subject: Horse Race Handicapping - Do Not Allow Your Ego To Get In The Way Of Making A Profit [print this page] Author: Gerald W Cohail Author: Gerald W Cohail When you go to a racetrack or a satellite racing facility do you have money in your pocket? The answer is most likely "Yes!" Not many people go to the races just to watch the horses run. Yet most likely you, like 90% of the other racing fans who attend the races on any given day, will leave with less money than you when you arrived. So what separates the winners from the losers? If you try to pick the winner in every race and back that pick with a wager, you will go home a loser more often than not. That is why when you go to a horse racing facility and keep your ears open, you will hear this question repeated over and over: "Who do you like?" Yet a far better question for them to ask would be, "Which horse should I bet?" To quote a Las Vegas professional, "Picking winners doesn't mean anything." If you like two horses in a race and one of them is the odds-on favorite and the other one is going to post at 5/1, which horse should you bet? Most folks will follow the crowd and bet the favorite, yet the better bet every time is the horse with 5/1 odds. Let me explain why that statement is true. If you bet $2 on the odds-on favorite in a series of 100 races and you cash 40 tickets, you will lose a minimum of $48 (assuming the horses went to post at high odds of 9/10) over that series of 100 races. Conversely, if you place 100 $2 bets on another horse you like going to post at odds of 4/1 or higher in each race in that same series of races, you only need to cash 20 tickets to break even (4/1 odds) or make a lot of money (higher odds). Odds-on favorites will never win enough races for you to make money long-term. You would have to pick a minimum of 53% winners (assuming the horse goes to post at those high odds of 9/10) just to break even. For a 1/5 favorite, you need to cash a ticket 84% of the time to break even. To make an extremely small profit from your investment, are you capable of deciding 54-85% of the time which odds-on favorites will win and which will get beaten? The answer is likely "No!" So, why do you bet on odds-on favorites? You cannot make money on them long-term. Yet, you, like so many folks at the track, get suckered into betting on them over and over again? I believe the answer for most people is ego related. Most folks would (subconsciously) rather lose a bet on a low-priced horse that finishes second or third than they would a bet on a 9/1 long shot that finishes seventh or eighth. They let their ego get in the way of making sound wagers. For many of you, that stems from an inherent belief that you "know everything" there is to know about horse racing. You have read every handicapping book you could get your hands on. You have attended numerous handicapping seminars at your local racing establishment. You have listened to commentators on television extoll the virtues of one favorite after another. In essence, you have been brainwashed into thinking you can make money following the guidelines outlined in books and seminars and from the comments you hear tossed about by so-called experts. The problem is, that is what the vast majority of horse players are doing. Hence, you are beaten before you have even started. Yet, believe it or not, if you can get past the need to find "the winner" in every race and ignore your natural "follow the herd" mindset, you can start making money at the track. It took me decades to learn that simple truth. Yet once I released myself from the restriction of picking "the winner" in every race, I started making money. That is the reason I bet on horses races. How about you? --30--About the Author:
Gerald W. Cohail started handicapping horse races as a young teenager in the early 1960s. After roughly 50 years, he has learned two certainties about making money from wagering on horse races. 1.) Never bet on a favorite no matter how good that favorite looks on paper. 2.) You cannot expect to make a profit from wagering on horse races if you bet on every race.
To see more of Gerald's horse racing insights and claim your Free copy of "Bet The Horses And Win" visit his blog at ProRacingPicks.com.
