2013 Preakness: 10 Questions to Ponder During Preakness Week

by 4 Comments
2013 Preakness

Will Orb win the Preakness and take home the Black Eyed Susan’s?

A week ago Orb dominated the Kentucky Derby.

He validated his Form from South Florida and boosted himself to the head of the three year old class.

A week from now he will attempt to capture the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes.

Here in Maryland no other day of horse racing can match Preakness Day.

It is the most attended day of racing, attracts the most handle annually and attracts national attention.

With that said it’s never too early to start dissecting the potential field.

Following are the top ten questions I could think of regarding the 2013 Preakness Stakes.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Triple Crown Tagged With: ,

2013 Kentucky Derby: Rain, Rain Go Away

by 1 Comment
2013 Kentucky Derby

The 2013 Run for the Roses will be contested in the rain this year.

The 2013 Kentucky Oaks was run under sunny skies on a dry track.

The winner was a long shot but was not impossible and was my last elimination.

The rest of the card was fairly formful and the track seemed to play fair.

The same will likely not be the case for the 2013 Kentucky Derby.

Rain has already started to fall and more is on the way.

The turf course will likely be soft and the main track sloppy.

Of course this completely changes the way I had planned on approaching the races but such is the life of a horseplayer.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Betting Strategy, Handicapping Strategy, Triple Crown Tagged With:

2013 Kentucky Oaks: They Should’ve Named Her Lily

by 3 Comments
2013 Kentucky Oaks

The 2013 Kentucky Oaks is quite possibly the deepest Run for the Lilies ever.

In most years the Kentucky Oaks plays second fiddle to its counterpart the Kentucky Derby.

The 2013 Kentucky Oaks, however, might prove to be the better of the two races.

From top to bottom the Oaks is loaded with talent.

All ten runners (after the scratch of Flashy Gray) are stakes winners.

The reigning two year old champion filly, Beholder, has carried her Form into her three year old season with back to back G1 wins.

Dreaming of Julia leads a quartet of fillies from the Todd Pletcher barn and is the fastest three year old of either sex based on her 114 Beyer Speed Figure, which she earned in her final prep.

There are no slouches in this field and if any of the ten won it wouldn’t be a big shock.

Unlike most years, however, the race looks fairly straightforward on paper and though you can never be too sure when betting developing three year old’s I am fairly confident I have solved this puzzle.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Betting Strategy, Handicapping Strategy Tagged With: ,

The Kentucky Derby: The Best and Worst Betting Race of the Year

by 2 Comments

The Kentucky Derby is by far the biggest race in America.

No other race receives the amount of media coverage, both from inside and outside the horse racing industry.

Each and every trip to the track by the potential Kentucky Derby prospects is documented and dissected.

Jockeys, owners and trainers give a years worth of interviews in the week leading up to the race.

Some say it’s an information overload while others wish it were the norm.

In either case the additional media attention brings the sport into the view of millions of people that wouldn’t otherwise watch a horse race.

Many of those people will bet a few bucks, which helps the Derby attract more wagering handle than any other race in America.

For that reason and many others the Kentucky Derby is the best betting race of the year.

If you look past the silver lining, however, you will also see that the Kentucky Derby is at the same time the worst betting race of the year.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Betting Strategy, Triple Crown Tagged With: ,

Speed Figures: Answering the Question of How Fast Did a Horse Run?

by 7 Comments

This is part V of a series on the basics of handicapping horse races, if you have not already done so I encourage you to read part I, part II, part III  and part IV first.

Determining which horse in a race is the fastest might seem as easy as comparing the final time of their past races.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple because horse races aren’t run in a vacuum and not every horse will have raced at the same track and distance.

Horses run on surfaces that change from day to day and sometimes from race to race depending on track maintenance and weather conditions.

Adding water to the track between races, a sudden rainstorm or a front moving through bringing high winds and/or significant temperature changes are just a few of the variables that can affect the speed of a race track.

Horses also run at different tracks and distances throughout their careers and no two tracks are exactly the same.

A six furlong race run in 1:12 might be fast at one track but slow at another.

Similarly comparing a race at six furlongs and one at seven furlongs, even at the same track, is not straightforward.

Fortunately Speed Figures provide a way to see through the chaos and determine how fast a horse ran in a race.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Handicapping Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

No Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow Pick 6

by 10 Comments
Rainbow Pick 6

There’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

For the second time in three years the Rainbow Pick 6 at Gulfstream attracted a massive amount of wagering handle at the end of  the meet due to the mandatory payout rule.

For the second  time in three years the Rainbow Pick 6, despite the huge pool size, paid very little.

Similarly the Black Gold Pick 5 at Fairgrounds attracted a lot of wagering handle on the final day of the meet this year and just like the Rainbow Pick 6 had a disappointingly low return.

These are just the most recent examples of why jackpot wagers are bad for horse racing.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Betting Strategy Tagged With: , ,

Pace: How to Determine the Likely Pace of a Race and How it Will Affect the Chances of Each Horse in the Race

by 5 Comments

This is part IV of a series on the basics of handicapping horse races, if you have not already done so I encourage you to read part I, part II and part III first.

Pace is the rate at which a horse race is run.

The pace of a race can be separated into two parts: Early Pace and Late Pace.

Most discussions involving pace revolve around early pace because it directly impacts the outcome of a race.

Early pace can be defined as the first half mile in sprint races (less than one mile) and the first three quarters of a mile in route races (one mile or longer).

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Handicapping Strategy Tagged With: , ,
«Older Posts