How to make smart bets at Cheltenham Festival 2025

The Cheltenham Festival Races is fast approaching. It’s regarded by many as one of the most talked-about horse races on the United Kingdom’s National Hunt calendar.

The event lasts days, and to kick things off, the Supreme Novices Hurdle 2025 opens the event at 12:20 on Tuesday, 11 March. The Martin Pipe Handicap Hurdle 2025 is the final race at 17:20 on Friday, 14 March.

If you are considering having a flutter on any of the 28 races that will be held throughout the four-day festival at Cheltenham Racecourse in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and want to know about how you can place strategic, more informed bets that are more likely to return a profit, you’ve come to the right place. Of course, you’re never guaranteed to win.

Here’s everything you need to know about making smart bets on the upcoming Cheltenham Festival on today’s safest UK sportsbooks.

How to find a safe online sports betting site with Cheltenham Festival markets

From our experience, the safest thing to do would be to start by finding a fully licensed and regulated UK online sports betting site. You can find a comprehensive database of over 2,000 online casino and sports betting website reviews on the official askgamblers.com iGaming review site.

We suggest starting with their top 10 or 20 recommendations and then comparing the reviews to see which of their featured brands might be a more suitable option for you based on your sports betting needs and preferences.

The important thing to remember about their highest-rated recommendations is that they are all known for having some of the most highly competitive odds for the annual Cheltenham Festival races and for almost every other major professional sporting discipline in the world.

Markets are available for:

The National Basketball Association (NBA)
The English Premier League (football or soccer if you’re based in North America)
Germany’s Bundesliga– Germany’s top-flight men’s domestic football league
Serie A– Italy’s top-flight men’s football league
La Liga – Spain’s equivalent of the above three football leagues
UEFA Champions League (annual European football competition)
Ligue 1 – France’s highest-tier football league

They also have thousands of markets every month for the Belgian Pro League, Eredivisie, UEFA Conference League, NHL, NFL, UEFA Europa League, US Open, Australian Open and MLS, plus countless other sports leagues and tournaments.

You must be at least 18 years old to join any of their suggested UK online sports betting sites, and you must register a real money account if you wish to place bets on any of these sporting events.

What are the biggest races at the Cheltenham Festival?

Four of the 28 races that spectators and online bettors will be focussing on this year are the Champion Hurdle on 11 March at 16:00, the Champion Chase at 16:00 on 12 March, the Stayers Hurdle at 16:00 on 13 March, and the Gold Cup at 16:00 on 14 March, the final day. However, you may already have your eye on other races.

If you’re looking to bet on or watch something else, the other notable races that you might want to look into are the Arkle Chase, the Grand Annual Chase, the Pertemps Network Final, the Kim Muir Challenge Cup, the Triumph Hurdle, and the Mares Chase, to name a few.

What will the ‘going’ be like at Cheltenham this year?

At any horse racing event, the ‘going’ is a term used to describe the weather, which also tells us roughly what the course conditions will be like for the thoroughbreds. If you learn more about which horses and jockeys perform well under specific weather and course conditions, it can help you place far more strategic bets.

However, it’s still far too early to tell what the going will be this year at Cheltenham. Last year, temperatures climbed from lows of around 4°C-5°C (around 39°F to 41°F) throughout the night to highs of 8°C-9°C in the day (around 46°F to 48°F), with less than 10% precipitation, which meant the going was good/good to soft. It’s likely that it will be similar this year.

How to make smart bets on the 2025 Cheltenham Festival

As mentioned, it helps to know what the going will be on the day and which runners will perform the best under those conditions. It also helps to learn the odds and implied probability rates.

We suggest avoiding betting on too many underdogs with high odds and low implied probability rates. For example, a horse that’s less likely to win may be priced at 100/1 or higher in the fractional odds format, which is the same as saying +10,000 in the moneyline odds format and 101.00 in decimal odds.

In other words, a horse that’s priced at 100/1 only has a 1.00% implied probability rate (IPR) of winning. However, that doesn’t mean that they won’t win, but a horse that is priced at 2/5 (-250 or 1.40) has a 71.40% implied probability rate and is far more likely to win that race outright than a 100/1-priced horse.

A few examples of outsiders who have won major UK horse racing events are The Last Suspect, which was priced at 50/1 (51.00 or +5,000) with only a 2.00% IPR and ended up winning the Grand National in 1985.

Other longshots who have upset the odds and won this same major UK horse racing event in the past include Aurora’s Encore in 2013 (66/1) and Mon Mone in 2008 (100/1), which illustrates that horses with low IPRs and high odds can sometimes win. However, it doesn’t happen very often.

We also mustn’t forget to mention each-way bets, which are also quite popular, especially for beginners or anyone looking to play things safe. With this bet, you win if your horse ends up finishing in the top three. However, at major events like Cheltenham, bookies often pay up to five places, not just three.

Conclusion

The important thing to remember about betting on horses is that you are never guaranteed to win, but there are ways to mitigate risk and place more sensible bets. Understanding what the odds and IPRs are trying to tell you can massively help you make more informed decisions.

Try to determine the current form of the horses you wish to bet on for at least their last five races to assist in your betting. To ensure you don’t exceed your spending budget, bet sensible amounts and consider manually setting session time reminders, deposit limits, win/loss limits or spending caps, known as safer gambling tools.

Safer gambling keeps things safe and fun and will ensure you get the most out of your Cheltenham Festival betting experience.