A Horse Racing Betting System That's Lots of Fun and May Beat the Favo

A lot of people have contacted me to find out if there's a way to win without doing a lot of handicapping. It's hard enough to come out ahead at the horse races when you work hard, handicap, and have a good method. I'll give it a try. Here's the best no-handicapping method I know of to level the playing field a little and possibly, I did say, possibly, come out ahead.

This isn't going to make you rich, but you will have some fun and have plenty of action. You certainly won't have to handicap, in fact, the only thing you need to read is the tote board. So if you like lots of chances to play, here it is.

The way you make money at the races is by beating the rest of the bettors, we'll call them the crowd. They put most of their money on the favorite in the race, also known as the chalk. Those chalks win about a third of the time, roughly 33% of the time or one out of three races. That also means that they lose about two out of three races. How hard can it be to beat that?

The problem, of course, is that while you may know that the favorite is going to lose, in order to beat it and make a profit, you still have to pick the winner. That's where knowing how often the other horses win comes in handy, There is a second favorite in the race, too. That's the horse at the second lowest odds. They win about 20% of the time. You can continue with that line of thought and find that the third favorite wins a little less than that and so forth, right down through the field.

So if you bet the second favorite in every race and bet enough races to make it statistically valid, you'd win about one out of five. Unfortunately the money that the track takes out of the pools, the takeout, is enough to keep you from making a profit if you always bet any one of the horses no matter where it is in that hierarchy.The Takeout Times Portland

Knowing that the favorite only wins a third of the time doesn't make you one of the elite at the races. Almost everybody knows that. However, it also matters just how much is bet on the favorite and how low the odds are. The horse at 1-1 is much more likely to win, statistically speaking, than the horse at 5-2. Both may be the favorite in the race, but each one has a different chance of winning. Generally speaking, the lower the odds the better the chance of winning. Once again, however, just betting a horse at very low odds will not show a profit. You always have to consider the track's takeout, also known as "vig."

If the favorite at 5-2 has less than a one out of three chance of winning, however, doesn't that mean the other horses in the hierarchy have a better chance of beating the favorite? They would have a hard time beating a horse at 1-1, but a luke-warm favorite at 5-2 is a different matter. If the second favorite is at 3-1 and the third favorite is at 9-2 they may be a pretty good bet. A horse at 9-2 will pay $11 for every $2 win bet. You could put a $2 win bet on each of the next three horses in the odds order, the second, third, and fourth favorites and spend $6. You would have three chances of beating the favorite an if the horse at 9-2 wins you'll get $11.