The Great Debate: Handicapping vs. Betting

There are two factors that go into playing the horses; handicapping and betting.

Some would say that these two factors are the same thing and that you can’t be good at one without being good at he other – and they’d be right. And that’s because with the takeout, most everything comes down to value. And if you can’t select horses that offer value, and then bet in such a way that you’re able to maximise that value, then you won’t be able to beat the takeout over the long haul. Therefore, both factors are not mutually exclusive.

But, in order to understand the importance of this concept, you must first look at them as separate entities: the art of handicapping and selecting winners, and the art of betting and using your money to maximum advantage

Six Secrets of Successful Bettors

As I refine my pace handicapping process, I recognise the latter sentence brings forth another stage in my education.

Having completed my apprenticeship in basic handicapping and now working toward developing a process that expresses my opinion in terms of a betting forecast, more often than not when conducting post race review I discover that I’m letting opportunities to maximise my insight into a horse race pass me by. For example

Musselbrough 4:20 3yo+ Handicap Class 3 6f

I knew Racing Post’s overnight tissue favourite Divine Spirit was vulnerable even at 6/1.

The benefit of specialising in one area of racing is that over time you get to know each horse’s idiosycrancies within the subset. In summary I knew that the tissue complier had made a “right old rick” based in my previous experience of Divine Spirits previous performance and preferences.

So why didn’t I take advantage of the following traders wet dream in being in possession of knowledge that correctly predicts price movements on the exchanges and trade accordingly?

I’m also missing out on laying horses that are running against the course pace bias, horses that are badly drawn even though collectively the public has decided that said horse is a good thing and horses that are being asked to run above their ability.

I think it took about 50 goes before I stopped putting the fav in as the outsider and vice versa etc. Then a year (say 1000 goes) before they (my tissues) were usable – though I had already started using them! (I remain a committed believer in learning with real money.)
The tooting tissue comments on creating you own odds line.

Currently I’m focusing on refining my own odds line process to determine value based on pace criteria, however as outlined in the initial comments, finding the right bet to take advantage of your handicapping insight is just as important as handicapping itself!

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