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.

TRY THE BETMIX BIRDDOG FREE RACE OF THE DAY

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.

Handicap the Free Race of the Day
Handicap the Kentucky Derby for free

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.

We were exchanging e-mails with a user on Saturday who was playing Aqueduct. This was a new user, and they were getting their feet wet with Betmix by using the Blend Dirt mix, available in the MixLibrary to monthly subscribers (Blend Dirt-ML).

When helping new users we try to get them to focus on one Mix and one track to get used to the way Betmix ranks horses. We tell them to play horses that have a big point advantage over the rest of the field, and focus on races where there is a small group of horses within 10 points of the top ranked horse.

The user asked us to take a look at the 3rd Race at Aqueduct on Saturday March 9th, and wanted to know if we would play that race, and if so, who we would bet on.

Using the Blend Dirt Mix, here are the rankings of the horses:

There is not a standout as far as a TOP HORSE (ranked at least 5 points better than the second ranked horse), but there are only 2 horses within 10 points of the leader. This is clearly a 3 horse race. And the obvious bet is the 4 horse.

Why bet the #4 Coalition, if he is not the top ranked horse? Was the question we got back, and the answer should be obvious. The #4 is only 2.4 points behind the leader, and he has the only Green Up Arrow in the race for speed (meaning that he has shown improved speed ratings over the last 3 races). On top of that, looking at the ML odds, as well as the actual odds at the track before post time he was the longest shot of the 3. The 8 was even money, the 3 was 2:1, and the 4 horse was 7:2. He was clearly the value play in the race.

There are other factors that put the #4 into GREAT BET territory. He finished 2nd last time he raced, and we love to bet horses that finished 2nd in their previous start in conditional races like this one (NEVER WON A RACE OTHER THAN MAIDEN; CLAIMING; OR STARTER OR WHICH HAVE NEVER WON TWO RACES). This means he ran 2nd against similar company last time but just missed, and should be among the best today. Looking at all of the horses in the race, only the #8 and the #4 were 2nd in their last start.

A good habit to get into when handicapping with Betmix is to isolate a single factor to see if your pick holds up against the field. In this case, we want to know how fast he is at this distance (1 Mile) so we would turn on just BEST SPEED DISTANCE to see how the #4 stacks up against the rest of the field.

The #4 Coalition is the fastest horse at the distance. We are really starting to like him now. Also, notice that the longshot #2 Small Town is ranked 2nd here and has a morning line of 30:1.

Finally, lets isolate Avg of Last 3 Late Pace to see if #4 will be running late in this 1 mile race:

The #4 is a standout on Late Pace, almost a full 10 points clear of the 2nd ranked horse.

This horse has moved into GREAT BET territory and we email back the user that not only should he bet the #4 to win, he should bet him heavily.

Of course it all worked out like it should (not going to happen every time unfortunately) but when you get a race where there only appear to be 3 contenders, and you can make a very strong case for one of those horses by looking at him in single factor screens (Best speed distance and Avg 3 Late Pace) and he has the only Green Up Arrow for speed in the race (Improving!), and he ran 2nd last time in a similar condition, and to top it all off he has the highest odds of the 3 contenders in the race. When you find a situation like that, you have to take advantage of it.

The #4 horse Coalition did what he was supposed to do, rallied late to get the win and paid a very nice $9.50 for a horse that checked all the boxes as a best bet.

The lesson here is to use the numbers to find the value bet. Look at all the factors and ask yourself if betting the top ranked horse is really the smart play. Betmix is a tool that will separate the contenders from the pretenders for you, and by using common sense in conjunction with the cold hard facts Betmix provides you can often find some stand out plays and some live longshots. Remember that #2 horse that showed up 2nd in BEST SPEED AT THE DISTANCE? He ended up running 4th and making the Superfecta a pretty easy call with the three favorites for $159.

The Keeneland Spring meet has just started, and handicappers always look forward to the full fields and nice prices that Keeneland typically provides.

Keeneland was always viewed as a speed favoring track, but in 2006 that changed when they switched to a Polytrack surface. For many people the surface switch has made Keeneland a tough track to handicap, but we have found that Betmix can provide a consistent method for picking winners at Keeneland.

