The term,  “money handicapping,” may sound strange but that is exactly how you win at the horse races.  By win I mean leave the track with more than you came with.  That is the goal of everyone who bets on horse races.  Though it is pleasant to watch them run, whether it is Standardbred or Thoroughbred, wagering and winning is where the real thrill is, unless you happen to own one of the runners.

So what do I mean by money handicapping?  Simply put, it is finding the best odds for your dollars.  Each dollar you risk is like a piece of bait to a fisherman or a bullet to a hunter.  You only get so many and you have to make each one count.  It has to bring the biggest return.  Finding bets that have a higher expected return than the crowd sees is the way you do this.

For instance, if the horse has a one out of three chance of winning and is at 2-1 odds, that is a break even bet.  If you bet a dollar on the horse three times, it will win once and return $3.  The goal of money handicapping is to find the best ration of risk to return.  An example such as the previous one would look like this, $3/$3=1.  That means every dollar risks returns a dollar.

Let’s take another example, such as a horse with a one out of four chance of winning that is going off at 6-1.  That means, for every four dollars invested, you would get back $14.  That is a huge return on your money and looks like this, $14/$4=3.5.  That means, for every dollar invested, or risked, you get back $3.5.  These situations are rare at the race track, but do occasionally occur.

The point I am making is that you are not trying to find winning horses.  You are trying to find winning bets.  Winning bets are profitable ones and that is how you leave the race track with more money than you started with.  While we watch the horses as they run and the result is very important, watching the money is more important.

Learn to follow it and see how it ebbs and flows and look for weaknesses in the system.  Thinking in terms of odds of a bet coming in is more important and beneficial than thinking of odds of a horse coming in though they are intrinsically related, of course.  While all this may sound quite academic, it is amazing how hard it is to stay focused and track the money when in the heat of battle.