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Guide to Winning Horse Race Betting
 
The most established form of sports betting in the world, horse racing, is the most daunting for new punters to get involved in. There is more jargon associated with racing than any other sport and it can just seem impossible to understand. However its also a very simple concept, a line of horses at the start and the winner is the first past the post at the end. And even if the first past the post gets disqualified or demoted, bookmakers will pay you out anyway.
 
 
So if you are new to the sport or have been dabbling for a while, then begin with specialisation. You have to be able to know something about a race to make it more than just a gamble. No one can take on every race, there is simply too much going on for anyone to understand every race.

The fact is that owning a racehorse is a very expensive business and if owners relied on prize money to get back their investment they would be heavily out of pocket with an average 22% return of the money invested, so -78% ROI. That means the prize money in UK racing amounts to 22% of the money spent on horses. So trainers have to play tricks with their horses to allow owners and syndicates to bet on their horses at the right time to get some of their money back.

Take the top price
Most important to wining is taking the best price. It costs nothing to open multiple accounts with bookmakers and exchanges. Take the latest betting promotions and bonus codes here when you are doing so. You don't have to deposit any money until you are ready to place a bet so keep that centrally located in your bank account.

Specialise
Whether you are new or not to the racing game, you have to focus on specific areas. If you are new then the best place to start is at the top. Horse racing is split into classes, seven in the UK flat racing scene. Class 1 has for sub-divisions with the top 3 known as Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3. This is where the best horses race.

The reason to start here is that you do not have to worry about alterior motives for the horses entry into the race. These are top rated horses that can not gain by losing and it costs a lot of money for the horse to be in the race. They will be trying to win.

Caution on betting Group races with pacemakers
Aidan O'Brien recently broke the world record for Group 1 wins in a season with his 26th win with Saxon Warrior at Doncaster in the Racing Post Trophy on 28th October 2017. In that race he not only had the favourite which won, but he had a 66-1 horse that was there to be a pacemaker. This horse was never going to win so just make a note not to bet on this sort of outsider. Nothing wrong with backing the favourite in this type of race as this situation will occur often.

Top of the market in king
With so many bookmakers competing for your money, they have to give you value somewhere. Its at the top of the market. Many casual punters do not want to take short prices, which is what most favourites are, and they go for outsiders. Whilst some win, and there are types of handicaps that make these prices good, in the big races they tend to be terrible bets.

Favourites analysis
If you would have backed every clear favourite in every Group race in the UK since the beginning of 2012 up to the end of 2017, you would have a return of 101.8%. That is a profit at bookmakers prices of 1.8%! 823 bets with 308 wins.

Now if you had backed the clear 2nd favourite you return 91.2% and the 3rd favourite returned 76.8%. These are massive profits for the bookmaker who are actually giving away money on the favourites.

Its worth noting that if you had backed the same favourites at exchange prices and take into consideration a 4% exchange commission, you would have returned 106.1%! Betting 100 units per bet that is a profit of 4979 units.

Get even more selective
The only time a Group race becomes really tricky is when the ground has become really soft. None of the Group horses are trained for really soft ground, they are thoroughbreds aiming to run at speed. However what this does is make punters vary and the prices are even higher than they should be. So carry on betting. But the few Group races that are run on All-Weather tracks are really difficult to analyse as there are so few of them and they show quite a big loss on the favourites. So avoid the AW tracks until you can understand individual races.

Study Handicaping
So now you are betting on the big races without much home work you can begin to study a particular part of the sport. You can choose from many but one area that allows study is handicaping. All horses get a handicap number once they have completed 3 races. Average horses will mostly run in handicap races, meaning they carry different weights compared to other horses in the race. Nearly all trainers will try to manipulate a horse's handicap down so that they can carry a low weight and win a race. If you study all the horses in a handicap race you sometimes will see that a horse has been running on tracks that they don't normally go to and don't like or running at distances they have never won at. These are the horses that have had their handicaps lowered by running in races that don't suit them.
 

 
 
 
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