4 Handicapping Methods To Consider When Betting The Races

Frustrated Frank asked successful horseplayers for a quote that would help him decide if a race is a good bet. The answers were varied. The coach of soccer's kids loves to start out their water break talks with a quotes.

Walt the Whale is a throwback to his late Uncle Dutch. UncleDutch kept a notebook of meet stats. Walt takes what you see in the past performances one step further and tracks the same stats with jockey and trainer combos and weighs them against morning line odds.

Some successful jockey/trainer combinations underperform because they are over bet under the wrong conditions. Walt has a data analysis system that he uses to help handicap the races. Cara has her own business selling handicapping services. She has won a lot of races with her doctorate. She sells her handicaps to handicappers. Her clients include first time starters, lightly raced runners, and horses stretching out for the firsttime.

Some handicappers don't make their living playing the big races. They make money playing weeknight claimers. Big Bucks Billy churns out a profit playing horses that go to post every two to three weeks at tracks like Penn National, Mountaineer, and Thistledown.

Billy is looking for the right running line for today's race. Chalky Chester is an interesting handicapper. He scours the past performances from at least five tracks a day to find his best wagering opportunities. Chester assesses the favorite as either strong or weak. He has shown his strong favorites to win more than half of the time and pegs weak favorites that can only win a fifth of time. I have developed my own “favorite likelihood factor” based on some of his principles. It works out to a linear representation of a favorite’s chances in a race based upon several factors from both the field and the favourite.

Chalky Chester makes his money playing the right favorites and beating the weak ones. If you are not having success with your approach to handicapping, you need to change it.