Fads and angles come and go in horse racing handicapping.  Speed figures were once a great angle and you could win by handicapping speed alone.  Now it is still a factor to consider, but no longer a profitable stand alone angle.  The same may be true of trainer angles.  Almost every supplier of handicapping material today includes them. The problem with handicapping factors is that once they are known, they become over used and almost useless.

You can buy sheets now that have nothing but trainer stats.  Public handicappers tout trainer moves and even give the percentages and ROI.  Beware of these easy to spot bets that seem so enticing.  They are what is known in the business as sucker bets.  If it seems too easy, it usually is.  This of course brings up the age old question, should you bet with the crowd or against the public?

Contrarian betting has its uses and has been made famous by some of the greatest handicapping writers so it makes you wonder, are there now so many contrarian bettors that now it is better to bet against them?  What is that called, counter contrarian betting?  It gets confusing.  Beating the crowd, or going against the grain is the way to make money betting on horse races.  That hasn’t changed.

The problem is that you can spend so much time worrying about how other people are betting that you lose the whole idea.  The whole point of betting is to make money.  You can’t make money unless your horse wins.  You need to handicap the race and determine each horse’s chances of winning and then convert that into odds so you will be able to spot a value bet.

That is horse racing handicapping 101.  Therefore, I recommend you start over again with that goal in mind and look at each horse and compare it to the field using the key factors.  Rate its chances of winning and then assign odds to it.  The horse’s chances of winning are determined by expected form, or in other words, how you think it will run today.  If you think the trainer has improved that form, factor it into the equation, but don’t lean too heavily on that angle.

No matter how good the conditioner may be with a particular move, the bet still has to be a profitable one.  So only use trainer moves as part of the process, not the whole handicapping method.