Many of the innovations and products that we provide come from user requests and suggestions. Not too long ago we recieved an email from a user who challenged us to create a mix that would be profitable across every race at Keeneland, since that is the only track he plays. With Keeneland being our hometown track and one we love to play, we took him up on his challenge.

We didn't have much confidence that we could create a mix that would be profitable across every race at Keeneland. Mixes are usually built to be specific rather than general. We normally build a mix for a race class, distance and surface and try to zero in on the handicapping factors that apply to that specific race type.

After several weeks of trial and error, we did come up with a mix that returned a profit when used against every race in the 2012 Keeneland Spring meet. Not every race was a winner, but a $2 WPS bet made on the top pick in every race returned a 14% net profit for the meet.

There were 143 races in the 2012 Keeneland Spring meet, and we we placed a fictional $2 WPS bet on the top pick in every race, and also did fictional $2 exacta and $2 trifecta boxes using the top 4 horses selected in the Keeneland Mix.

$2 WPS bet: 143 races, total bet $858, total return $982.
$2 Trifecta box bet: 143 races, total bet $6864, total return $9554
$2 Exacta box bet: 143 races, total bet $3432, total return $2657

The WPS bets and Trifecta boxes showed a profit, while the Exacta boxes showed a loss. The Keeneland Mix hit 58 exacts in the 143 races, but there were several low returns that hurt the overall numbers.

We learned a great deal in trying to construct a mix that would work across every race type, class and distance at Keeneland and the mix that we ultimately came up with is actually very simple. Normally we would never play every race on the card, but for this test to be valid according to the conditions proposed we did. The results would have been better if we passed on Maiden races and tossed some of the horses that ended up on top but were coming in off of long layoffs or showing declining form.

The mix is now available in the MixMarket, and we will start accepting proven mixes from users as well. If you have developed a mix that is profitable across several races and you can provide the data to back it up, you can sell your mix in the market and earn some money while allowing other handicappers to take advantage of your hard work and creativity.

Best of luck at Keeneland!

Who will win the Kentucky Derby? That is the question that all serious and casual horse racing fans will be asking over the next few weeks. The Kentucky Derby is the most watched horse race in the world, and the payoffs can be life changing.

There are many reasons why picking a Derby winner is so difficult. To start with, there are usually 20 horses in the race. Getting a trouble free trip in a race with that many horses is never guaranteed. These young 3 year old colts will be running 1 1/4 miles, a distance they have never run before and will probably never run again. The atmosphere at Churchill Downs is something that will be completely new to the horses. How will they react to over 100,000 screaming fans? Betmix can help solve some of the puzzle.

Did Betmix Pick the Kentucky Derby Winner? The 2014 Kentucky Derby was won by California Chrome, he was the overwhelming favorite so it was pretty easy to find a reason to put him on top of your tickets.  The real trick was coming up with Commanding Curve (38:1) in second, and Danza (9:1) in third.  The correct mix to use at Betmix was heavy on Best Lifetime Speed, Late Pace, Turn Time and Pedigree.  To win the Kentucky Derby a horse needs to have a history of running fast and closing well.  Having the pedigree to run long is also important.

Using a Mix of Best Lifetime Speed (84), Avg last 3 Late Pace (60), Avg last 3 Turn Time (49), Last Turn Time (54) Distance Pedigree Rating (22) and Trainer Current Year (1)

You would have had these rankings, and hit the Kentucky Derby Trifecta:

Kentucky Derby Pedigree (Who has the best KY Derby pedigree?)
Can a horse get the distance? Is the horse bred to be able to run the 10 furlong distance of the Kentucky Derby? Using the Distance Pedigree Rating factor you can determine which horses have the bloodlines that may benefit them when running this distance. The data behind the pedigree ratings is based on an analysis of hundreds of thousands of starts in North America, each start of all offspring from the Sire, Dam, and Damsire are evaluated and measured for their individual racing aptitudes and preferences. Chances are that if the horse in questions had parents or siblings that were able to handle the distance, they will be able able to as well.

