How to pick a winning horse?

[Guest martinthevet]

I am new to betting on the horses and havent had much success so far, I am starting to look at form, jockeys and the like but was wondering if anyone can share tips on how they choose horses, and what kind of percentage wins by jockey and owner they look for?

[manckevin]

How to pick a winning horse? Buy any daily newspaper, the Mirror should do for this as it's full of pr**ks ;) Purchase one needle. Open to Racing Pages. Stick pin in paper with eyes closed. Might as well be what I'm doing at the moment given my luck on Wednesday, plus I just had to get that dig in at the Mirror. Seriously though, spend some time looking around forums such as this - you may also find the systems and strategy one of use if you prefer a more systematic method to your betting rather than spending hours looking through the form of past races only to come up with a shortlist of six! Following jockeys and trainers in current form, or at a particular course can also be useful, and the best way I would suggest for this is to register on the Racing Post website (www.racingpost.co.uk/horses) - registration is needed, but free. There's plenty to go at under "statistics" or go to Future Racing (the night before say), pick a meeting of your choice, and on the right hand side if you scroll down you will find Course Details - the Top Jockeys and Top Trainers sections should also keep you occupied. I also like using the Naps Competition on the RP website (www.racingpost.co.uk/rpos...aps_comp). Right click on the page when it loads, and "export to Microsoft Excel". Sort the output by race time, then selection, which gives a good overview of confident selections. I think the paper version of the RP also carries more details from more "tipsters". Personally I disregard the Seasonal and Monthly LSP totals. The Desktop Betting Shop (www.racingpost.co.uk/hors...rt=horses) I also find handy - select a race for all sorts of information (including Jockeys and Trainers). Finally, you'll need a Calculator to work out your winnings. Personally I find www.ladbrokes.com/betCalc...tCalc.html useful for regular bets including each way, and www.tisnt.com/bet/index.html handy for multiples/accumulators etc but it doesn't cater for each way. I hope this is the sort of thing you were looking for, as for individual percentages, it's really your own preference, but perhaps someone can suggest a more reasonable percentage strike rate for these. Good luck, and when you feel like it, come along to the Daily Horse Racing Competition, and participate - we could do with more entrants in Division Three - and there's still plenty of time for you to mount a promotion challenge! Kevin

[WorkingForTheEnemy]

Re: How to pick a winning horse? Some great info and good links there Kev. When it comes to the flat personally theres a few key factors I look at. GOING: The horse has 1-2-1-1-6-2-8-5 form all at the same distance. So why the discrepiancies?? Check the going for each race, maybe all the good results come on firm whereas the bad on soft. DISTANCE: I personally dont like horses that havnt at least done the distance before, even without huge success. At the RP , on each horses form, if you leave the cursor over the winners name it will give a brief description of how the horse(the ones form youre on) ran, if its running on towards the end but just missing out over 6f, average 6f results may come good over 7f. The same vice versa, if its weakening over 7f I wouldnt want to be backing it over 1m. CLASS: Always compare grades of races. A horse with 1-1-1-1-1 in class E may handle the step up to CLASS D and have the best form. But if that horse with 3-4-2-7-4-5 has been running CLASS A and B then the drop in class could make a huge difference. Anyway thats my little input.

[Guest racemanjack]

Re: How to pick a winning horse? All the before is great advice, although you may need to buy a book to go through everything. If you do then I would suggest one of A Potts's (a professional gambler). He used to appear on ATR but can't remember the last time I saw him. The only other thing I would suggest (and its advice that I need to follow more myself) is to specialise in certain races. If you like the flat, look at sprints only or if you prefer the jumps concentrate on 2m hurdles or chases or whatever (that's one thing that I'm trying to do - to an extent). The thing is that there are so many races that you can't analyses them all. Also that way you get to know the horses and trainers better. For the moment I would suggest avoiding big fields - in flat races especially there's a lot of luck involved (and in my case a lot of bad luck) and long losing runs in these types of race are quite common. So better to bet at Beverly than Royal Ascot (for instance). Cheers