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    Do Horse Racing Handicapping Tools Give you a Betting Advantage?

    Every serious horse player is always looking for more horse information that will give him or her the edge that can be the difference between winning and loser. Most people who go to the racetrack will buy a program, study the Racing Form or a tip sheet, and then make a wager. Having access to this information is helpful, but, it certainly does not guarantee that you will win.

    The overwhelming majority of race fans wind up leaving the track with less money than they had when they arrived. Favorites only win about once in every three races. Making it even more difficult to win are the exotic bets like trifectas and pick four wagers.

    Even the most veteran of gamblers can have a difficult time trying to pick the ponies. It can be incredibly challenging to narrow down a large field of evenly matched claimers down to just one or two horses. How do you pick the winner in a race full of first time starters? Part of the intrigue and attraction of the King of Sports is the process of wading through all of the data and choosing what horse information matters the most.

    Handicapping is not an exact science. It is much more of an art. One handicapper might choose to analyze a race based entirely on speed figures. Another might take into account the class of the horse or the jockey and trainer winning percentage. There are literally thousands of statistics that can be analyzed.

    Horse racing analytics can make it easier to analyze the wide universe of data. There are a number of services that do this type of work and then package it in a form that is easy to read and understand. Some software packages provide proprietary information based on formulas and algorithms. Without computers, it would be impossible to analyze all of the data and make such highly educated picks based on past performances.

    Racing enthusiasts can use a horserace handicapping tool to access information and interpret data. Today, there are even apps you can download on your smartphone that will give you an edge at the track. Imagine going to Belmont or Churchill Downs and, instead of rifling through the Racing Form, you pull out your iPhone, touch the screen and get all the information you need to make a bet.

    Technology touches our lives in so many ways. The racing community is no exception. While many old-timers are hesitant to try the newest handicapping tools, younger race fans are quick to adapt the latest technology. Who can say for sure whether the 60 year old horse player with a crumpled up Racing Form is better at picking winners than the 25 year old newcomer who has the advantage of a horse racing handicapping tool.

    Using Horse Racing Statistics in Handicapping

    Before the digital era, handicapping thoroughbred horse racing was an art more than a science, a blend of past performances and gut intuition that could only be gained through years of observation and experience. Even with all of that dedication, few handicappers ever made a profit. For many people, the sport has not changed at all following the invention of the Internet. Others, however, have recognized the vast potential to be found in an online database with results from nearly every modern race ever run.

    Horse racing statistics alone cannot be used to predict the outcome of a race. There are so many variables that affect finish order, including acts of random chance, that can rob a favorite and send a longshot to victory. The whole point of an odds system is that the same race, run one hundred times, will show many different results. Statistics are not a guarantee. Instead, they look at how similar races ended and, when integrated into a handicapping system, provide an odds-line based on historical evidence.

    The questions that influence the efficacy of a handicapping program are which statistics to use, how many and from where. There are the big considerations, like how many maidens win their debut, and then there are the smaller ones, such as how closers are faring over Santa Anita’s new track surface. It’s best to have separate programs, each geared toward a different surface or track. Some of the most common statistics used are the win, place and show percentages of favorites, second favorites and so on; performances of horses rising or dropping in class; Lasix usage; individual trainers and jockeys; and pedigree performance. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of numbers to measure and catalog.

    The hardest part of using horse racing stats in handicapping is gathering them and compiling them into an accurate program. Many online horse racing services have extensive archives, including past performances, but translating that information for your own use is a time-consuming process. This is why most profitable players focus on only a few tracks: They have a narrow enough scope to create a specific, functional model. It’s also why many handicappers choose to buy established software rather than create their own.

    Don’t forget to give other handicapping considerations weight. A computer can’t know that a horse was badly blocked in its last race, but you can by doing your homework. Always double check before putting down money, and don’t bet the farm before you are seeing profitability. Even if you are managing a positive return on investment, keep experimenting and tweaking to improve your performance. With the right data and a well-crafted handicapping program, you can transform hundreds or even thousands of numbers into meaningful and profitable information.

    Making Use of Horse Racing Handicapping Analytics For Wagering

    Some days, there seems to be as many horse racing wagering systems as there are bettors. How can anyone make any money playing the ponies? By doing the same things that thoroughbred and Standardbred track handicappers do when they determine morning line odds. They do a lot of tedious number crunching and look for any promising patterns to emerge in their horse reports.

    Horsemen and horse players are both superstitious. This makes them wary of change, such as using software to help make their betting decisions. In reality, there is nothing to be wary about.

    40 Shades of Factors

    It used to be that betting on horse racing was a full time job. Did you know that there are at least 40 considerations to take into account for each individual horse before deciding to make a bet? This is a lot of information to juggle. You can sift through this information quickly by using handicapping analytics software.

