Horse Racing Handicapping Strategies

The first thing that you must learn about horse racing handicapping is that it is most certainly not an exact science. Although a good horse racing handicapping expert can win over the long term by stacking the odds in his favor, on any given day it boils down to short-term luck. It is very similar to the game of poker in terms of you can bet your money while you are a very large favorite, but that in no way guarantees you to win.

There are many different horse racing handicapping strategies so many in fact that you could never possibly master them all. In order to determine the type of handicapping strategy that you need to apply you must first determine how you plan to bet.

Some horse racing handicapping experts feel that betting to win is the only way to bet. Other horse players look for sleepers to pay out big in exactas, trifectas, and superfectas. There is no right or wrong way to answer this question, but the answer to this question will most definitely affect your horse racing handicapping strategies. Most people fall somewhere in the middle, and a lot of people actually do both.

Once you decide the type of bet that you’re handicapping for is then time to dig into the details of the race that you’re handicapping. You should horse first look at the surface of the race. Is this race being run on the dirt, if so is it regular dirt or synthetic dirt? Isn’t being run on the turf? The next question you need to ask is how long is the race? Is it a short 6 furlong sprint race, or is it a long mile and an eighth race? One last question that you will need to answer before you look at the horses is what type of race is this? Is this a high class graded stakes race, or is it a low class $5000 claiming race for any horse in the race can be purchased for $5000?

Once you have a general idea of the details of the race it is time to review the individual horses to determine which horses look the strongest. I always start off by looking at each individual horses past performances. In my opinion in all of horse racing handicapping, the most important thing that I look at is the class of the races that they have previously been running in and how they have performed in those races. For example if they have been running in grade 3 stakes races and now all of a sudden they are running in a very small allowance or claiming race, they are most likely a very large favorite to win the race since they have previously been running against such strong competition and now they are running against a much weaker field. Unless they are coming back from injury or perform horribly against the stronger fields you have to at least give them a slight edge here. On the same token if a horse that’s been running in $10,000 claiming races all of a sudden decides to run in a $60,000 allowance race and most likely doesn’t have a chance unless there’s some sort of secret that the trainer knows that you don’t. In my opinion the class that a horse has been running in versus the class that is currently running in is a very good indicator of how it should perform in the race.

You must also review the past performances to ensure that the horse has performed well on the type of surface that is running on today. This means if the horse has previously been running all turf races and now it’s running on a dirt track you can give too much credit to the previous races because they were on turf and now he’s running on dirt. Also alter is not created equal, some tracks have real dirt and other tracks have synthetic dirt. This synthetic dirt is designed to be easier on the horses legs and ankles, but it does affect the way that they run. Because of this you almost have to handicap these races as a separate type of surface.

The last major consideration in horse racing handicapping is the distance of the race. If a horse has previously been running sprints at 6 furlongs or less and today is running a mile and an eighth you really have no idea what’s going to happen. However, if you can see that the horse was previously closing strongly in the 6 furlong races you might likely think that it could perform well in the mile and an eighth race today. Or, if the horse had previously been running all short sprint races, then ran one long race, and is returning to its short sprint distance today, this could be an indicator that it needed a race to come into form and could perform well today.

After reviewing these basics you should be able to at least group the horses in the race into categories of contender, possibility, and pretender. These categories can have any number of horses in each of them. Once you have the field narrowed down into these categories you have a much better idea of who you should be betting depending on your strategies.

You can now begin to dig in to the recent performances of each horse to determine if it’s rounding into form. There are so many additional factors to consider, and that is what makes horse racing handicapping an exciting and fun sport. We plan to bring you many more tips and strategies here. Feel free to browse our site and learn more.