Saratoga Longshots

Saratoga is famous for longshot winners. The large field sizes, evenly matched fields, and trainers and owners who are aiming for a win at the track can produce some very high priced winners. What tools does Betmix provide to help you look for those longshots and how will they help you?

The first step is to find which types of races tend to produce more longshots than favorites.  Using the Create My Report Tool you can search by race type and by the amount the horse paid.  Here is the breakdown of the 2013 Saratoga Meet.

The race type that tends to produce the most longshots is Turf Route Races, where 15% of such races produced winners that paid over $20, and 47% of the Turf Route Races at Saratoga had winners pay over $10.  On the other hand, the Dirt Route races tended to produce more winning favorites, with only 5% of those races resulting in winners that paid over $20 and the majority of winners (65%) returned less than $10, with 35% paying $6.00 or less.  So, if you want to find longshots, this type of information will lead you to the types of races you need to handicap.

Once you have the race types that result in more longshot winners you can create a Report that will allow you to analyze what handicapping factors those longshot winners had in common that you can use going forward.

In Create My Report (found in the Tools Dropdown) you can enter the criteria that will build a report for Saratoga Longshots.  Use the following criteria to build the report:
Date Range: July 19, 2013 - September 2 2013
Race Track: Saratoga
Surface: Turf & Inner Turf
Race Type: Select all
Distance: set the distance range to 7.5 furlongs - 1 1/2 Miles
Win Payoff: Set the minimum to $20 and the maximum to $100

You can then add the first 20 races to a report and analyze that in Test My Report. Bringing that report up in Test My Report you can click the Power Factors button to see which factors for Turf Route Races at Saratoga where the win price was greater than $20 produced the most winners, and use those factors to help you build a Mix that you can use to handicap those races at this year's Saratoga meet.  Your Factor report will look very similar to this (depending on which 20 races you selected to include in your report)

Building a Mix weighing the most important factors and not using the least important factors you can then test how many of the Longshot Races you would have hit.  Its a good idea to break this out in more detail and focus on specific Turf Route Races: By distance and Class.  All of that can be done by making the criteria in the Report match the types of races you are looking at.

Of course, this type of analysis can be done for any track, distance, surface, class or pay range.  Many users create multiple mixes for the race types they play and can use this tool to screen for longshots, favorites or other scenarios.

The 6th race at Beulah park on December 11 was run on a muddy race track, and provided a good example of how sometimes looking at a race in the most simplistic terms can payoff big. The 6th race was a 5.5 F claimer with 7 entrants. Simply turning on the Mud Pedigree rating produced the following rankings for the horses:

Boxing the top 3 horses in a trifecta resulted in a nice payoff:

Sometimes just asking a simple question like "Who is bred best to run on an off track" can result in a nice payoff. Betmix is ideal for answering those types of questions and you should get in the habit of looking at a race with just one factor turned on when you want a quick answer to a simple handicapping question.

One of the most common questions we are asked is "What do the Red and Green arrows in the rankings mean?" There are two columns in the results screen, one is labled "S" for speed and the other "F" for finish. If a horse has run three races in a row that show improved speed or improved finish position he earns a Green Up Arrow, if his last three races show declines in speed numbers or finish positions he gets a Red Down Arrow. The idea is to show you at a glance if a horse is off form or in form. Horses with Green up arrows are on the improve and those with red arrows are in decline. However, you need to look closely and not blindly include or toss a horse based solely on the arrows. If a horse were to earn a red arrow for speed and his last three speed numbers numbers were 100/99/98 then you wouldn't consider that a horse in serious decline. Also if a horse finished 11th, 10th, 9th in his last three races, then he is improving! But, probably not a contender today.

Take a look at the 2nd race from Turf Paradise on December 10th 2012:

All of the horses with the exception of #2 and #4 have Red Arrows, and many of them are showing declining speed numbers which is worse than declining finish position. In a case like this you should look very closely at those two horses to see if they are contenders within your normal handicapping process - if they are then you have found a race that has excellent potential for a big payout.

