Horse Betting Basics

The best way to get started to learn to be a good handicapper is to familiarize yourself with the Daily Racing Form, or other Past Performances that are available to you. They have a page in each issue which is a guide to the data that is contained on each horse listed in the PPs. (Past Performances).

Once you are comfortable with the process, you can begin by handicapping some races. You will easily be able to pick out the contenders in the race simply by looking at the latest running lines for each horse. A running line is dated and gives the track, distance, post position and other data first. After that, the fractional times of the leader at certain points in the race. Then, the horses position within the field and how many lengths the horse is behind. If the horse was leading at that point in the race- then the length margin is how much he led by at that point. If you look at the finish position which is the last one given, you can see where the horse has been ending up in it's recent races.

There are as many methods of handicapping as there are handicappers, and you should go about it in your own way eventually. One of the things that you will notice early on is that the most obvious choices in the race will also be recognized by the betting public, which drives down the odds, possibly too far to warrant a bet. One of the things that I learned early in my handicapping education was to look for value. In other words, you handicap with value built in. The way to do this is to be looking for things that the general betting public may overlook.

One of those things may be certain trainer-jockey combinations. Sometimes a good trainer will use a lesser known jockey to ride a horse for a few races, and then when the horse is ready to win, he will switch to one of the top riders at the track to ensure that his horse has the best possible chance to win while he is sharp. The trainer may also make an equipment change like adding blinkers or removing them. He may also switch the distance from a short race (a sprint) to a longer race (a route). If you watch the trainers habits and keep track of the subtle and not so subtle changes they make before one of their horses runs a big race, you can get to know when they have one ready to pop.

There are several methods that employ the "value" approach to handicapping and I will share more in future articles.

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