Keirin Betting Explained: Bet Types, Odds and Mark Cards in Japan and Korea

Keirin is Japanese cycle racing, run on banked velodromes with a field of riders in colored jerseys. It is one of the country's four public "keiba" style sports, and the betting side is closer to horse racing than to a casino: you study a race card, pick a combination, and buy a ticket whose payout is set by how much everyone else bet. Korea runs a very similar sport called kyungryun, with the same pari-mutuel logic and a comparable set of bet types¹.

This page covers what you can actually do: the bets on offer, how the odds and payouts work, how to fill in a mark card, where to buy tickets, what happens when a race is canceled, and how to bet from home. If you are new to the sport, the mark sheet guide walks through the card field by field, and the online account guide covers the KEIRIN.JP and Chariloto sign-up.

The seven bet types explained

Keirin betting comes down to predicting who finishes first, first and second, or first, second and third. The official lineup is seven standard bet types plus two multi-race tickets, and the same seven are offered across all venues and all meetings¹. The Korean version, kyungryun, is built on the same idea: seven bet types that predict the first place, the first two places, or the first three places⁶.

The simplest is the single win bet, where you pick the one rider you think will finish first. In Japan, where a standard race has nine riders, its hit probability is 1 in 9, and it is the most basic bet type, with dividends that can come from relatively small stakes⁶. In Korea's kyungryun, which runs seven riders per field, the same bet hits 1 in 7⁶. From there the bets get progressively harder and, when they land, more rewarding.

The two multi-race tickets, Dokanto!7 and Dokanto!4two, work differently: instead of one race, you are trying to pick the winners of several races in a row¹. They are a small part of the market and most first-timers skip them.

The trifecta, 3連単, is the one people ask about most. You pick the first, second and third place riders in exact finishing order. It is the hardest bet type and the one that pays the highest dividends when it hits⁶. In the Korean version the same bet has a hit probability of 1 in 210⁶. That number tells you why the payouts can be large: very few tickets get it right, so the pool is shared among very few winners.

How odds work and what they pay

Keirin odds are payout multiples. They tell you how much a winning ticket pays, and they are the single most important piece of information when you decide how much to buy⁷. The lower the odds, the more popular the pick, the one the crowd expects to hit. The higher the odds, the less popular the pick⁸.

The arithmetic is simple. If you buy a JPY 100 ticket at odds of 4.5 and it wins, the payout is JPY 100 x 4.5, which is JPY 450⁹. That is the whole calculation. The odds number is the multiplier, and your stake is what gets multiplied.

What the odds also tell you is how the crowd is thinking. The lowest number on the board is the most popular favorite, the pick expected to have a high probability of hitting but a low payout rate¹⁰. At the other end, an unpopular combination with a low expected probability of hitting can pay a very high dividend if it comes in, in one example as much as 9418.5 times¹⁰. Neither end is "better." A favorite pays less because more people backed it; a long shot pays more because almost nobody did.

Because keirin is pari-mutuel, the odds are not fixed in advance the way a sportsbook price is. The pool of money bet on a race is divided among the winning tickets after the operator's share is taken out. That means the odds you see move as money comes in, and the final payout is set when betting closes. If you are used to fixed-odds betting, this is the main thing to unlearn: you are not taking a price from a bookmaker, you are joining a pool.

A practical consequence: a big payout on a long shot is not a bookmaker's mistake, it is simply a combination that few people backed. And a short price on a favorite is not a guarantee, it is a crowd opinion. The odds board is a summary of what everyone else thinks, nothing more.

Filling in the mark card: stakes and bet limits

You cannot buy a keirin ticket without filling in a mark sheet first³. The card is the order form. It has fields for the venue, the bet type, the race number, your prediction, the purchase amount, and a cancel box for when you want to void a bet¹¹.

The card is designed for speed. You mark your predicted numbers together with the bet type: for a 2車単 (2-rider exacta) you mark up to second place, and for a 3連単 (3-rider trifecta) you mark up to third¹¹. You mark with a thick line drawn in pencil¹¹. If your prediction is certain and the target is clear, the standard card is the one to use¹¹.

The amount field uses three units: hundreds of yen, thousands of yen and ten-thousands of yen. You mark the amount you want to buy together with the unit on the right side of the card¹². So a JPY 100 bet is marked as 1 in the hundreds column, and a JPY 2,000 bet as 2 in the thousands column. The ticket face value must be a multiple of JPY 100².

A few practical points that trip people up:

• Card specifications can differ between venues, so read the card in front of you rather than assuming it matches the last one you used¹³.
• If you are betting the day before, mark the "前日" (previous day) box on the venue field¹³.
• The cancel box exists so you can void a bet before it is processed¹¹.
• At Kanazawa Racecourse, only the Kanazawa voting card is accepted, and one card allows a maximum of four bets for the same race and same bet type¹⁴.

On how much to stake, the official guidance is deliberately modest: buy about three to five tickets per race and bet at a moderate level, bet only on races you are confident in, increase amounts gradually, and bet only within what you can afford to lose⁶. That is sensible framing for a pari-mutuel sport where it is easy to chase a long shot.