As it turns out - both the 2 and 4 were serious contenders and the race was played as a Superfecta, the bet was 2,4 / 2,4 / all / all. We knew 2 of the horses had to fill out the super, but didn't have a strong opinion about which ones, so we hit the ALL Button and hoped for a bomb. The horse that ran 3rd went off at 49:1 and made for a nice superfecta:

Use the arrows to point you towards a race where there is potential for chaos. Use that to your advantage. When the majority of the filed in a race is in bad form, it can mean monster payoffs if you play it the right way.

One of the factors available to BetMix users is Avg. Best 2 of last 3 speed. This factor looks at the last 3 speed figures earned by the horse, tosses out the worst number, and averages the other 2. If a horse earned speed figures of 72, 68, 73 in his last three starts his Avg. best 2 of last 3 would be (72+73)/2=72.5. Why do you toss one? Because it gives the horse the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had trouble in one race or was experimenting with a new distance or surface and that low number might not be representative of his true ability.

It goes without saying that fast horses win races. This factor should be used heavily in your mixes. Let's take a look at the first 7 days of the current Gulfstream meet to see how important the Avg. Best 2 of last 3 speed factor is.

We are not going to use Maiden Races in our stats, simply because some of those horses haven't started yet, or if they have they might not have run 3 races. This factor is more predictive when looking at horses who have a few races under their belts.

If you look at non-maiden races at Gulfstream to date, and only turned on the Avg. Best 2 of last 3 factor, how accurate would that factor be at predicting the winner?

We took the top two ranked horses from each race to see how well we would have done betting horses with the best speed. We bet a fictional $2 win on the two fastest horses in each race, so we are betting $4 per race.

Dirt Sprints: 18 races 11 winners (61%) bet $72.00 won $70.00
Dirt Routes: 8 races 4 winners (50%) bet $32.00 won $31.60
Turf Sprints: 4 races 3 winners (75%) bet $16 won $26.20
Turf Routes: 13 races 6 winners (46%) bet $52 won $42.40

Overall: 43 races 24 winners (55%) bet $172 won $170.20

We can see that 55% of the winners at Gulfstream in non-maiden races came from the top 2 best speed horses in the race. Betting on each of them would have resulted in a loss of $1.80. From this limited sample we can also see that speed is more important in sprints than routes and betting the fastest horses in just the sprint races would have resulted in a profit of $6.20.

If you use best speed as the foundation of your mix and start adding in other handicapping factors available in Betmix, then you can start creating very profitable handicapping angles that will result in higher win % and profits.

Best of luck at the windows!

We know that Betmix allows you to handicap a race quickly and accurately, but how do you use the results to make exotic bets like trifectas and superfectas?

One of the great advantages of the Betmix handicapping system is the point totals that it returns for each horse after you have applied your mix to the race. It gives you a very good idea of the number of horses in the race that are contenders. The key to making successful bets is separating the contenders from the pretenders, and we will show you how to do that using Betmix.

In this example we will be handicapping the Dania Beach Stakes at Gulfstream Park on December 15th (9th race). Subscribers can pull that race up in the historic race section, those who have not subscribed will just have to follow along from the screen shots.

The race is for 2-year-olds going 1 mile on the turf, and we will use our Standard Turf Race mix which is available for monthly subscribers to add to their saved mixes in the MixLibrary. When we apply that mix to the race we get the following results:

When betting a trifecta or superfecta we want to limit the contenders so that the cost of the bet is reasonable. The rule of thumb that we use is horses that are within 10 points of the leader are "contenders" and those outside of that margin are "pretenders" (for Superfecta bets we would include horses within 15 points of the top ranked horse). In this case, the top ranked horse is #4 Newfound Zapper with 77.5 points. For our 10 point rule we always round down, so any horse that has 67 or more points would be considered a contender in this race. We have 5 horses that qualify, which is a manageable number in a field of this size (the 11 horse scratched, so there are only 10 in the race) if over half the field had been within 10 points of the highest ranked horse we would probably skip the race in terms of betting exotics.

