Secrets to Winning at Horse-Race Betting Revealed

At age 73, I had a near heat stroke at an outside family event a couple days ago. Suddenly my head was pounding, my heart rate jumped well beyond the norm, my own voice echoed in my ears every time I tried to speak and my blood pressure spiked. Of course, I joked with those at my table that I was the oldest guy at the event, and tried to get my granddaughters to go ask the other graybeards how old they were just for fun, but there I was standing in the sun drinking alcohol like an idiot. Luckily I now wear a watch that reads back my vitals at a moments notice. So as I wandered to my car to lay back in the air conditioning until my temperature and vitals returned to normal, I thought about some of the things I have learned but never shared.

Today I’ve decided to start lifting the curtain on my most closely guarded secrets for winning at horse-race betting. If you’ve been following my blog, you already know about the power of statistics, the art of measuring variation, and the unforgiving logic of probabilities. You’ve learned how to sniff out good risks and avoid the siren song of blind chance. But until now, I’ve held back the juiciest morsels of wisdom—because most people, even relatives, prefer quick shortcuts to the steadfast patience and iron determination this game demands. (No one really cared why I told them on social media to bet Journalism before the Preakness or Sovereignty before the Belmont.)

Years ago, picture us in the grandstands, season-ticket holders at the same dusty track week after week. The afternoon sun slants across the rails, the horses paw at the ground, and the announcer’s voice booms overhead. Beside me sits a young man with more enthusiasm than skill. He pesters me relentlessly: “Who are you betting today? How do you decide?” Never one to be a complete jerk, I sketch out my reasoning: this colt’s stride is smooth, his owner trains winners, the morning line pegs him as a 2-to-1 favorite. Yet time after time, he stubbornly ignores my picks and throws his money at the longshots—the high-odds outsiders whose names you can’t pronounce. No wonder he goes home empty-handed, his shoulders slumped, while I’m back at my small, worn table, sorting crisp bills and counting out my winnings.

He’d groan at me, “I can’t bet $500 or $1,000 every race like you do, so I need to bet longshots!” And he was right—he never had that kind of bankroll. Instead, he’d risk ten dollars on the win and maybe five on an exotic only to watch his pick fade past the finish line. Meanwhile, I’d be pocketing hundreds or thousands on my smart, patient plays. But such is the fate of anyone who chases fireworks rather than steady embers. Lucky for him, his wife carried the family’s financial torch—otherwise he’d have been washed out of the game entirely.

What he—and countless others—fail to grasp is the necessity of nurturing your bankroll like a young sapling. That means embracing the first golden rule of horse-race betting: Don’t play every race. Scour the readily available data to cherry-pick only those contests across the country that meet your strict criteria for predictable probabilities. You’ll find no glory in brainlessly wagering every race at your local venue, rain or shine, hot favorite or thrown-away claimers. That’s a recipe for a quick bleed-out.

Back in the pre-Internet era, I too sat through ten races a day at Arlington Park in a haze of bad data, looming thunderstorms, and utter ignorance of true form lines. I was determined—if only to prove I belonged. Today, armed with instant feeds and sprawling databases, I can cherry-pick six-furlong to mile-and-a-quarter fast-dirt races from coast to coast, zooming in on the suites of horses whose past performances shrink my uncertainty.

So what does a professional bettor—someone who’s lived well off investment income (aka gambling) for two decades—actually do when the gates fly open? First, I bypass off-track and turf races entirely, as well as any surface where past-performance data is too sparse or erratic to yield reliable insights. Why tempt fate when you can funnel your stake into the lower-variance, high-predictability realm of fast-dirt sprints and routes? Six furlongs or a mile and a quarter, that’s where you’ll find the slender thread of consistency amid the chaos of hooves. And let’s not forget the racetrack’s takeout—the house’s slice mentioned in earlier posts, roughly 20 percent of every betting pool. That’s a silent tax you must outsmart every time you drop a ticket in the tote.

Today, I hope you’ve absorbed Rule Number One: be patient, be selective, and let the data guide your wagers. If you have questions, fire away. In the next installments of this blog, I’ll walk you through constructing predictive probabilities for dirt races, sourcing the essential data, translating probabilities into finishing-position ranges, and using variability to spot true overlays.

Remember—it’s not about mindlessly picking winners, but about finding wrongly priced chances. Horses aren’t machines; they gallop plus or minus several lengths every race, just as stellar players like Caitlin Clark occasionally miss free throws, even though the basket never moves. In both cases, you can find ways to capitalize on the human (or equine) element of unpredictability.