First 4 and Quartet Bets

Horse racing has a family of bets that ask you to name more than the winner, and the four-horse bets sit at the top of that family for a single race. You pick four horses, and if they fill the first four places, you collect. The catch is that two different products share this space, and the same word can mean different things depending on where you are standing when you place the bet. This page explains both, how they pay, what they cost, and where in Asia you can play them.

What a First 4 bet is

A First 4 asks you to select the horses that finish first, second, third and fourth in one nominated race, in the correct finishing order¹. In Hong Kong, where the bet is one of the flagship exotic pools, the Chinese name is 四重彩, and the rules define it as picking the first, second, third and fourth horses in a designated race in the order they finish². Get the horses right but the order wrong, and the ticket loses.

Because the order matters, a First 4 is a hard bet to win with a single line, which is why most players buy combinations. If you like four horses and want to cover every possible finishing order of those four, that is 24 combinations, and the cost of the ticket multiplies accordingly. You can read more about how combination betting works, including banker and flexi options, on our page about banker, box, multiple and flexi bets.

The First 4 is a pari-mutuel, or tote, bet: all the money staked goes into one pool, the operator takes its commission, and what remains is divided among the winning tickets. That means the dividend is not known until the race is run. When few people hold the winning combination, the payout can be very large; when a popular combination of favorites lands, the dividend can be modest. This is the same pool principle behind the three-horse bets, Trifecta and Trio, just one placing deeper.

What a Quartet (四連環) bet is

In Hong Kong, the Quartet, in Chinese 四連環, asks you to select the first, second, third and fourth horses in a designated race in any order². If your four horses fill the first four positions, you win, no matter which of them actually crossed the line first. The Chinese-language illustration of winning combinations spells this out plainly: first, second, third and fourth placed horses, with no requirement on the sequence⁶.

Because order does not matter, a single Quartet line with four horses is one combination, not 24. That makes it a cheaper bet to construct than an exact-order First 4 covering the same four horses, and it is often the choice of punters who are confident about which four horses will dominate a race but not about how they will sort themselves out.

The Quartet is also a pool bet, settled the same tote way as the First 4. In Hong Kong the two pools run side by side on the same races, and at some meetings the operator merges them into a single pool, so that a ticket bought on either product counts toward the same dividend⁸. When the pools are merged, the distinction between the two bets effectively disappears for that race.

First 4 vs Quartet: where the two bets differ

The core difference in Hong Kong is order. First 4 pays only on the correct sequence of the first four finishers; Quartet pays on any sequence¹. A First 4 with four horses as a full combination costs 24 times the basic unit; a Quartet with the same four horses costs one unit. The First 4 therefore pays a much bigger dividend when it lands, because the winning pool is shared among far fewer tickets.

The second difference is geographic, and it trips up a lot of travelers. In Singapore, the Quartet is defined as selecting the first, second, third and fourth horses in the correct finishing order³, which is what Hong Kong calls the First 4. Singapore Pools lists the Quartet among its bet types alongside Forecast, Place Forecast, Tierce and Trio⁹, and the minimum bet value for all of them, Quartet included, is S$2¹⁰. The Philippines follows the same convention: Philracom's official guidance defines the Quartet as the first, second, third and fourth place finishers in exact order of arrival in a designated race, with a minimum bet of P2.00⁵.

So the word "Quartet" means the easier any-order bet in Hong Kong and the harder exact-order bet in Singapore and the Philippines. If you are used to one market and bet in another, check the local rules before assuming anything. The table below sums up the three markets:

A third difference is flexibility in staking. Singapore Pools offers a Flexi Quartet, which lets you take a percentage of a full combination rather than buying every line outright; the minimum is S$20 or 10 percent of the cost of the full unit, whichever is higher¹⁰. This is useful when you want to cover many horses in a large combination but do not want to pay for the whole thing. Banker options are also available for the Quartet in Singapore: with a single banker, your banker must win the race and the remaining selected horses must fill second, third and fourth in any order⁴.

The insufficient runners rule for Quartet pools

Four-horse bets need horses, and the rules protect punters when a race loses too many of them. The general rule in Hong Kong is that if fewer than six horses come under starter's orders, the Quartet pool is terminated and all bets are refunded⁶. The same threshold applies to the First 4 pool, and to the merged Quartet and First 4 pool where the two are combined: fewer than six starters closes the pool and every bet is refunded⁷.

There is a second layer of protection for what happens during the race. If fewer than four horses finish the course, all bets on the First 4 and Quartet are refunded⁸. A race can start with a healthy field and still end with three finishers if horses fall, pull up or are brought down, and in that case there is no valid first-four result to settle against, so the money comes back.