Now that we have our top ranked horse, we must check to see if he is worthy of being the "key" horse in our trifecta bet. He doesn't have a red arrow in the S or F column (for more information about arrows read our post about Declining Speed), his last race was 48 days ago which is acceptable (if it were more than 60 days we would be concerned), and a quick click of the Trainer-Jock button tells us that he is ranked 2nd there, so we can trust that he is well meant for this particular race.

To construct the bet we could simply box the top 5 horses in a $1 Trifecta Box which would cost $60, but we prefer to key the top horse with the others to save a little money.

We structure our bets like this:
$1 Trifecta 4 / 10,9,1,2 / 10,9,1,2 - Cost $12
$1 Trifecta 10,9,1,2 / 4 /10,9,1,2 - Cost $12
$1 Trifecta 10,9,1,2 / 10,9,1,2 / 4 - Cost $12

We invested $36 in the trifecta and put the #4 on top, between, and on the bottom of the other horses that were within 10 points of him in our mix.

Here is the result of the race:

Our key horse, #4 Newfound Zapper ran 3rd, and our 5th ranked horse (#2) went off at 16:1 and won the race resulting in a $378 trifecta for a $1 bet.

One of the many advantages of using Betmix to handicap is that you can accurately look at every race on the card in a matter of minutes. You can find races where you have a reasonable number of contenders and skip the races where the horses are too evenly matched to make an affordable wager. When you create your mixes or use those in the library, you are applying consistent logic to each race using solid handicapping principles. The key to making money betting on horses is all about consistency. Handicap in a consistent manner, and bet in a consistent way.

We are excited to introduce a new report feature available to monthly subscribers - the ALL RACES REPORT. This report will allow you to select a saved mix, or use the sliders, and see the results for all races on one screen.

There are numerous advantages to this handicapping report. If you thought Betmix allowed you to handicap quickly before, this report takes it to a whole new level. You can now look for standout horses on a race card in seconds. For example - if you are looking for Early Pace (lone speed) horses, you can turn on Avg. Last E1 Pace and see if there are horses on today's card that have big point ranking advantages over the rest of the field.

This report will also assist you in creating new mixes. When creating a new mix for a track its a great idea to look at the past results for that track and turn on 1 factor at a time to see where horses who ranked the highest in that category actually finished. Using this report makes that quick and easy.

For example, pulling up the Equibase results for Santa Anita on Dec. 30th 2012, and then bringing up the All Race Reprt and turning on Avg Last 3 Late Pace you will see that the top ranked horse hit the board in 6 of 9 races. The horses ranked on top in Avg Lifetime earnings hit the board in 7 of 9 races. Using the All Races Report you can do this very quickly and start creating mixes based on the most predictive factors. You will then refine those mixes by looking at race types and distances, and you can create very accurate handicapping methods for different tracks in a short time.

The most frequent question we get asked is "Can you really make money betting on horses?", and the simple answer is yes.

However, very few people will show a consistent profit betting on horses because they lack the ability to handicap using a consistent method and they do not have the discipline to adhere to a consistent money management system.

Betmix is a handicapping tool that was developed to provide a consistent approach to handicapping. It allows you to create a handicapping "system" and apply it consistently to each race you look at. If you have created a mix for handicapping 6 furlong Claiming races at Gulfstream, you can instantly handicap every race in the same way. You can certainly do that using the racing form or some other tool, but not with the same speed and exactness that Betmix provides. If you are using the Racing Form, pencils and a calculator to handicap every race at Gulfstream it could take you hours and there is no guarantee that you added up everything correctly or that you didn't miss a key data point for a horse. With Betmix you can handicap an entire card in seconds and see which races you should be playing, and where you might have the best advantage.

When you bet on horses, you are betting against the crowd, not against the house like in a casino. When you win money at the race track you are taking money away from the other people who bet on the same race as you. You have to work harder and be smarter than the people you are playing against in order to win money consistently. Betmix gives you that advantage. You can devise a mix and then test it against historical races to see how it performed over the course of a meet. When you apply that mix to future races you will have the data to prove that you are making a smart choice and be able to bet with confidence.

