Prizes & Payouts

There are three different pots of money on ROX and they are not connected. Most confusion about payouts comes from mistaking one for another, so this page keeps them apart.

Pot	What it is	Who receives it	Funded by
Race purse	the "pool" figure on a race card	the owners of the placed horses	entry fees
Bet returns	your share of the betting pool	the bettor	other players' stakes
Play balance	your practice wallet	you	signup bonus and daily top-up

The prize pool shown on a race card is the purse for the horses' owners, paid out of their entry fees. It has nothing to do with betting. Your return on a bet is your share of the betting pool, which other players funded. The purse does not grow with betting activity, and no part of it reaches a bettor.

What a winning bet pays

ROX runs pari-mutuel pools. Everyone backing the same market on the same race pays into one pool. When betting closes ROX takes a 12% rake, and everyone who backed the winning outcome shares what remains, in proportion to what they staked.

A worked example. Ten players bet the Winner market and $1,000 goes into the pool. ROX takes $120. The remaining $880 is shared among whoever backed the winner — so if $400 was staked on that horse, each dollar staked returns $2.20, and a $300 bet on it takes $660.

That is the whole calculation. There is no bonus and no multiplier on top of it.

The price on the card is an estimate, not the payout. It is calculated from the same ratings that decide the race, with a margin; it does not read the pool. What you receive is your share of the pool, so it may be higher or lower than the figure you clicked. A market nobody else backed pays more; a heavily backed one pays less, and in a thin pool it can pay back less than you staked.

There is no maximum payout per bet, and there does not need to be one. The pool sets the limit: ROX can never owe more than the pool holds, because the money paid out is the money paid in less the rake. That is a property of the arithmetic, not a promise.

A pool below $50 is not a market. It voids and every stake is returned in full.

Is there a jackpot?

Yes, on the exotics — and it is funded entirely by players.

Here is exactly what it is.

If nobody backs the winning combination in a Forecast, Quinella, Tricast or Trio pool, that pool is not refunded. It is carried forward into the same market at a later race and keeps growing until somebody takes it.

• ROX never adds money to a rolling pool. Every dollar in it was staked by a player in an earlier race.
• A carried pool is raked once, in the race it was staked in — not again each time it rolls.
• A race where nobody bets that market at all does not disturb the carry. It simply waits.
• A cancelled race returns its own stakes and takes nothing from the carry.

On Winner, Place, Show and Gate a pool with no winner is refunded in full instead. Those markets always have a winner — a race always produces a finishing order — so a rollover there would be a strange way of being told nothing happened.

Where the money goes

Winnings are credited to the same balance you staked from. A bet placed with play money settles in play money.

Play money is exactly that: a practice balance, funded by the signup bonus and a daily top-up if you run dry. It is never convertible and has no cash value. Real-money betting is not live, and until it is licensed nothing you win at the book is worth anything outside the game.

The racing side, for contrast

Race purses are a separate economy, described in full under Race Classes & Entry Fees. In short: the purse is the total of the twelve entry fees less the 5% race fee, split 60 / 25 / 15 between the first three horses, and paid to their owners. If you own a horse that places, that is money you receive as an owner — not as a bettor, and not from anything you staked.