How do horse racing handicappers find good bets?

The way most people rank a horse race is by comparing different factors or data to assess each runner’s recent form and ability. Skill is the key to probability and that is the key to fair value odds. “Fair value odds” describe the condition that exists when a horse will return as much or more money than was wagered on it.

For example, if a horse ran the same race ten times under the same conditions against the same opponents, how often would it win? If the answer is once, then that horse has a 10% chance of winning. Therefore, he must return at least ten dollars for every dollar wagered in order for punters to win back their bets. Anything above the 9-1 odds is a chance for profit. A horse that wins 9-1 will return $10 for every dollar wagered on it.

Only experience can teach a handicapper how often certain horses can win. To gain experience and really learn how often a horse is going to win, a horse player must try many races and then watch them to learn. You might think that the people you see at a race track or OTB who have been going to the races for years would have gained that experience, but that is often not the case.

Just because someone does something over and over again doesn’t mean they learn from experience. Many of them are losing out on horses they would have bet on when they first started attending races and for the same reasons, although they are missing out on long-term strategies.

Human nature is often slow to learn, in fact practice rarely makes perfect, but often makes it permanent, meaning people get into a rut and refuse to get out because it’s familiar even if it’s uncomfortable. .

The people who handicap and find good bets are the ones who took notes and then accumulated enough data on the handicap races to learn from that experience. They may have discovered, for example, that the horses with the highest average speed in certain races had a 32% chance of winning. By combining factors and statistics, they came up with a way to evaluate horses by creating certain filters that weed out runners down to the best horses and each one’s chances of winning.

Practice and record keeping as a form of feedback is what makes a tipster successful.

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