Win Bet Stategies

Placing a win bet seems simple enough ... but is it? All to many times one has the tendency to just 'do it' without too much thought particularly if it's just a $2 win bet. Now a $100 win bet is a different matter unless you just have plenty of money to throw away. With a $100 win bet you want to have a very high confidence level that your bet will pay off. This is where your handicapping comes into play.

Just concentrating on a 'win bet', there are lots of considerations. If you pick a race to bet on you may come to the conclusion (from your handicapping) that there is just one horse that you are convinced will win the race. In this case scale your bet to your level of confidence. For example, you may be so convinced that you are willing to bet $50 to win on that horse but no more.

Now in another race that you have handicapped you find two horses, or maybe even three that you are convinced could win the race. You just don't know which one. With a little knowledge of the odds on each horse you can do a quick calculation to determine if you'll place a win bet on these 2 or 3 horses. For example, let's say these three horses have odds of 2/1, 3/1 and 5/1 on the tote board at race time. Quite simply you could place say, a $10 bet on each of these three horses to win. If the 2/1 odd horse wins your return would be (2 x 2 + 2) x 5 or $30. You bet $10 on all three horse so your cost was $30. You get your money back. Now if the 3/1 horse wins your pay off will be (3 x 2 + 2) x 5 or $40. So you come out $40 - $30 or $10 ahead. If the 5/1 horse wins your return is (5 x 2 + 2) x 5 or $60. That's $60 - $30 or $30 ahead. If you're totally wrong and one of the other horses comes in you lose $30.

Notice that in the above example that you bet the same amount "$10" on each horse. What if you wanted to scale your bets on each horse so that you come out ahead no matter which horse wins. This technique is called 'dutching'. By going to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutching you can learn more about dutching. If you google 'dutching' you can find calculators to take to the track with you to perform these strategies. A specific tool I have used is called 'hedgehog'. It can be found at http://www.crowncity.com/speedplus/hedgehog.html. I will dedicate a complete article at a later time to dutching.