“In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” Opening to the TV series Law and Order
I’m going to paraphrase that a bit. In horseracing there are two separate but equally important skills. Discovering winners through handicapping, and betting them correctly.
Handicapping is mostly science, but there are elements of psychology and art thrown in. You want to find the horse likely to run the fastest, but sometimes it is not as simple as a calculation. Sometimes you are looking for patterns, especially those associated with specific trainers. Good handicappers often “see” things that lesser handicappers miss. It is about taking masses of data, filtering out the irrelevant pieces, and weighting what’s left correctly. It’s about understanding the “style” of a horse, and whether that style fits in a respective race.
ABILITY + STYLE + INTENTION = WINS
There are a great number of better than average handicappers playing the races, but the percentage making money is much smaller.
Betting is pretty much all science. Calculations of risk and reward. I would suggest the first thing you have to do is categorize yourself as a bettor. Do you like to grind out profit? Do you live for the big hit? Are you playing for fun or are you serious? Are you willing to make the right bet at the right time, whatever it is?
I’d point people at Andy Beyer’s My $50,000 Year at the Races. He made all his money betting win and exacta. When he was sure and he had an edge, he fired and won enough to make big profit.
I remember talking to a non-horseplayer about spending my vacation at the track. He figured if he was going to spend a thousand dollars on a vacation he rather go scuba diving. i pointed out that once he spent the thousand it was gone, but I actually had a chance to come home with more money than I left with. And even if it cost me a thousand dollars to spend a week at the track, I’ll bet I had as good a time as he did scuba diving.
Lots of people see spending money at the track as entertainment. If at the end of the year they are down a few bucks, it was just the price of entertainment. They win some, they lose some; have a few big thrills, a few big disappointments. If that’s the case, bet in whatever way makes you happy, as long as you are, as the ads say, betting with your head not over it. But if you are playing to make a profit, you have to show some discipline and get into the pools that fit your bankroll.
Most betting handbooks tell you that a critical element is to keep records. See which bets are profitable, which are not. That’s a fine idea, as long as you are willing to change your betting pattern once you decide certain bets are losers for you.
I think you can become good at any type of bet, depending on your bankroll, but I would maintain that for the average player some bets are better than others. I’ve often advised smaller players to divide their bankroll into three parts: 50% win, 25% exacta, and 25% other bets. If you are a better than average handicapper, this is a good way to either make profit or keep your bankroll alive longer, and still allow you to get into some of the exotic combination pools.
Here is my opinion of the various betting pools.
Must pools
Win – read my article The Magic Number http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=147 to learn how to bet win. If you think about it, vertical and horizontal bets all have a win component to them. If your choice wins the race, the worst thing is to be caught not cashing tickets.
Exacta – read my article Risk Intelligence http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=149 to learn how to bet exactas. With the exacta you can turn 8-5 shots into 5-1 shots. Again, it’s very disappointing to have a winner and not bet it because the odds are too low.
Occasional Pools
Place – read my article Betting Two Horses http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=827 to learn why you should rarely bet place. I understand why people bet to place – it is a psychological salve against watching your horse just miss. But arithmetically, you are almost always better off taking the money you would have bet to place and playing it to win, either on the horse you prefer or your second choice. Even if you make fewer collections, in the long run you’re likely to make better profit. The one exception to the no place rule would be horses going off at odds, since often the place price will be as good as the win price on other horses. If your horse is 37-1 and finishes second, you better have an exacta or place tickets, preferably both. Let me make one emphatic point – I’m not telling people to bet two horses to win every race. I’m telling people that if they were GOING TO BET TO PLACE, put the money in the win pool instead.
Trifecta – my favorite way to bet the trifecta is to play a solid choice on top, the two most likely place horses in second, and longer priced contenders in third. If you reference the Magic Number, you’ll see a series of graphs that show the percentage of longshots finishing third is actually higher than you’d expect. A horse with a 10% chance of winning may actually have as high as a 25% chance of finishing third. I’m sure you’ve figured out that betting this way is essentially making a win bet, so what you are really banking on is getting a price in third. If you’re going to bet the first three choices, save your money. Bet a trifecta to make a nice hit if your top choice wins and a longer priced horse finishes third. But don’t forget – you still need to make the win bet if your top choice is value. And some exactas.
Daily Double – This is simply a win parlay, and is a good bet if you have a shorter price horse that you can play with a longer price horse. A couple of tips. NEVER wheel a horse in the double. A smarter way to play would be to bet doubles just with some of the longer priced horses with a reasonable chance to win, and make a bigger win bet on the horse you thought about wheeling. The smartest way to play is to just take all the money you were going to invest in the double and place it to win on your single. Finally you should rarely play more than a 2 X 2 double. If you are that unsure, wait for a better betting opportunity.
Pick 3 and Pick 4 – It’s hard to resist lottery bets, and frankly most people don’t have the bankroll to play them properly. There was a time when all I played was the Pick-4, investing $100 to $200 a race (with $1 tickets). I hit some big ones, but when I looked at my records overall, I was barely making a positive ROI. I also realized that whenever I had a single, I was essentially making a win bet on that horse. If I invested $120 in a Pick-4, and my single hit but I didn’t cash on the Pick-4, the irritation I experienced stuck with me a while. I’ll give you one alternative way to bet the Pick-3/4. List all your potential contenders for each race and pick the likeliest winner for each event. Play the Pick 3/4 as a series of a single in one race with the contenders in the others. I still don’t think it’s superior to a series of win bets, but if you’re determined to play the Pick-3/4 it gives you a chance to cash multiples without a cost much higher than betting one ticket with all the combinations. You can also reference my article, The New Way to Bet Pick-4s http://halveyonhorseracing.com/?p=1097
Never Bet
Show – I’ll just say this. You’re a better horseplayer than that.
Pick 6 – Unless you are highly capitalized, it’s a sucker bet. I guarantee that for every story of a bettor hitting a big Pick 6 with a $15 ticket, there are a thousand stories of a syndicate snagging the pool by betting $10,000. I’ll concede that if there is a big carryover the temptation to bet might be overwhelming. In that case, go ahead. Better yet, form your own syndicate and compete with the bigger boys.
Pick 5 – See Pick-6 above. Most bettors are not capitalized to bet it properly. There may be a time when you can get into it cheaply, but this is definitely case of caveat emptor.
Quinella – bet the exacta instead. It’s usually a bigger pool and a better payoff, especially if the longer price of the two horses is on top.
Superfecta – It’s tempting to get into it for a dime, but it is most often a waste of money. You have to cover a lot of combinations, and unless you have a a few longshots in the four positions, it’s hardly going to pay enough to do more than grind out profit. The one exception might be on Breeder’s Cup Day. More than a few of those superfectas pay boxcars.