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Horse racing betting strategy: keys to being successful long term

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(© Daren Whitaker – stock.adobe.com)

Horse racing is far from your regular sport, and so is betting on it. While sports like football, tennis, and even soccer requires that you focus on the athletes only, horse racing requires that you focus not only on the athletes (the jockey) but the horses, too.

This explains why we don’t see as many bettors staking on horse racing as we do in other sports betting like football. Simply put, betting on horses is a tough ask of anyone.

How then can one devise a long term winning strategy? You may wonder!

Well, for all its difficulty, horse racing betting is not rocket science. And thanks to the series of tools bettors now have available to them, including equibase, horse racing betting is easier now more than ever.

That said, these few tips will help you win long term betting on horses.

Bankroll management

Any long term winning strategy in horse racing must feature bankroll management because how you manage and control your money will determine how long you get to stay within the horse racing betting world.

Although the process of monitoring your bankroll as you stake on horses might seem more like accounting rather than punting, you really don’t want to stray off-course because it is as easy to win money on horses as it is to lose it.

This is why most horse racing bettors devise a bankroll management strategy before they even place their first bet. Here are some of the most popular strategies they use:

  • Targeting shorter priced-horses: When betting on those short-priced horses, some bettors like to raise their stakes. Although the return on these types of bets might be low, it thus saves their bankroll from crashing down overnight. This strategy is mostly adopted by those bettors that are low on cash.
  • Targeting bigger-priced horses: With bigger-priced horses come greater risks but a tasty profit return. For a bettor looking to make big money, this is the type of horse you want to target. But it thus puts your bankroll at great risk if you don’t have enough money to go on.
  • Each-way: For some bettors, it is better to bet “each-way” to level stakes.

Ignoring trainer/jockey comments

This tip is pretty straightforward. If you want to bet on a horse, ignore what the jockeys or trainers are saying. Of course, every trainer or jockey will want people to believe that their horse is the best for a race, but a seasoned bettor knows better than to believe these statements.

Instead, take your time to conduct your homework and back horses based on what strategies tell you. As a student of the form-book and someone who understands pedigrees, you will already know whether a horse will last a certain race or go soft sooner rather than later, you simply don’t need a trainer or jockey to tell you.

And for a newbie bettor who needs a second opinion on their betting selections, you can trust the stats on equibase to lead you in the right direction.

Watching back races

Horse racing is not always won in the closing stages of a race, as some people like to think. Some races are won/lost even from the start. But how will you know this when you’re only focused on which horse has won a race and which has lost?

This is why we recommend going back to past races and watching them all over again. On the first watch, you can focus on how a horse starts the game. On the second watch, you can turn your focus to how the horse recovered or lost its winning position. And on the final watch, you can focus on any mid-race incident and how it affects the horse.

By and large, don’t just focus on the closing stages of a past race. Instead, take your time to watch a race over and over again and take different lessons from each watch.

Don’t limit yourself

Don’t even think for a second that you always have to stick with the odds you find a certain bookie’s site. Far from it! If anything, you should take your time to compare the odds of all the best betting sites before you make a decision on where you’ll be making your selection.

Remember, you don’t owe any bookie anything, so if there’s any edge you can take from them, you should be looking to take advantage of it, provided it doesn’t have a detrimental effect on your ability to use your account with them in the long term.

Research

In an age where bettors can now place bets on horses from the comfort of their mobile phones, it can be tempting to bet on horses once you notice that the opportunity is available.

You don’t want to do this!

In the times before digital technology, before you can bet on horses, you’ll have to first walk down to the nearest bookie’s shop. On getting there, you’ll have to do a lot of research/forecast on the available horse before you put your money on the line. Even if you’re too lazy to do, you’ll find always find some guy who’s done theirs, and from them, you can take the hint on the best selection to make.

In this age, however, such opportunities are almost non-existential. To make up for it, we now have a series of tools, materials, and content available on the internet to help us make good decisions. Checking these materials out before betting on any horse is a no-brainer.

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