Horse Racing Betting Strategies

Let's face it, betting on horse races, comes with risks. And it is probably the one risk we are unwilling to make at times because it involves our money.

There is, however, a very simple way to improve your odds of winning horse racing bets at online bookmakers... it's statistics.

Horse Racing Statistics

In order to make any form of intelligent decision, one must first become acquainted with each of the associated risks and the value of each risk.

Especially in the case of horse racing where a win or lose situation could mean a lot of money out of the pot or a lot of money into the pot.

To assess the risks involved and to determine worth, here's three horse racing strategies.

Research Horses Before Races

Your goal here is to have a good background in a horse's history in terms of wins and loses.

In order to assess the values of the odds offered (in tip #2) by online bookmakers, you must be able to pre-judge each of the horses in your own mind as to whether it is a viable horse to bet on or not, irrespective of the betting odds a bookmaker offers.

This can be done through conventional means or on the internet. Maybe strike up a conversation with a fellow horse-better to gain valuable knowledge on a horses statistics.

Assess The Odds

Each horse will have a specific odds (in the form of a ratio: 1/1, 2/1, 3/1, etc.).

The odds placed on horses is created by the oddsmaker, who almost always has good knowledge about the horses, their statistics, and horse-racing in general.

Your objective is to beat the odds that online bookmakers set.

For now, just keep track of the odds of the various horses, preferably in written form. Both tip #1 and tip #2 is necessary before you can move on to tip #3 and improve your betting.

Assess The Value/Type of Bet

You have knowledge of each horse and you know the odds placed for the horses. What now?

Now that you have the two most important pieces of information for each horse, you can piece together the significance or value of a specific horse and its odds. I will illustrate a purely hypothetical situation (this will never happen).

Assume a horse, Blazing Thunder, has the odds of 3/1. And you know, from researching, that Blazing Thunder has taken first, second, and third place quite a bit more than it has come in any of the other subsequent places.

So, you can qualitatively decide that the odds of Blazing Thunder taking a winning position is highly in your favour.

Also, referring back to Blazing Thunder's odds of 3/1, you know that if Blazing Thunder does win, the online bookmaker will pay out at three times your stake minus any commission.

Now, this situation is completely unrealistic. A good horse will be offered at lower odds because too many winning punters may put even the best bookmakers out of business.

However, this is the mentality you must keep in order to make this horse racing strategy work.

Gauge the relative performance of a horse in comparison to it's odds. Choose a few of the best horses that you think can win, systematically and logically.

Don't leave it up to intuition unless you're clairvoyant or got a full proof horse racing betting strategy!

You'll also find that online bookmakers offer numerous types of horse racing bets.

We'll not describe all of them but we will describe the few which I believe are easy enough for the beginner but still has a decent winning opportunity.

The most obvious one is the straight bet.

This entire article was more generally focused towards straight betting. Straight betting just means that you bet on horses at given specified odds created by online bookmakers.

You only collect your pot if your horse wins 1st place. The second betting type which I recommend is parlaying/accumulator betting or double betting.

This allows you to choose winners of several races all at once.

With good planning, you can determine the winners of the races while not having to place bets at the bookmaker more than once. These are just the basic horse racing tips to help you win more.