Three Key Factors to Note in Horse Racing Handicapping For Consistently Picking Winners

By Bill Peterson

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The way that you progress as a horse racing handicapper is by keeping good accurate notes that you can refer to when you want to check your progress and avoid making the same mistakes. But keeping notes is not that simple for some people and being organized in your thinking is an absolute must when picking winners.

First you must identify key handicapping factors that you want to follow. If you want to become a master at using speed figures to pick winners, then you must keep track of the speed figures that you used to make decisions about bets. If you want to use pace as a handicapping figure that you use to rate the competitors, then you must note how you thought a race would shape up and then you must watch the race and see how closely you were able to call the position of each horse during the race.

Here is what you are actually trying to accomplish when you are using your own notes to become a better handicapper.
1. Learn how each horse's projected figure, whether pace, speed, class, will affect its ability to compete.
2. Learn how important the spread is when comparing those figures in each class of race.
3. Learn how to exploit the differences and the crowd's opinion of those factors to find good value bets.

Here is what each of those points really means.

1. Once you decide which factor(s) you want to rate, the next job is to write them down for each race you handicap. Then, watch the race and note how each horse performed. After a while you may start to notice a pattern. You will also start to have a valid opinion based on watching numerous races with horses that showed that figure. For instance, let's saying you are watching claiming races for older horses at 6 furlongs at your favorite track. You start to notice that a horse with a superior early pace figure is usually within a few lengths of the leader or wins the race. Now, each time you see a horse like that, you know it must be considered a contender or an exotic play.


2. If you are following the three major factors, speed, class, pace, and notice that one is not really much of a determining factor, that is important, especially when we get to part three. During the second phase you are trying to determine how important a 3 tick advantage is in early speed or if horse's dropping from 15k claimers to 10k claimers have a big advantage. In other words, you are seeing how much weight the spreads have and therefore how much each one should be used in your calculations.

3. This is where your note keeping should pay off. You have watched the factors you wanted to become expert at and have a good collection of notes. You have determines, for instance, that speed is only a good determining factor if a horse has at least a 5 point advantage in speed figures in its last three races. Yet you notice the crowd is betting a horse with only a 2 point advantage down to even money. You look at the other contenders and find a horse with good early speed and know that the advantage it has in early speed will make it competitive at the end and it is at 5-1 odds. You know from past experience that it is a good bet so you play it.

The reason the crowd didn't know it is because most don't keep notes and don't understand how important the spread is in important handicapping figures. If you took a poll of the crowd they'd tell you the horse was the favorite because it had the best speed figure and that's important. But you know from your notes, that while speed is important, it doesn't matter much unless there is at least a 5 point spread. The crowd over estimates the horses advantage. That is how you find good value bets among the other contenders.

You won't find a bet in every race this way and it will take work to do this. You have to keep well written notes and state why you liked a horse in a race and then see what happens and write that down. Then watch the race and look at your opinions at the end of the race to see how well they held up. That is how you will learn and that is how you will have an advantage over the crowd. The notes are feedback and without feedback you won't improve.

You will find that most people learn almost everything they know about handicapping in the first 10 trips to the race track. After that they go over and over again and make the same mistakes over and over again and never progress beyond that point because they didn't keep notes and have a hazy recollection of what works and why. Most people, truth be told, are just trying to get lucky at the horse races and everyone can't be lucky. For the 9 out of 10 days when you're not lucky, you better be good. Picking winners for profit takes skill and good horse racing handicapping.

The most consistent horse racing systems have to have the basics and a handicapper must understand the basics. I have been around horse racing for 50 years including as an owner. Without the basics the rest is not going to do any good. If you want to learn how a horse owner and insider handicaps just go to http://williewins.homestead.com/truecb.html and get the truth.

Bill Peterson is a former horse race owner and professional handicapper. He comes from a horse race handicapping family and as he puts it, "Horse Racing is in my blood." To see all Bill's horse racing material go to http://williewins.homestead.com/handicappingstore.html, Bill's handicapping store.

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