Totalizer

A betting totalizer or lottery, is when the players fill out a coupon. If they manage to predict the outcome, they will receive an assigned sum of money. If they manage to predict all the outcomes they will receive the majority of money on offer. However, smaller winnings are on offer to those who managed to guess some of the outcomes. Usually, these lotteries, or pools, as they are known in countries like the UK or Australia, see punters bet on the outcome of football matches and there is often a jackpot on offer.

Sporting totalizers are not often used by modern bookmakers.

Types of totalizers

There are different types of totalizers.

The standard is the ‘1×2’ type. This totalizer covers a mixed range of sports, which normally includes 14 or 15 different events, thought this figure can sometimes be 10. The task of the player is to guess the outcome of each event by placing either a ‘1’, ‘2’ or ‘x’. In football, the ‘1’ means a home win, ‘2’ corresponds to an away win and ‘x’ means a draw.

Some bookmakers have started to introduce a type of totalizer, which asks the punters to guess the exact score. Each edition has a list of matches, normally a maximum of 10. The player then has to choose what he or she believes the correct score will be. The more correct scores the person is able to guess, the higher that person’s winnings will be. Statistically, it is almost impossible to guess 10 results correctly.

There are pools for different sports other than football. These can also include tennis, basketball, hockey, rugby amongst others.