Horse Racing- Help?

[Donk4Life]

I usually like to turn to the track after football winds down and vary it with basketball plays. Anyone else on the forum a Horse player? Also, anyone know any great sites for discussion of the ponies? Thanks.

[Bishop22]

I think I am the only one on here making the majority of my income from US horse racing. I don't believe there is really any great public place to discuss horse racing. Some forums I've looked at include horseswild and thorograph. You are going to find the forums to be disappointing as most serious players like myself cannot afford to publicize picks because of the nature of the pari-mutuel pool. The forums are full of hopeless touts with trifecta systems and who recommending hedging via the show pool and other non-sense like that. Horse capping is a lonely pursuit for the most part, luckily for me I am part of a syndicate and my best friend is a talented semi-pro capper. So your best bet may be to find a partner rather than a forum. If you have any specific questions on anything else I could probably help you via PM.

[Strickly Bidness]

i've always been under the impression that nobody could beat the horses.

[DarkKnight]

you've always been under the wrong impression.

[Thremp]

Its not easy... 20% take out is killer. Though if you can get that down to 13%... You start seeing some real headway.

[noddyholder]

How do you beat the horses? Do you focus on just 1 or 2 tracks? Do you just handicap certain races? Do you bet "win" bets only or exotics? What is the best way or your favorite way?

[Thremp]

noddy,

I know very little about the subject, but I'll add what I think can help you out. There are a vast number of horse races everyday. I'm pretty sure the avg. horse bettor places wagers on a lower % of events than someone betting a major sport. And I'm pretty sure if you're good enough to beat the vig that you can identify value in win/place/show or other more exotic bets as well.

[Donk4Life]

Thanks to all, I'll be in touch.

[Bishop22]

Yes it is very, very difficult for an individual, especially one with a limited amount of leisure time, to beat the races. If you go to work all week and then go to the track or OTB on Saturday and pick up a DRF to handicap you going to find it near impossible especially if you are betting into the pari-mutuel pool.

The average takeout across major tracks is probably 17.5% for the win pool. Tom Ainslie in his book: 'The Complete Guide to TB Racing' talks about "getting this number down", which I think is a great way to look at it. The first thing you can do these days is to bet with an off-shore book. Pinny reduces the takeout at most tracks by 7% to 10%, and at NYRA tracks by 4% to 11% (by the way you should be betting NYRA tracks through 5dimes for the 10% payout bonus). We are only talking about win bets here, there is absolutely no reason to bet exotics until you have proven you can pick +ROI winners, for one thing the takeout is higher, and for another picking minor finishers is less skill and more luck.

Ok that was the easy part of "getting the number down", next you need knowledge, knowledge of what you are looking at in the PPs or Thorograhps or whatever tool you are going to use. The book I mentioned above along with Davidson's Picking Winners and Quinn's Condition Book are the required reading, yes they are a little old but I haven't seen any modern books that compare.

I'm off to get my wisdom teeth ripped out, I may write some more later or I might just enjoy my Vicadin enduced haze.

[Donk4Life]

good luck with the teeth. Any way we can bet on that?