You can't bet every race. That should be obvious to most players, but it can't be emphasized enough. If you bet every race you encounter you are going to lose money. You have to pick your spots - races where you have determined that a particular horse has a better chance of winning than the rest of the field, and have the numbers and historical data to back it up. Even then, you are not going to win every time, but with a solid money management system you will be able to overcome the losses and show a profit in the long run.

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With Betmix you can evaluate every race at every track running today and find the 4 or 5 best opportunities to make a winning bet. If you were looking at a typical Saturday, and had 8 racetracks that you wanted to handicap, each offering 9 races, you would have 72 betting opportunities. If you have a very selective set of mixes that you created, and applied those to each race where your top ranked horse has a strong point advantage you might find 10 races worth betting. You might eventually find that only 5 of those races are worth playing if the horses you selected do not meet your minimum odds criteria (who wants to bet a 3:5 shot?). For arguments sake lets say that 2:1 is the lowest price you will accept and in all 5 of the races you decide to bet the horse is going off at 2:1. If you bet $2 to win on each of those horses in every race you will have bet a total of $10. A winning horse that goes off at odds of 2:1 will return $6.00. You will need to win 2 out of 5 races to show a profit. By being right 40% of the time you can make money betting on 2:1 shots at the racetrack. Of course things don't always line up that simply in the real world. Some horses will be 9:5 or 4:1. The key is to limit your bets, and to bet consistently. Human nature is such that if you lose the first few bets you will either be tempted to bet more on the next race to win back what you have lost, or you will lose your confidence and bet less in order to reduce your potential losses. In either case you are headed for disaster.

Winning money betting on horses demands consistency. Consistency in how you handicap and how you bet. Being consistent in how you handicap is much easier than being consistent in how you bet. People are not robots, and its tough to watch a race where a horse that almost met your handicapping criteria is going off at 15:1 without betting it. Your money management strategy should allow you to play those marginal horses, but not at the same level that you would play your solid picks.

There are several articles and books available on money management, and you can find several systems that should make sense to you. But the purpose of Betmix is handicapping, not money management. We can provide you with a consistent and accurate way to handicap, how you bet those results is up to you. To make money betting on horses you have to be disciplined in both areas.

Get started making money on horse racing by watching the tutorials or trying out the free race of the day.

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Currently, we have over 40 handicapping factors available in Betmix and the obvious question most people have when they first start is "What is the most important handicapping factor?"

Unfortunately there is not an answer that applies to every race, surface, track or condition. But we will talk about a few of them here to help you understand how you might want to weigh them in your mixes.

First of all, a handicapping factor is a data element that is used to describe how a horse ran in previous races. A list of the handicapping factors used in Betmix can be found here. The factors are numeric, and as an example consider BEST LIFETIME SPEED NUMBER. That factor is easy to understand, it is the best speed number that a horse earned during his career. If he has run 20 times, and the best number he ever earned was 88, then that is his best lifetime number. It is an overall number and does not take into consideration the track or surface where the number was earned.

To handicap a race with accuracy, you have to consider several factors and then determine how important each of those factors should be in your overall decision.

We will take a look at a few of them here and show you how important they are when looking at a large sample of races. These numbers are accurate, and based on several thousand races. However, they are not specific to any race, track or surface type.

Let's start with odds. Post Time odds are a factor, and although we do not include that in Betmix, it is something that you will certainly be aware of when betting a race. This is an obvious factor to many people and you would certainly expect that the horse with the lowest odds wins the most races.

How often does the favorite win a horse race?

HORSE WIN %
Favorite 36%
2nd Choice 22%
3rd Choice 15%

What we all know, and the data proves, is that favorites win more often than 2nd choices, and that 2nd choices win more often than 3rd choices, etc. Overall - averaging thousands of races - the public generally gets the order right. A little more than one third of the time the post time favorite wins the race. More than 70% of the time, the winner of the race is going to come from one of the top 3 choices.

