The Process of Elimination

Let's take a look at why all horses in a race are bet on.  Someone has a belief that a particular horse could win or possibly be in the money.  Every owner and/or trainer puts a horse in a race and has some reason or reasons to believe that his horse can win or be in the money.  There are odds associated with all horses in a race.  Every horse has been placed in a race for some reason.

For the horseplayer, what part do emotions play?  What happens when there is so much confidence in a horse that the toteboard is bid down to very low odds?  What is a "live" horse in the horseplayers lingo?  Is this not a horse that the trainer has gotten ready to win and that trainer is often very effective in doing this?

Is it possible to place a bet (and win) without knowing the answers to all of the above?  Let's start with the most basic of bets, the win bet. Suppose you place a $2 win bet on each of the horses in the race.  If you bet 'um all on one ticket your ticket is a winning ticket.  Depending on the final odds of the horse that won, you either made money or lost money on that ticket.  So it is possible.

Continuing with this logic, let's determine which horses are the least likely to win the race.  This is kind of a reverse engineering type of strategy.  Every horseplayer has an opinion about whether a particular horse could win the race. So use your opinion and rank the horses from least likely to most likely to win the race.  Now rather than betting 'um all remove the horses that you feel can't win (in your opinion) and only bet the horses that are left.  Maybe there are 5 horses left.  Or possibly 4, or 3 or 2.  If you are right in your judgment you have a winning ticket and have increased the  amount of money you have won.  This essentially is the process of elimination.

Try it and see how it works for you.