art of filling in a slip is all but lost.
Whilst some punters in store might be happy to help you, most will be focussed on their own wagers, meaning that you’ll need to turn to the person working behind the counter for help.
We are not looking at betting coupons here, which are a whole thing all of their own, but rather just the blank slips that you need to fill in when you’re placing a wager on something specific. There is usually a common on the slip referring to racing bets that says ‘please clearly mark time and meeting’, or something similar. In reality, that is good advice whatever you’re betting on. The more information you can put on there the easier it will be for the bookmaker to take your bet and know exactly what it is that you’re staking your money on.
As an example, if you were to write ‘£5 on Rory McIlroy’, that doesn’t really tell the bookie anything. If you say ‘Rory McIlroy to win US Masters at 14/1 – £5’, that informs the bookmaker exactly what it is that your wager is for and how much you’re hoping to stake. The system will automatically record the stake and the odds when the bet is placed, but it is always a good idea to write it down yourself. The odds are usually the ones that are correct at the time that the bet is placed. The main thing to remember is to write clearly and included lots of information.
Check What You’ve Written
The first thing that you need to do is to double-check what you’ve written onto your betting slip. Have you put the correct odds at the time you’re placing the bet? Have you written the name of the player, team, horse or other participant that you want to bet on down properly? Have you identified the event that you’re betting on and written it out clearly?
It is not unheard of for some punters to try to fudge some of the things that they’ve written down in order to later claim that it was something else that they’ve bet on, for example.
Bookmakers, of course, are wise to this. They know that there will always be some bettors who think that they’re clever, so they have rules in place to ensure that the bet that they accept is what they say it is. You can argue about it, but if what you’ve written on your slip wasn’t clear then they will be totally within their own terms and conditions to refuse to pay out on it. You want to avoid being in that position, which is why you’ll want to make sure that you’ve checked your slip before you hand it into the cashier for the bet to be placed.
Check What They Give You
The next thing that you’ll want to do is to check the slip that the cashier hands back to you as proof that you have placed your bet. This is arguably even more important than checking the betting slip that you give to them in the first place.
If you leave the shop, get home, check the slip and realise that they’ve put a bet on the wrong thing, there is going to be very little that you can do about it after the fact. If, on the other hand, you check it there and then and argue the point with them, they can void the original bet and place the correct one.
Arguing with them in the shop is always the best thing to do if there’s been an error. What gets scanned onto the computer is what will end up being paid out on, so it has to be dealt with there and then. There is no way that you’ll be able to prove that they placed the wrong bet later on.
Even if you kept hold of the original slip that you handed into them, how can you prove that it was the original slip rather than one you’ve just written out and tried to claim is the bet you placed days, or even weeks, before? That is the argument that the bookmakers will put forward.
Even Check Online
It might sound stupid, but the idea of checking your bet also counts online. It is not unheard of for punters to think that they have placed a bet, only for a quick check of their account to cause them to realise that the bet was never actually placed.
You will receive a bet slip into your account for each bet that you have placed with an online bookie, so make sure that it is there as soon as you’ve placed your bet and check that it is a bet on what you thought it was. The only time this isn’t the case is if you’ve requested a bet and received it via email.
If you haven’t received a bet receipt then the likelihood is that your bet didn’t actually get placed for some reason. You can move to place the bet again, which is the best way forward. Unfortunately, if you have placed the incorrect bet in the first place then there isn’t a huge amount you can do, unlike in a physical bookmaker’s shop. The good news is that most bookies allow you to Cash Out nowadays, so you can always do that on an incorrect bet and then move to place the right wager that you were after in the first place.