Betting on the Cheltenham Festival: four days of jump racing

Cheltenham racecourse sits at Prestbury Park, below Cleeve Hill on the edge of the Cotswolds. The Festival runs from Tuesday to Friday in March, with seven races a day and 28 in total. Every race is a jumps race or, in the case of the bumper, a National Hunt flat race for young horses bred to jump later in their careers.

The programme mixes novice races for horses in their first season over hurdles or fences, open championship races, big-field handicaps and a cross-country chase over banks and natural obstacles. For trainers and owners, a Festival winner is the target of the whole season, which is why so many horses are campaigned with this one week in mind.

For punters, that means the best jumpers of the season meet each other, often for the first time, and the markets are deeper and more competitive than at any other meeting in the jumps calendar.

Each day builds towards one championship race, and together they decide the top of the jumping divisions.

The Gold Cup is the most prestigious race of the week and the championship for staying chasers. Its history includes Arkle, who won it three years in a row in the 1960s and is still spoken of as one of the greatest jumpers of all time. The Champion Chase, by contrast, is all about speed and accurate jumping over two miles, and it often produces one of the most thrilling races of the week.

An ordinary weekday card might have small fields and one or two obvious favourites. The Festival is the opposite. Handicaps regularly attract large fields, novice races bring together unbeaten horses from different yards, and championship fields include horses that have never met.

• Bigger fields mean bigger prices and more each-way opportunities, but also more horses that can win.
• Little shared form between runners in novice races makes the form book harder to read, so look at the strength of the races each horse has won.
• A demanding track with a stiff uphill finish rewards stamina, and horses that have run well at Cheltenham before often do so again.
• The going in March can change quickly. Check our guide to the going before you rely on a horse's previous form.

The atmosphere adds to the sense of occasion, with crowds packed into the stands and the famous roar as the first race of the week sets off.

Festival markets open months in advance, and many punters bet ante-post, before the final declarations. The appeal is that a horse can be a much bigger price long before the race than it will be on the day, especially if it wins a trial in the meantime.

The catch is that most ante-post bets lose if the horse does not run. Plans change: a horse may be aimed at a different race, miss the Festival through injury or be withdrawn because the ground is unsuitable. In the weeks before the Festival, many bookmakers switch their markets to non-runner no bet (NRNB) terms, which return your stake if the horse does not take part. For most punters, waiting for NRNB is the sensible middle ground between early prices and the risk of losing a stake on a horse that never lines up.

The Festival's big handicaps are where the each-way terms matter most. Under standard terms, a handicap with 16 or more runners pays four places at a quarter of the odds, and bookmakers competing for Festival custom frequently pay a fifth or sixth place. That can turn a horse that runs on well into fifth from a loser into a bet that returns something.

Check the place terms, the price and whether Best Odds Guaranteed applies before you bet, because terms vary from one bookmaker to the next. Our each-way calculator shows exactly what a placed finish would return, and our bookmaker reviews compare how racing terms differ between firms.

Twenty-eight races in four days is a lot of betting opportunity, and it is easy to spread a budget too thin or to keep betting after an expensive Tuesday. Decide on a total budget for the whole Festival before it starts, split it across the days and stick to it. You do not need a bet in every race; picking the races you have studied properly is a better use of a fixed budget.

Use the racecard well. Our form guide explains how to read form figures, course form and headgear. And when the Festival ends, the jumps season still has one more big date: the Grand National at Aintree in April.