    Factors to consider include not only the horse’s past performances in all types of weather, but the past performances of its trainer and jockey or driver. Since tracks vary, you also need to pay attention to how the horse, trainer and jockey perform at each track. You also need to check if the horse is stepping up or going down in class from its last few races. Is the horse coming back from a layoff? Is the horse’s equipment being changed?

    What’s Old is New Again

    Long-time horse players remember the old way of making bets. All horses at a track were studied and written about in a notebook. After dutiful study, some highlights would stick out. As you can imagine, sifting through all of this information took a very long time, making the player make very few wagers at high amounts in order to break even, let alone make a profit.

    Handicapping software simply processes a large amount of data in a short amount of time. The software taps into the data from Equibase. Equibase is the main database of race results and statistics in North America. There are separate data bases for thoroughbred races and harness races. You can try to sort through Equibase by yourself or have software do it for you. It’s a safe bet that handicapping software is a vital tool for modern horse players.

    How Horse Handicapping Software Can Help You Pick The Winners

    Horse racing provides ample opportunities for gamblers to win a substantial amount of money. As long as you know what to look for when you are handicapping a race, you can walk away a big winner at the track. But just how does one accurately handicap a horse race in order to determine a winner? Using handicapping software can help you spot profitable horse races that you can bet on to turn a nice profit.

    Quickly Analyze Data

    Analyzing data is the name of the game when it comes to predicting the winner of a horse race. However, with so much data readily available to horse bettors these days, it can be difficult to analyze the right data before each race starts. This is where handicapping software comes in handy as you can rely on a computer to spit out horse reports that have crunched the numbers for you, and shows you who is most likely to win the race.

    Find Profitable Angles

    Another way how handicapping software can help you win money at the race track is by providing you with profitable betting angles you never would have thought of on your own. Once you have input all of the data you have about a particular race, you can set a variety of parameters for the software to use. By looking at the race through these parameters, your computer software will be able to spit out profitable betting angles that could provide you with the winner of the next big race.

    To see if your parameters do produce a profitable betting angle, it is important for you to back test your betting angle to see if it would have produced a profit over a substantial amount of races. Once you feel you have a reliable betting angle, you can then use your software to find these same angles moving forward on the horse racing calendar.

    Play All of the Tracks

    With numerous tracks running every single day of the year, it can be difficult to find the time required to handicap all of the races. When you do not have the time to sit down and properly handicap each race, you are potentially missing out on a profitable betting opportunity. With the assistance of horse handicapping software, you can analyze all of the data for each race on a given day’s schedule, ensuring that you have handicapped every single race that day. This will help make sure that you never miss a profitable betting opportunity as long as your handicapping software consistently produces winning picks.

    With the Breeders Cup quickly approaching, horse bettors are looking for new ways to improve their selections. Utilizing handicapping software will help you quickly analyze a large amount of data, find new profitable betting angles you did not know existed and play all of the tracks on a given day. When you are able to add these factors into your own personal handicapping skills, you are sure to see your profits increase dramatically the next time you are at the track.

    Handicapping Horse Races

    Are you looking forward to a day at the races and wishing you could come home with more money than you have when you get there? Do you have any idea how to go about choosing horses wisely, or do you just pick the ones with names that appeal to you? There are ways to use the experts’ knowledge to help you pick horses that are more likely to win. It’s called handicapping, and it can give you an edge in choosing the ponies which might actually put some money back into your pocket.

    Handicapping horse racing is part art, part science. It involves using prior knowledge about the horses in a race, their past performance, the track conditions, the jockeys, and countless other factors which may affect how a particular horse will perform in a particular race. Fortunately for you, there are plenty of options out there to help you handicap a race. From reading racing forms to using online handicapping software, horse racing enthusiasts have plenty of ways to make a day at the races potentially profitable.

    Handicapping software horse racing sites are plentiful online. When you take a look at all of the factors these sites evaluate, it seems like a good idea to let them do the work for you. A typical online handicapper will factor in such things as the weight the horse is carrying as compared to the weight it has carried in past races, the lengths by which a horse has won or lost a race, the number of days since the horse was last raced, which horses it’s competing against in today’s race, how well the horse runs in specific track conditions, and many other details too complex for the average race track visitor to understand. You can purchase past performance records (anywhere from a single card to an unlimited number of cards per year), or you can download daily racing forms for the track and races you would like to see.

    Daily racing forms will give you news, race results, “how-to’s”, race reports, and more. You can use these sites to purchase PP’s (Past Performances) which will help you understand the horses you are looking at in any race. Today’s Racing Digest, which is an online publication, gives you inside information on dozens of factors which might influence the chances of a horse winning on any given day.

    With so much information out there to help you decide which horses are potentially good ones on which to place your bets, why not use the experts’ advice and place your money on the ponies with the best chances of winning?

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