• Investigation is opened before Cheltenham Festival
• Tote a feature of British betting landscape since 1928

The Gambling Commission, the government’s betting watchdog, is understood to have launched a review of the Tote’s betting activity.

The former state-owned betting operator is under scrutiny over whether it is fulfilling its obligation in its pools to make it “clear to customers in plain language” that they could in effect be betting against the Tote itself when they gamble on small-stake, high-win pools, such as the popular Placepot bet.

The Commission will now assess whether the operator is compliant with the regulator’s rules to ensure that gambling is “conducted in a fair and open way” and to make the extent of the Tote’s involvement in its pools “clear to customers in plain language”.

The Commission’s decision to assess the extent and nature of the Tote’s staking in its own betting markets comes a few weeks after the regulator received a detailed analysis, compiled over two years by a longstanding racing fan and punter, which suggested that the Tote’s own money now accounts for up to 60% of the cash invested in its key daily Placepot bet, which will have a guaranteed minimum pool of £750k on each of the four days of next week’s Cheltenham festival.