Buying tickets at the track and off-course: machines and counters

There are two ways to buy in person: at a velodrome, or at an off-course ticket sales office³. Both work the same way.

The steps are:

1. Find a velodrome or an off-course sales office⁴.
2. Fill in a mark card, which you pick up at the facility¹⁵.
3. Take the completed card to the counter or the automatic ticket machine¹⁶.
4. Insert the card and the amount you want to spend into the machine⁴.
5. Take the printed betting ticket and wait for the race¹⁵.

That is the whole process. The machine reads the card, takes your money, and prints the ticket. You do not need to explain anything to a clerk unless you want to buy at the counter instead.

One thing worth knowing: a "bet" in the system is defined as a race number, a bet type, a combination number and a number of tickets bundled together². That definition matters because it is what the purchase limits are counted in. It also explains why each mark card carries one race and one bet type: the card is one bet.

Night races and midnight keirin can also be bought this way, so the same routine works whatever time the meeting runs¹⁷. If you want to know how the late-night format differs from a normal afternoon meeting, the midnight keirin comparison sets out the differences.

Refunds and payouts: canceled races, crashes and the 60-day window

Winning tickets are paid within 60 days⁴. You can collect at the velodrome where the race was held, at an off-course ticket sales office, or at a place designated by the organizer⁴. The 60-day window applies to winning ticket refunds as well¹⁶. After that, the ticket is worthless, so do not leave a winning slip in a drawer for months.

If a meeting is canceled, the rule is specific. When rain or another reason stops the day's racing before the fifth race and the meeting is postponed to the next day, purchases for the races that were not held are canceled and the purchase money is refunded to the subscriber¹⁸. In plain terms: you get your money back for races that never happened. Keep the ticket, because the refund is processed against it.

Crashes are handled by a line on the track. There is a mark drawn 30 meters before the finish, and a rider who falls after reaching it on the final lap may carry or push the bike and still be deemed to have completed the race¹⁹. So a rider who goes down in the final 30 meters can still count as a finisher for betting purposes, which matters if your combination depended on them placing.

For online accounts, refunds and unused balances work differently. With the net bank service, unused amounts, payouts and refunds can be returned to your ordinary account during settlement hours, and in principle once a month in a lump sum for all users with a balance²⁰. So money does not sit in the betting account indefinitely; it cycles back to your bank.

Betting from home: internet voting and who can join

Internet betting in Japan is not open to the general public on a walk-up basis. It is limited to KEIRIN telephone voting subscribers⁵. That is the gate: you become a telephone voting subscriber first, and internet voting comes with it.

Telephone voting itself has eligibility rules. It is open to individuals only, with corporations excluded²¹. You must open a voting ordinary deposit account and a transfer ordinary deposit account in your own name at the designated bank by the date the association specifies¹⁸. Withdrawals work in one direction only: funds move from the voting account to the transfer account through the telephone voting system, and the voting account cannot be designated for any other automatic transfer¹⁸.

There is also a list of people who cannot become subscribers. It includes adult wards, persons under assistance or bankrupts, anyone punished with a fine or heavier penalty for violating the Bicycle Racing Act, people likely to commit collective or habitual violent unlawful acts, government officials concerned with keirin, JKA officers and employees and keirin riders, people engaged in ticket sales under the agreement, and anyone whose daily or social life is or may be disrupted by ticket purchases².

If you do not already have a keirin bank account, the route in is to call the Keirin official voting CTC telephone voting recruitment center or request an application form from its website, open a dedicated keirin bank account, and then register at KEIRIN.JP to use internet betting²². If you hold a Keirin Net Bank Service account, registration takes about 10 minutes online and gives you both internet and telephone voting straight away²².

The service itself is free, but you pay your own internet connection charges and the phone charges to the Keirin telephone voting center²². You also need to access KEIRIN.JP from a designated internet voting connection environment, using your own equipment and communications means¹⁷.

Once you are in, the limits are generous. A single application can carry up to 25 items and 999 bets, or up to 50 items and 999 bets on PC internet voting, and the daily limit is 3,000 bets². Betting opens at 8:00 AM on race day and runs until three minutes before each race's scheduled start, with previous-day sales from 6:30 PM the day before until 8:00 AM the next morning². Subscribers must place their own bets and cannot have someone else buy on their behalf².

One restriction to note: points earned through the KEIRIN Official Point scheme are awarded according to your betting amount, but refunds and private-site portions are not included, and you cannot bet with points²³.

Nationwide sales and the 43 licensed venues

Keirin is sold nationwide. The seven standard bet types are available at all keirin venues and all meetings, so you do not need to check whether a particular track offers a particular bet¹. What varies is the venue itself and the facilities around it.

The practical point for a visitor is that you are not limited to the track in front of you. Off-course ticket sales offices sell the same tickets, and winning tickets can be collected at the track where the race was held, at an off-course sales office, or at a designated place⁴. If you are in a city without a velodrome, an off-course office is the way in.

If you are also curious about the other pari-mutuel sport in the region, boat racing works on the same pool principle with a different set of bet types, and the boat race betting guide covers kyotei and Korea's kyungjeong side by side. For the wider picture of what is legal where across Asia, the Asian games overview and the jurisdiction comparison are the places to start.