Pace in the Kentucky Derby (Who are the late/early runners in the Ky Derby?)
Betmix can't predict what kind of trip each horse may get in the Kentucky Derby, but it can give you insight into the pace scenario. Pace ratings tell you how fast a horse ran up to a specific point in the race. The higher the number, the faster the horse ran. Looking at the pace factors in Betmix you can determine who will be running fast early, in the middle, or late. In a typical race if the majority of the field runs early then you would give the advantage to a horse who is the lone closer. The same would be true of a lone speed horse in a race full of closers. With 20 horses in the Derby there is probably not going to be a pace advantage for any one horse, but you can try and map the race out to see where a horse will be positioned. Using that in conjunction with the post positions (usually drawn the Wednesday before the race) you can start to map out how the race may unfold.

How important is speed in the Kentucky Derby
(Who is the fastest KY Derby horse?)
Speed is important in any race, and the Derby is no exception. We can look at speed in several ways in Betmix. You can look at the fastest lifetime number, the fastest number on dirt, the fastest number at this track (Churchill Downs), the average of the last 3 races, etc. Any successful Derby mix will use speed factors heavily.

The Trainer and Jockey factor in the Kentucky Derby
(Who are the best Jockeys and Trainers in the KY Derby?)
In Betmix you can evaluate the trainer and jockey based on their statistics for the current meet and for the current year. In looking at the Derby, the stats for the year are going to be much more important than for the meet. This is because the Chuurchill meet will have only been running for about 1 week prior to the Derby and because the Derby contenders will be shipping in from all over the country. The best trainers and jockeys in the world will be involved with the Derby horses, and you will want to look at how they compare for the year to get a true picture of who has the best.

There are 45 handicapping factors that you can use in Betmix and while some of them may not be relevant to the Kentucky Derby, you can create a very accurate handicapping method that will give you a big advantage when trying to pick a Kentucky Derby winner.

Yes. We have been asked numerous times if Betmix picked the Oaks and Derby winners. The first thing we tell people who ask this question is that Betmix ranks horses based on the criteria that you provide, so it is ultimately the user who made the pick because the user told Betmix which factors to use and how important those factors should be. That combination of factors and weighting is what we call a Mix.

So, was there a Mix that picked both the Kentucky Oaks winner (Princess of Sylmar $79.60) and Kentucky Derby winner (Orb $12.80)? Absolutely. There were probably several Mixes that did. Many users have told us that they hit big both days, some used the same Mix for both races, others used different ones.

One Mix that worked for both the Oaks and the Derby is the Alpha Mix. It is available in the MixLibrary for any Monthly Subscriber to add to their saved mix list. To find the Alpha mix, just open up the MixLibrary and in the search box type "Alpha", then hit the SEARCH MIX LIBRARY button.

The Alpha mix is simple, as you will see when you add it to your saved mixes. The mix was created in response to a challenge from a user (we get challenged all the time!) who asked us which Mix we would use if we could only use one to handicap every race. The Alpha mix is the result. It utilizes some basic handicapping principles that we believe would work in most races. It catches its fair share of longshots (the Oaks winner) and favorites.

To answer the question, yes, there were several mixes that picked the Oaks and Derby winners and several that did not. It's up to you - the user - to decide which Mix to use in any given race. If you were like Jason H. who uses the Alpha Mix regularly then you would be celebrating with him. The $20 Oaks/Derby double he made using the Alpha Mix returned a very nice $6,214. Congratulations Jason, and congratulations to the many users who have shared their winning Kentucky Derby stories with us.

Who will win the Preakness? Using the Alpha Mix again, it's interesting to note that the predicted winner of the Preakness is not Orb. We will update this post with the results after the race or you can run the Alpha Mix on your own to see the predicted winner...

Start mixing it up with Today's Free Race.

Using Betmix to find longshots
The most important thing that Betmix offers its users is a consistent method for handicapping and the ability to quickly look at entire race cards to find horses worth betting.

Looking for races with potential longshot horses is a great way to use Betmix. In this example we will be using the Longshot45 mix, available for free to monthly subscribers in the MixLibrary. If you are a subscriber just go the MixLibrary and type "Longshot45" into the search box then click the search button. When it comes up, click the "Save to MyMix" button and it will be available for you to use when handicapping any race.

