Horse Racing Handicapping to Find Good Bets by Following Horses

If you are trying to make money by betting on horses, you are probably like most people, zigging and zagging from one method to another and looking for something that keeps working. While you may have found short term profits picking winners, if you are like most horse players, those profits get eaten up when you start losing and it seems like handicapping horse races for profit is a regular roller coaster ride and you are always going up and down.

The nature of horse racing is that what works one day, week, or month, will fade out and start losing money. Eventually, if you stick with the same method for picking winners, you will give back all profits and eventually your bankroll, too. That is because horseracing is cyclical, just like the individual horses themselves.

By that I mean that horses go through regular form cycles as well as reacting to other changes in their training, and health. Some successful horse players follow individual horses and wait until they think the horse is in a position to win, then bet that horse. It can be a very good method for picking winners, but you can also waste a lot of time watching horses, keeping lists and notes, when the horse you are following is a dud or just isn’t going to change much.

So how do you know which horses to follow to make a profit from your wagers? Here are a few tips for good horses to keep track of and to bet on when the time is right. First of all, horses who have won in the past, have had a rest and are coming back to the races are often good ones to watch. But before you start making a list of every horse coming back from a layoff, here are a few thoughts, first of all, don’t waste your time on low percentage trainers.

If the trainer can’t win very often, he or she may not be able to get a decent horse back in winning shape. So when picking horses to follow, horses coming back from a layoff, that is, stick with horses with a trainer with a decent win average at that track. The next tip is to stay away from older horses who have seen their better days and may have many physical problems and will not return to previous form.

You have to use your judgment on this one and realize that some older horses have a trainer who will drop that horse into a class it can be competitive at, but if the horse was at the bottom of the class ladder when it went for a rest, it may not have any more room to drop. Therefore, if an older horse struggled last year in the lowest class levels and is coming back, pass it by. It may have a few good races left in it, but chances are, it has lost another step or two that it could not afford to give up.

Horses coming off the claim often win in their first or second race when the trainer is a good one for that, but if it is a big name trainer who is known for this move, you’ll be hard pressed to find value in the pools. In this case, look for little known trainers who have small stables and fly under the radar. For that, you need to be familiar with the tracks in your local circuit. There are some real good bets out there but they go un noticed by the crowd because the trainer doesn’t produce big numbers of winners for the year and therefore doesn’t make it on the lists that the handicapping guru’s and public handicappers use to make their choices.

The bottom line on making money betting on horses that you follow is that you not only need a horse that has something going on with it to make it improve in its form cycle, but you also need the right trainer to make that happen. Knowing the trainers habits and strengths at your local track is the first step in making a good list of horses to follow and make money on.