Welcome to our horse betting tips guide, we wanted to give you a few ways to ensure you give yourself the best chances of winning when placing a bet on a horse race.
There are many bet types, betting strategies, and different methods to succeed but getting the basics down is the first part.
Getting Started
First things first familiarize yourself with the different types of bets available to you, we recommend for horse racing focusing solely on the Win and each way bets.
Win Bet
A win bet is placing a bet on that horse to win, if it doesn’t win you don’t win plain and simple.
Each Way Bet
An each-way bet is a win bet and a place bet, so if your horse wins you win, and if your horse places 2nd or 3rd (sometimes more places are on offer depending on the bookmaker you use and the amount of runners).
If your horse wins you get the win bet and the place bet, if your horse places you get the place bet, place bets are paid out at usually 1/5 of the odds the win bet is.
Example
You place a £5 each way on a horse called Red Tango at 5/1, the horse comes second so you get one-fifth of 5/1 which is 1/1 meaning you will get your £5 stake plus £5 back.
Should the horse win you will get 5/1 for the win part and 1.5 of 5/1 for the place.
Covering Your Bets
Hopefully, you understand the two main bet types now and more importantly how you can cover your bets on horses that are priced at 5/1 and above.
By this, we mean that if your horse doesn’t win but does place you can get your stake back at the very least, and if it wins you still have the chance of a very nice amount of profit.
Look for extra place races
Many bookmakers now offer extra places in races for each-way punters, meaning that you can get paid out on your each way for anything up to 7 places ( usually 4 or 5 places on smaller races).
It’s important to utilise these promotions to your advantage, after all you’re getting more chance of your bet being covered if you don’t win.
Use A Betting exchange for win bets
Betting exchanges like Betfair and BetDAQ are well known for having the best possible odds due to the way its run by punters for punters, we advise that you only place win bets with a betting exchange to get the best possible payout for your win bet (failing that a bes todds guaranteed bookmaker).
Odds Are Everything
There is nothing worse than putting £10 each way on a horse at 5/1 only to find the price drifting out to 9/1 and then it still wins, this is because you will only get 5/1, and if you had got the 9/1 odds you would get almost double the return.
Finding the best odds is paramount, maximising returns enables you to cover more of your losses when they occur in the long term.
Use sites like Oddschecker for example that can compare every bookmaker possible in one place so you can see where you will get the best return for your stake.
Dont Be Loyal To One Bookie
The only thing loyalty will get you in the betting world is a hole in your pocket, this is purely because there are always better odds available elsewhere on a certain market at a certain time or at least at some point.
Loyalty can at times mean you get the worst odds, the least promotions, and the least rewards.
Open accounts with any bookmaker you need to to get the best odds, think of it as supermarket shopping do you pay £1.70 for beans here or do you go to another supermarket and get two of the same tinned beans for the same price.
Focus On Form, Conditions, And Previous Results
When selecting a horse unless you are going to take our advice and use one of the best horse racing tipsters you will want to focus on conditions first.
Whats the weather like where the horse racing even is happening? Let’s say it’s a horse race at Worcester Racecourse the going the night before said soft but its been raining all night and it’s still raining very heavily now, do you go for a horse with firm ground form? NO!
Look for horses that have the best form in the conditions firstly, ground is very important for many horses unless they go on all goings.
Course & Distance
Ever wondered what the little C, D, or CD means by a horse? it means course winner, distance winner, or course and distance winner.
You have found a horse that goes on the ground but has he won at this course before and can he stay the trip? it’s no good backing a horse that’s going up to 3 miles but has never won a race over further than 2 without any evidence that the horse can stay the trip.
Jockeys
I personally don’t tend to focus on jockeys too much unless they are teaming up with a trainer where they have a great record or quite literally are riding the most winners.
I tend to find the jockeys with the most winners are riding the best horses (funny that), but obviously, you have to take this into consideration too.
Tack
Things like a hood, visor, cheekpieces, etc can also have a marginal effect on a horse’s performance, but you need to put together a picture of why they are being applied and if it can make all the difference.
Let’s say a horse has never won a race over a sprint trip because it gets distracted by the other horses or simply does not focus as it should, a visor could change this as it focuses the attention of the horse straight ahead only, but if the horse has no form or hasn’t even looked like winning it unlikely the visor is going to create a miracle!
Handicap Races
A good place for each way betting in my experience is handicap racing, these are races that are run based on a horse’s ability, let’s say for example a horse keeps winning in handicaps when a horse wins it has to carry more weight next time.
Every time it wins it has to shoulder more weight meaning at some point it won’t be able to win anymore, and will start finishing further down the field.
When horses don’t do very well in handicaps they carry less weight and in most cases, there will be come a point where the horse is now able to get a win and find what’s known as its winning mark (handicap weight).
Focusing on the form nit these races can bring great results and using each way bets can cover your bets with a lot more accuracy.
Put it altogether
Now it’s time to put all that advice together and pick a handicap race that pays out on each-way bets of 3 places or more, remember the more runners there are the more places paid but also the less chance of a win, so you want to aim for 8+ runners.
Avoid amateur jockey races in our experience these can be a bit of a lottery, and do your research it will pay off in the long term.
Should you still be struggling after all this why not try out a tipster? they can offer all of this done for you for a small monthly fee and a good amount of profit in some cases too.