How to use the Longshot45 Mix
The best way to use this mix is through the All Races Report. That view allows you to select a date and a racetrack, and apply a mix to the entire card. You can scroll through the results of every race. After you have selected your date and racetrack, select the Longshot45 Mix from your saved mixes. Every race on that card will now be shown ranking the horses using the Longshot45 Mix. This is a selective mix, so we are only going to be betting the top ranked horse that meets the following conditions.

1. Morning Line odds of 5:1 or greater
2. Last finish position 4th or better
3. No long layoffs (Greater than 60 days)

All of that information is available to you on the results screen and you should be able to spot the playable longshots in a matter of seconds.

WATCH TUTORIAL | TRY FREE RACE OF THE DAY

The above image shows the 2nd race from Churchill Downs on April 27th. As you can see, the top ranked horse using the Longshot45 mix has ML odds of 5:1, he finished 4th or better in his last race, and he is not coming off a long layoff (last race was 28 days ago).

The data below shows the results of using the Longshot45 mix at Churchill Downs during the 2013 Spring meet. Through May 18th there were 17 horses that qualified under the Mix conditions. If you would have bet $2 WPS on each of those horses you would have bet a total of $102 (17 x $6) and you would have collected $168.60, for a profit of $66.60 (65% ROI). If you had just bet $2 to win on each horse the total bet would have been $34 (17 x $2) and the return would have been $67.20 for a profit of $33.20 (97% ROI).

The point of this post is not to say that the Longshot45 Mix will show the same results at every racetrack or even that it will produce the same ROI at Churchill for the remainder of this meet. What we hope you take away from this post is how to use Betmix to screen races for playable horses, and to demonstrate that you shouldn't bet every race - pick your spots!. We also hope that you will create your own Mixes for certain racetracks and conditions and create a set of rules to follow to find the most profitable betting scenarios. Betmix gives you a consistent handicapping method. When you combine a consistent method with solid money management rules you are well on your way to being a winning horseplayer.

Churchill Downs
Date Race # Horse Win Place Show
04/27 2 5 D'Wildcard 15.80 6.00 3.80
04/27 7 1 Destrehen 22.60 9.00 5.20
05/01 4 1 Scatman 0.00 0.00 3.60
05/01 10 6 Soto's Hija 0.00 13.60 8.00
05/02 4 4 Bluebrass B. 0.00 4.00 3.00
05/03 2 7 Cora Mesa 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/03 4 8 Love Train 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/03 10 6 Positivley 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/04 7 8 Bryma 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/04 11 9 Overanlayze 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/04 13 5 Column 19.20 8.20 5.40
05/11 6 1 Chocolat City 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/11 10 9 Palazzo Babe 0.00 3.60 2.80
05/11 11 9 Lafitte 0.00 0.00 0.00
05/17 8 4 Barksdale 0.00 0.00 4.20
05/18 7 2 Southern S. 0.00 7.60 5.00
05/18 9 8 Treasured Up 9.60 4.80 3.60

We have a new feature at Betmix, called RANKINGS. If you look at a race screen you will see a new button on the menu called rankings:

Clicking this button will open a pop-up window that will give you detailed information about where a horse ranks within the 30+ handicapping factors we offer as part of our handicapping system. Each factor is listed, with the rankings of the horses to the right of the factor name:

Looking at the information above as an example you can see where each horse ranked in a specific category. Looking at the Best Speed at the Distance factor you can see that the horses are ranked 2,4,1,5,3 - Horse #2 has the fastest speed at today's distance and horse #3 is the slowest. LEARN HOW TO CREATE A MIX USING THE RANKINGS

The Overall Rankings chart looks at every factor in the race and then assigns points to each horse based on where they ranked. In a 10 horse field, if a horse was ranked on top for a factor he would get 10 points, the second ranked horse would get 9, and so on down to the last ranked horse who would get 1 point.

You can use the rankings feature as a stand alone handicapping tool that will give you an indication of how well matched the field is. When you find that the highest ranked horse has a very large point advantage you may be on to a sure thing! Or, when all of the horses are very closely ranked you might want to pass the race or back the horse with the highest odds.

