BetMaryland.com's Bill Ordine Shares Tips For Betting On Horse Racing

BetMaryland.com sports betting analyst Bill Ordine chatted with PressBox about how beginners can bet on horse racing in Maryland, the best way to take in the scenes at Pimlico Race Course during Preakness Weekend and more.

This has been edited for content and clarity.

PressBox:How can beginners bet on horse racing in Maryland? What tracks should they go to?

Bill Ordine: Our main track here for thoroughbreds is Laurel. Laurel has a fairly full schedule. It’s not difficult to pick out some days where you’d like to go to Laurel. A way to do this is to go to the Maryland Jockey Club website, take a look at the calendar, pick some days that are convenient and go to the track. The first thing you do, of course, is get a program and start looking it over.

For a beginner, trying to translate a horse racing program is sort of daunting. What you’re looking for is past performances of horses. You want to look at the distances they’ve been running, how that compares to the distance in the race that the horse is going to be running in. You want to pay attention to the jockeys, the trainers. Horse race betting is a bit of a learning curve, particularly with people who are unfamiliar with the cast of characters.

PB:What betting advice do you have for those who are just starting out?

BO: It pays to get yourself to a track, to take in the atmosphere, get a soft drink and a hot dog, sit down with your program, avoid the temptation to bet on the first couple of races that are going to come up and look down the road on the race card for that day. And if possible, try to avoid wagering on what we call the chalk — the favorites — because the payoffs are usually too low for it to really matter. If you’re only going to get 20 cents or even a $1.40 back on a winning horse, that doesn’t do much for you.

What you want to look for is a third or a fourth favorite in a race. If the third or fourth or fifth favorite in a race seems to be a horse that matches up with the distance — if you like the looks of how the horse has performed in the past. If you like a frontrunner, look for frontrunners. If you like a closer, you look for a horse that has closed in his past races. You start to develop your own personality as a horse race bettor depending on the type of horse that you think you’d like to bet on.

PB:Are there ways to get involved if you can’t get to the track?

BO: If you can’t get to the track, there are plenty of OTBs around Maryland that you can go to. Those are off-track betting parlors. When you go to those places, you have the opportunity to bet on horses and races around the country and sometimes around the world. One that I happen to be familiar with is the one at the Timonium Fairgrounds. There’s an OTB parlor there. For someone who doesn’t want to go to the track and they want to study racing charts and wager on races that they’re going to be watching probably on TV from someplace else, that’s a way to do it.

But I think that someone who is brand new ought to be experiencing horse racing in its own environment because it’s not just about trying to win money. And certainly everyone does want to win money — you’d rather win than lose, that’s certain — but enjoying horse racing is to enjoy the atmosphere, to enjoy the animals, the athletes. They are the athletes along with the jockeys in this sport. And really the way to do that is to be there in person and to soak in the atmosphere and get a feel for what narrative the program is telling you in a specific race. The more you get accustomed to reading the programs and studying the programs, you’ll begin to see a story begin to unfold for each horse.

PB: What do Win, Place, and Show mean?

BO: For people who just want to dip their toe in, we hear the very famous terms of Win, Place, and Show. The safest way to wager on a horse race is to bet on the horse to Show, which is to finish third or better. Now, the payoff is going to be very low, but at least you’ll get your money back and maybe a few bucks on top of that. The obvious way to bet is to bet on a horse to Win. If you bet on a horse to Place, you collect money if the horse finishes first or second, but it’s going to be a lower amount of money than if you bet on the horse just to Win. You can bet on a horse to Show and you can collect money if the horse finishes in first, second or third, but of course it would be a small amount of winnings. However, if someone is very conservative and just wants to enjoy a day at the races and wants to have some action for a race, that’s a very conservative way of doing it.

PB:How can bettors get a feel for the Kentucky Derby field before placing bets on the race?

BO: There are prep races all over the country in which horses will be trying to qualify, [so to speak], for the Kentucky Derby and earn their way into the Kentucky Derby. I would advise folks to not necessarily watch those races, although with YouTube now you can maybe miss the Florida Derby or Santa Anita Derby and get caught up on it the next day. You see who won the race and you go on to YouTube and you get the race frequently. If someone were interested, I would start doing that, to keep track of the big races that are coming up that are prep races. That would be one bit of advice. I always like to do that. I like to see what horses are doing well in those prep races as I prepare for the Kentucky Derby.

PB:What’s the easiest way to take in the scenes at Pimlico Race Course? Should people go to Black-Eyed Susan Day, Preakness Saturday or both?

BO: I’m a little biased because I’ve done both regularly. The day before the Preakness is Black-Eyed Susan Day. It’s the day where you’re going to see fillies and mares running, mostly. So you’re going to see routinely female horses running. I have gone to Black-Eyed Susan Day for many years. It’s a time when you can kind of spread out, you can get on the rail, you can be really right at the finish line on the rail if you choose to. I love Black-Eyed Susan Day. The horses are great. I mean, they’re spectacular.

When you get to the next day at the Preakness, it’s a little bit of a madhouse. It’s going to be much more electric, the atmosphere. … The Preakness is unique insofar as, unlike the Belmont, there’s a potential Triple Crown winner running in the Preakness assuming that the Kentucky Derby winner comes to Baltimore. There is that caveat there. The Kentucky Derby winner has to come to Baltimore. Typically, the Derby winner does. You’ve got the excitement of being there when a Triple Crown winner winds up winning the Preakness. I think each day is special in its own way.