Two horses flashing across the line together is one of the most exciting finishes in racing, and it happened in the Empress Fillies' Stakes (Listed) at Newmarket's July course. Havana Sprite, our top-rated runner, could not be separated from Glorious Game and the pair dead-heated for first. So what happens in the NAP competition when your selection dead-heats?
What is a dead heat?
A dead heat is when the judge cannot split two (or more) horses for a position. They are declared joint winners of that placing. It is rare, but it does happen, and every betting operator has a settled way of dealing with it.
How the NAP competition settles it
The rule is the one you already know from the bookmakers and the exchanges. When two horses dead-heat for first, you win on half your stake at the full odds. In other words, you collect 50 percent of what a clean win would have paid. Nothing else changes: the odds you took still stand, only the stake is halved.
The example in full
One member, playing as The Know Nothing, made Havana Sprite their NAP at 5.20. In the competition every selection is settled to a notional £50 stake, and we count profit only: your stake is never returned, and because the competition is free to enter there is no real money involved, so we are simply rewarding those who find the winners.
A clean win at 5.20 would have returned £50 x 4.20 = £210 profit. Because the race was a dead heat, that figure is halved, so the member collected £105, exactly as the Profit & Loss column shows. Same odds, half the stake, 50 percent of the score, just as you would expect at a bookmaker's.