Breaking into horse betting is not something that is forbidden. Actually, it refers to the rounding down of the odds on the board for all the race tracks in this country. In a parimutuel pool, the break can affect the amount of payout you receive once you cash in your winning bets in the window.

In the United States, a dime is used. This means that the odds are rounded to the nearest tenths. For example, if the fair odds on a particular horse are 5.73/1, they will be rounded up to 5.7/1 before calculating payouts. Following the usual calculation, breaking ten cents would generally round payouts to the nearest multiple of 20 cents. So instead of getting paid $15.33, you’ll receive just $15.20 when you redeem your winning ticket.

How does the break affect your bets?

Depending on the type of bet you place, the break may have no effect or take a big dent out of your winnings. You won’t know in advance how much a break will cost you, as in a pari-mutuel pool, the amount cannot be determined until the windows close. However, a safe guess would be that your payout can be reduced by as much as 19 cents and around 10 cents on average, depending on the odds.

When you think about it, 10 cents isn’t much when you’re expecting a payment of, say, $12. However, when it comes to winning minimum bets like $2.40, a breakout of even 5 cents can be very steep.

An interesting thing to note about the breakout is that it is best to play a horse at odds of 1/9. This is because for winning bets, the minimum payout is $2.40 and even if the payout is assumed to be lower for 1/9 probability, the track is required to give the minimum payout, so no need to worry about breakage here.

How do you prevent your bets from being affected by the break?

There really is no way you can avoid it. You can simply choose to bet on situations where the break will not feature heavily, for example on remote bets or exotic bets like trifectas. Breakage is a problem in favorites and groupings of venues and shows. But this approach would severely limit your bets. It’s much better to just see rest as part of the whole process and that while it might cost you a lot on certain days, it won’t matter much on others either. Eventually it will just level off.

Breaking up shouldn’t take the fun out of betting.