It would be hard to find a winning horse player who doesn’t use a good angle or a good system, or perhaps both.  The benefits of a methodical way of comparing the horses and making value based judgments are obvious.  The same is true of knowing a statistical edge and using it to win.  While a good system may use an angle and you may methodically use an angle, there are a few differences.

If you want to make winning bets, everyone knows you have to take back more money than you risk over the long haul.  People who play spot plays know this and use it to beat the crowd.  They wait until a horse is in a certain position or situation where it has an advantage that the crowd doesn’t value and they then collect on that situation.

A spot play and an angle could be considered the same thing.  For instance, let’s say that you know that 2 year olds going 5 furlongs at your favorite track win fifty percent of the time when they are on the lead at the half mile marker.  Spotting the early speed in the race and betting it is an obvious angle, but if everybody in the crowd knows that, the early speedsters may be bet down too far and become unprofitable.  It is no longer a profitable play.

But what if you also know that too much early speed in those races works against those front runners and horses who run within 3 lengths of the leaders often win when there are three or more speedsters?  While the crowd is hammering early speed, you can make money playing an off the pace runner.  Because this play involves a little more thought and work, going one more step, some would argue that it is now a system.

If you add yet another step to it and figure in the jockey and trainer moves, it now becomes a system and yet, it is still based on an angle.  So it looks  like a good angle may lead to a system but a methodical method may also start with a spot play.  The most important thing to remember is that you have to do your homework no matter what method you are using because value is the key to profitability.

While an angle may be profitable, it is less likely that you’ll find one that will stay that way because they are too easy to spot.  The more factors or steps you add to a horse racing system, the longer it will stay profitable.