The goal of the rankings information is to help you create more accurate mixes very quickly. When you look at past race results and want to build mixes that will predictive in future races you can use the rankings information to identify the handicapping factors that produced the most winners in the race types you are looking at. You can also use the rankings information to potentially explain longshot results. If you look at a span of races where the winner paid over $20, you can try to find common factors where the longshot horses were ranked highly, and they use those factors with heavier weighting in future races to find longshot scenarios.

The Rankings button is available in Today's Races, Historical Races, MixMaker, and the Free Race of the Day.

The Rankings view was created to help users build better mixes. If you are new to Betmix, the RANKINGS button is located on the right next to Trainer-Jockey.

When you click on the Rankings button you will see a list of all of the handicapping factors at Betmix, and be shown where horses rank in each factor for that race.

So, how do you use all of that information to create a Mix?

Let's walk through an example of how we would begin to create a mix and you should begin to see how useful this information is.

Open up Historical Races (sorry, subscribers only) and choose 6/12 (2013) as the date, and for the race track select Belmont, race #6 - which was a 5.5 dirt claiming race.

When we click on the RANKINGS button we see the following chart:

We know that the results of that race were as follows:

The #4 horse won the race and paid a very generous $17.00. How should we have created a Mix that would have predicted that result?

The first thing we want to know is in what factors did the #4 rank the highest? Go back and look at the above chart and find out where the #4 was ranked the best.

We can see that he was ranked1st in the following factors:
Best Speed Number at Today's Track
Best Speed Distance
Horses Beaten %
Avg. Earnings Today's Track

If you would have told me before the race that the horse with the best speed at the distance and best speed at the track (who also had the best Avg. earnings at Belmont and had also shown over his last 5 races that he can beat the majority of the field) was going to win the race I would not have been surprised. If you told me he was going to pay $17.00, I would call that a steal.

If you are still looking at the rankings screen, close that by clicking the X in the upper right hand corner. You will now be back at the main screen and we can start creating a mix. If you can keep this post open in one window and open

The first thing to do is turn on each of the factors mentioned above where the #4 was ranked the highest. To turn a factor on, just click the ON button next to the slider and give it a value - let's start with 10.

After you have turned on all of the factors and set the values to 10, you will see that our Mix using those 4 factors - all set to 10 - would have ranked the horses in the following way:

Note that we removed the horses that scratched from that race. We did that by clicking on their name and hitting the CLICK TO SCRATCH button.

The Mix has the Exacta right (4,3) but let's see if we can get the Trifecta too. We could do this in several ways. We could go back and look at the Rankings again and see where the #1 horse was ranked highly and add those factors into our mix, or we could mess around with the point values to see if we can get the #10 horse to move down a spot and move the #1 horse up into 3rd.

Right now we have all 4 of the factors (Best Speed at Today's Track, Best Speed Distance, Horses Beaten % and Avg Earnings today's Track) all set at 10. That means that Betmix is treating them all equally. We would get the same result if they were all set at 20, or 5, or 33. If they all have the same value then the computer is going to give them the same weight in its decision.

Look at how the results change if we make Best Speed Number at Today's Track more important than the other factors. We set it to 50 and left the other factors at 10.

Now the #1 (In Todd We Trust) has moved into the 3rd spot and the Betmix rankings now give us the Trifecta - (4,3,1).

If we are satisfied with that mix we would hit the SAVE MIX button, give it a meaningful name like "Belmont 5.5" and use that the next time we encountered a 5.5 furlong dirt race at Belmont.

But, what we really should do before thinking that we have just figured out how to beat the races is test that Mix against several 5.5 dirt races at Belmont to see how it holds up. We could do that fairly easily by using the ALL RACES REPORT (Sorry, available to subscribers only) and pull up some past cards at Belmont using that mix to see how it would have done. We would check the accuracy of that mix across several races and tweak it until we have a Mix that picks frequent winners.

The Rankings feature is an excellent tool to use when creating mixes and gives you a great idea of what factors were the most predictive in any given race. Using the Rankings feature in conjunction with MixMaker will help you build profitable mixes in very little time.

Best of luck!