The London Underground is an amazing labyrinth – an underground railway system that serves Greater London, Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It first opened in 1863 as the first underground railway system in the world and it had another first in 1890 when it started operating electric trains. Although it is called the Underground or The Tube, 45% of it is above ground. The Underground has 270 stations, which cover 250 miles of track, and it is therefore the longest metro system in the world lengthwise. The Paris metro for example covers but 133 miles. The London Underground map now has an almost cult status, and many other transport maps have been strongly influenced by it.

The Central line opened in 1900 as a cross-route from Bank to Shepherd’s Bush, and gained the nickname of the Twopenny Tube due to its fare of two old pence. The line has been extended to serve White City Exhibition, Liverpool Street and Ealing Broadway. The Central Line is now 46 miles – the Underground’s longest line, and serves 49 stations. Staying on the Central Line from West Ruislip to Epping is the longest continuous journey you can take on the tube and takes 1 hour 28 minutes. The line needs 72 trains to operate the peak period service and accommodates approximately 590,000 each week day.

The Waterloo and City line links with Bank without any intermediate stations. It stretches 1.5 miles, all underground. In 2006 the line had upgrade works which included a new track, improved signaling and new trains. More than 37,000 people travel on the Waterloo and City line each weekday.

The Metropolitan line runs from Aldgate to Amersham, with branches to Chesham, Uxbridge and Watford covering 41.5 miles, with just 6 miles underground. Kings Cross with an annual passenger count of 87 million is the busiest station on the Metropolitan line.

The Piccadilly line is now over 100 years old, having opened in 1906, and has been extended many times over the years, with the most recent additions accommodating the Heathrow airport terminals. The line now covers 44 miles and serves 52 stations transporting almost 530,000 passengers on a daily (weekday ) basis. There are 4 disused stations on the line, some parts of which can be seen as the trains whizz by – York Road, Down Street, Brompton Road and Osterley and Spring Grove.

The Jubilee line is the Underground’s newest line, but serves stations which originally opened over 100 years ago. The line covers 22.5 miles and serves 27 stations between Stanmore and Stratford. It is the only line on the Underground to connect with all other existing lines, and accommodates more than 400,000 passengers during weekday journeys.

The Circle line shares its 14 mile route with the District, Hammersmith and City and the Metropolitan lines. It serves 27 stations, and a round trip would take one hour to complete. The principle depot is Hammersmith and the line itself serves almost 68.5 million passengers per year.

To settle a bet means calculating how much a winning bet is worth, most of which nowadays is done by computer systems. However the computer is only as good as the information being entered into the computer so it is worthwhile knowing how to spot a mistake should it happen.

Betting odds are usually expressed as a fraction which represents the fraction of your stake that you will win if your selection wins eg: 20/1 (twenty to one), which means that for every one stake, you will win 20 stakes, but as you will get your stake back, the total amount returned in this example will be 21 stakes.

Single bet: for example this is a simply bet on say the Grand National that a particular runner will win a race and to calculate what you could win you multiply the basic factor by the stake eg: £5 win at 5/1 is 5 x 6 = £30.

Betting each-way: Putting a bet on each way really means placing two bets – The first bet is a standard win bet, and the second bet is if the runner finishes anywhere in the first three places (some bookies have a finish in the first four policy while others have a first five – for example Paddy Power did this for the Grand National). Settling an each-way bet isn’t as difficult as it may seem – You multiply the fractional odds by the place factor, which will give you the each-way basic factor, then add one or two, depending on whether the selection was placed or won.

If you place an each-way bet on a horse in an eight runner race and your horse, which has odds of 15/1 comes second in the race, then the win part of the each-way bet wouldn’t get you any winnings but the place part does achieve a win eg: 15/1 multiplied by the place factor (1/5 for 8-runner races) plus one (to include the place part of your stake) which works out as: 15/1 * 0.2 + 1 = £4.00.

If you were lucky enough that your horse won the race, the each-way factor would be calculated as 15/1 multiplied by the win factor and the place factor (the place factor plus one = 1.2), plus two (your two stakes) which works out as 15/1 * 1.2 + 2 = £20.00. This new each-way basic factor is then multiplied by the each-way stake to get the settlement figure.