Now lets consider earnings as a factor. There are several earnings factors, but we will take a look at Average Lifetime Earnings which is the simply taking the total earnings for the horse and dividing by the number of races it has run. If a horse has earned $100,000 in his career and run in 10 races then the AVG Lifetime earnings would be $10,000. In Betmix you can refine that by looking at Avg earnings at today's distance, surface, track, etc.

Average Lifetime Earnings handicapping factor

HORSE WIN%
Highest AVG 22%
2nd Highest AVG 18%
3rd Highest AVG 15%

You can see from the data above that in an average race, the horse with the highest average earnings per start wins approximately 22% of the time. On average, 55% of the time, a horse that ranks in the top 3 for average earnings per start will win the race.

Speed handicapping factors are among the most predictive because (and this will shock nobody) fast horses win races. But what factor is the most predictive? We have found that taking the best 2 speed figures from a horse's last 3 races and averaging those 2 numbers is the best indication of speed. It throws out a dud which may have been earned over a bad surface or when a horse was trying a new distance or race class for the first time.

Average best 2 of Last 3 speed handicapping factor

HORSE WIN %
Fastest 26%
2nd Fastest 19%
3rd Fastest 15%

The data shows that in about 60% of all races, the winner is going to be among the top 3 speed horses based on averaging the best 2 out of the last 3 speed figures. Compared to average earnings, speed seems to be a stronger factor in determining the eventual winner.

How important is having the best jockey or trainer when betting on a horse?

Jockey win % handicapping factor

HORSE WIN %
Best jockey 17%
2nd best jockey 14%
3rd best jockey 12%

Trainer win % handicapping factor

HORSE WIN %
Best trainer 18%
2nd best trainer 14%
3rd best trainer 11%

The trainer/jockey factors are about equal. Having the best trainer seems to be moderately more important than having the best jockey. But, both the trainer and jockey factors are much less important than the speed or earnings factors.

The challenge for you and those you are betting against is to determine which factors you are going to use when handicapping each race, and how much importance you are going to assign to each of those factors?

If you were going to create a simple mix using Avg Lifetime Earnings, Avg Best 2 of last 3 speed, Trainer current meet and jockey current meet how would you set your mix levels?

Based on the data we have shown above, you would want to assign more importance to speed and earnings than you would give to jockey and trainer. Play around with the settings in Betmix and save a few to your mixes assigning different weights to each factor. Pull up some historical races and see how accurate each mix was. Then, you can start adding in other factors along the way based on race type, distance, surface, etc.

You will find that with a little work and experimentation, you will start to find races where there is a horse that separates himself from the rest of the field and is an outstanding bet. Using Betmix and saved mixes in conjunction with the All Races Report will allow you to handicap a race card in minutes and know that you are making a very educated wager!

We receive many emails from subscribers that have made big scores using Betmix to help them handicap. Here is a great email we received yesterday, along with photo evidence!

Hey Dave!

Just wanted to send you a pic of my winning Pick6 ticket from yesterday (Feb 18th).

As you can see I only put $3.00 into it, but I'll be damned - I hit it! Didn't win the whole jackpot but my ticket was worth $4,613.15. Not bad for a $3 investment...

I've been working on my Gulfstream mixes for a few weeks and have settled on using heavy speed factors for the dirt races, and for turf I mainly use turf pedigree, distance pedigree and trainer/jock year stats.

You can share this on your website if you want. Thanks again for the cool tool! Let me know next time you're at Keeneland - drinks are on me!

Chris S.

Nice hit Chris - well done! Chris is exactly right about one thing - Betmix is a tool. Like most tools, you have to know how to use it in order to get the job done. Chris has taken the time to develop mixes that work for the race types and track that he plays. Through trial and error over several weeks he has looked at past data and found what works most of the time. No mix is going to work every single time you use it, but as you start to realize which factors are most important in certain race types you will be able to bet with confidence - a $3 pick 6 ticket is pretty damn confident!

And before you ask - the answer is NO. Chris has not agreed to share his Gulfstream Mixes in the MixLibrary. But the information he has provided in his email should give you a head start in handicapping Gulfstream Park - who knows, you may come up with the next winning Rainbow Pick 6 ticket.