Guide to be a winner

Learn How to Pick Horse Racing Winners

If you’ve been handicapping horse races for years or have just started, the path to success is the same.  You’ve got to pick winners and those winners must make a profit.  In other words, they have to return more than you bet in total.  If you bet 0 in the course of a day and take back 0, you’ve made profit.  The math is so simple it lures many into a false sense of confidence, but a positive return on investment (ROI) is maddeningly difficult to achieve with any regularity.

The formula for success, like the above description, is also simple and straightforward.  It is a matter of probability (how likely the horse is to win) times payoff (the amount of money the winning ticket pays) minus the total amount of bets.  So if we use a base bet of and make 10 bets in the course of a day, we need to cash over worth of tickets in order to make a positive ROI, a profit.  For many of you this isn’t exactly a new revelation, but also for many of you, it is a problem you have struggled with for a long time.

In the example above, if you have three winners out of the ten races, and each one pays an average of , then you will have collected for your investment of .  That amounts to 25% more than you started with.  Increase your bets by ten ( win bets) and your profit is now .  Increase your bets by one hundred and your profit is now 0.  Once again, simple math, but not so simple to accomplish in the real world.

Now let’s talk about how to make this dream a reality.  Most of you will fail at it.  I’m not trying to be a wise guy or discourage you, that’s just the way it is.  Anyone who goes to a race track or casino soon realizes that most people who play at those venues walks away a loser, though for many it is a form of entertainment and worth the price. The best way to start on the path to becoming a winning horse player is to realize exactly what it takes, the odds against you, and to write down as much as you possibly can about your dream, goals, and the knowledge you now possess.

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The next step is picking winners.  Once again, I’m not being flippant, but that is what it takes, or at least the first part of it.  The second part is only playing those winners that you pick that will actually make a profit, but we’ll get to that part later.  For now, step one is to pick winners.  So start handicapping races with only that goal in mind.  Obviously, this is not a time to be wagering serious or large amounts of money.  While in training, small bets or just paper bets are the safest.  If you were learning how to ski you wouldn’t tackle the biggest mountain you could find on your first run.  You shouldn’t go to the race track and make huge bets without practice.

Just for fun, start trying to pick the winner in every race with no regard for the odds on the horses.  Make it into a game and see how many winners you can pick.  Perhaps you can make it a contest among friends and the winner gets a free lunch.  It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it and write everything down.  Keep notes and write down your reasons for each choice that you make and what the final result may have been.

After a suitable amount of time, go back over your notes and try to find any situation or reasoning that you had that showed a profit over the other bets.  Perhaps you’re better at handicapping maiden races and picking winners that show a profit in those races.  Maybe you like to bet on the runners of a certain trainer in claiming races or on the turf.  Whatever the case may be, you may be surprised to learn that there is one area of handicapping in which you are more successful.  Now for step two.  Start playing only those races that offer that unique opportunity and make sure you keep an eye on the odds and continue to insist on the odds that the horses raced for when you were just playing at picking winners.

This is difficult to do if you make any changes, so stick with small bets at this point and stay within your comfort zone. Pick your winners exactly as you picked them before.  You have notes to help you to look for the same situations in the same kinds of races.  While there may be slight seasonal adjustments to be made and adjustments according to which track you play, overall, if you’ve kept notes and find the same situations, you should develop a winning method and it will be completely your own.  It all starts with just picking winners for fun and keeping good notes.