If you are like most horse racing handicappers you probably pick winners fairly consistently.  But also like many handicappers, you may not be making a profit.  The reason isn’t that you’re not picking winners, it is that you are picking losers that could have been eliminated from your betting with a little common sense.  Bad bets are where your profit is going.  It’s like having a hole in your pocket.

There are several reasons that people make bad bets.  One reason may be that you just aren’t that skilled at picking winners.  That is a situation that can be remedied with practice and a good horse racing system.

Another reason that people bet on losers, despite being good handicappers, is because they let emotion cloud their judgment.  Do you ever make a bet because of an emotional attachment to a horse, rider, or trainer?  It happens to the best of us.  It is also possible to go on “tilt,” to borrow a poker term.  If you lose a photo finish or a horse you backed got disqualified, it is possible to get frustrated or emotionally off balance.

Being on tilt happens to all of us and can be triggered by a run of bad luck or by things that happen away from the race track.  The best thing to do when you start letting your emotions cloud your judgment, is to leave the track or OTB.  If you aren’t making good decisions then you shouldn’t be gambling, period.

There is a third class of bad bets that can be avoided, however, and they have to do with the horses, not the bettor.  I am talking about the mystery horses that run every day.  Mystery horses are those that run in races and try to accomplish something they haven’t been able to do so far.  For instance, a horse running at a mile around two turns for the first time, is a mystery horse.  A horse trying turf for the first time is a mystery horse.

The people who sell sire stats who have us believe that all we have to do to check the sire stats to know if a horse is capable of doing what is asked of it in today’s race, but that is not the case.  Let me ask you this, how many professional basketball players have a son or daughter who becomes a pro player?  Not many.  The same is true of any professional athletes.  Not many of spring of the pros continue in their father’s footsteps.  While horses may inherit certain traits from their parents, there is no guarantee that they will be able to do what the sire did.

Therefore, to sew up that hole in your pocket and quit bleeding your profit, stop betting on horses that haven’t proven they can do what you are asking of them.  Stick to your system and what works.