These thresholds sit at the top of a ladder of minimum field sizes that applies across the single-race pools⁷.

• Win needs at least two starters
• Quinella needs at least three
• Tierce and Forecast need at least four
• Trio needs at least five
• The four-horse bets need at least six

The pattern is simple: the deeper into the placings a bet goes, the more runners it needs to make sense. For commingled pools, where bets from different jurisdictions feed one shared pool, the same rules apply: First 4 and Quartet bets are refunded if fewer than four horses finish⁸.

If you have backed a four-horse bet and horses are scratched late, the scratchings themselves trigger refunds or substitutions under separate rules, which we cover on our page about scratched horses and refunds.

Where you can place these bets in Asia

Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Jockey Club offers both the First 4 and the Quartet on its races, and the two products sit side by side in its betting guide, which walks through every pool from Win upward¹¹. Bets can be placed at racecourses, at off-course betting branches, by telephone and through the club's online and mobile channels. The Chinese names 四重彩 and 四連環 appear on all Chinese-language materials, so a bilingual racecard will always show you which product you are looking at².

Singapore. Singapore Pools runs the Quartet as its exact-order four-horse bet, with a minimum of S$2 per combination and the Flexi Quartet for partial combinations³. You can bet at Singapore Pools outlets using a bet slip marked Forecast/Place Forecast/Tierce/Trio/Quartet, which also has a Computer Pick option if you want the machine to generate your combination⁹. The full list of bet types in the horse racing game rules includes Quartet Betting alongside Win, Place, Forecast, Tierce, Trio and the multi-race products³.

The Philippines. Philracom, the racing regulator, lists the Quartet among its official bet types, defined as the first four finishers in exact order, with a minimum bet of P2.00⁵. Betting is available at the raceclubs and their authorized outlets.

Commingled and simulcast betting. Because Hong Kong's pools are commingled with overseas operators and vice versa, you can sometimes bet a Hong Kong First 4 or Quartet from another jurisdiction, or bet an overseas race's four-horse pool from Hong Kong. The refund rules for commingled pools follow the thresholds described above⁸. Our page on commingled pools and simulcast betting explains how these shared pools work.

Japan and Korea. The Japanese and Korean tote systems do not use the names First 4 or Quartet. Japan's deepest single-race bet is the Trifecta, which covers the first three in exact order; there is no standard four-horse single-race pool. Korea's KRA similarly tops out with three-horse products such as the Trifecta and the QP, which asks for two horses to finish first, second and third in any order. Travelers from Hong Kong or Singapore should not expect to find a direct equivalent at a Japanese or Korean track.

Race meetings where four-horse bets come into play

Four-horse bets are offered on nominated races, not automatically on every race on a card. In Hong Kong, the operator designates which races carry the First 4 and Quartet pools, and these are typically the races with bigger fields, because the six-starter minimum has to be met and because large fields are where the four-horse pools generate the biggest dividends⁶. Small-field races, such as some Class 1 handicaps with five or six runners, may not carry the pools at all, or may see them closed if runners drop below the threshold on race day.

The bets come into their own at big meetings. Field sizes at major race days in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines tend to be full, and the four-horse pools attract so much money that a longshot combination can produce a dividend worth many multiples of the stake. This is also where the merged Quartet and First 4 pool appears in Hong Kong, concentrating all four-horse money into one dividend⁸.

For a first-timer, the practical approach is to check the racecard before the meeting: it shows which races carry which pools, the field size, and the horse numbers you need. Our page on how to read a racecard covers the rest of what the card tells you.

Questions first-timers usually ask

Do I have to pick exactly four horses? You pick four horses for a single line, but you can add more horses to create combinations, which multiplies the number of lines and the cost. In Singapore, the Flexi Quartet lets you take a slice of a large combination instead of paying for the whole thing¹⁰.

What happens if my horse is scratched? Late withdrawals trigger refunds or substitute rules under the scratching regulations, and if the field falls below six starters the whole pool closes and everyone is refunded⁶. See our page on scratched horses for the detail.

Why is the dividend sometimes small? Because these are pool bets. When a heavily backed combination of favorites fills the first four places, thousands of tickets share the pool and the dividend shrinks. When an unfancied combination lands, few tickets hold it and the dividend can be enormous. That is the trade-off compared with fixed-odds betting.

Can I combine a four-horse bet with other bets? Yes. All-up and multiple products let you string several bets across races, and a First 4 or Quartet can be one leg of such a combination. Our page on multi-race bets explains how those work.

Is there a strategy that guarantees a win? No. Covering every combination of a large field guarantees a winning ticket but usually costs more than the dividend returns. Four-horse bets are long-odds products, and the pool structure means the crowd's money, not the odds board, sets your payout.