A Beginner’s Guide to Horse Racing Tips – The Factors That Matter!

The vast majority of people in the UK today can tell you that their betting experience begins and ends with the office draw for the Derby or Grand National. To be sure, most people refuse to gamble due to their lack of understanding of the main factors involved and view the entire process as a matter of luck. This is certainly not the case and I will try to give the beginner who is thinking of placing a few more bets than usual a quick guide to success. I’ll try here to tease out the jargon that does little to encourage newcomers to the game. Well, we’ll start with some of the most important points. I consider this to be the most important thing when looking at a race; the going

This is simply the state of the ground at the start of the race. One important thing to consider is that this can and does change throughout race days when it rains. So caution should always be exercised here. Why is it important to go? Well, imagine for a moment how this would affect you personally. A quick jog down the beach on sand would certainly be different from a jog down the street on hard asphalt. Likewise, the difference would be noticeable if you went for a run on the grass of your local sports field. All of these surfaces would have a positive or negative effect on his performance and similarly for a horse. So if you were to compete against someone else who liked and performed better on tarmac compared to your liking for grass, given the fact that they’re both reasonably fit, there’s bound to be a difference. Going back to our horses for a moment, everyone has their preferences for ground conditions. They can work on all surfaces, but will work considerably better in one or two similar conditions. Your task is to find out which one. You’ll hear things like ‘he loves some cuts on the ground’ and ‘he likes to hear the noise of hooves’. These sayings would refer to ‘soft land’ and ‘firm land’ respectively.

So ‘GO’ is really no more complicated than that and you should be able to easily figure it out from racing press releases about the horse before placing your bet. Next, we will see another important topic only in Flat; The tie.

This is unique to flat racing, as in all flat racing horses enter from a starting position. The draw for the order takes place before the race and again this information can be found in the racing press. One thing to note here is that your saddle number is NOT your draw number. Never confuse these two numbers. You may be wondering why the giveaway can be so important. Historical data will show that at some racecourses the draw, either TALL Prayed BASS can have a significant impact on a horse’s chances of winning the race. The racecourse that stands out above all others when looking at this effect is Chester. Chester is a particularly narrow track that opens up into the city centre. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that a horse lying on the inside of this narrow track would have a considerable advantage over the others in the field for obvious reasons.

The only thing that negates this advantage is the length of the race. The longer the race, the less the effect of the draw is noticeable. This will conveniently take us to; The Journey or Distance.

In a nutshell, the race distance to be covered is known as The Journey. There are many different popular distances to cover from as low as 5f to over 3 Miles [24f] and even more in some exceptional circumstances. The most famous long-distance race, at 4 1/2 miles, is the Grand National. Furlongs are a traditional distance measure in horse racing and other than that there is no real reason why they are still used. You will also see that occasionally an extra distance is added at the end of the run i.e. 1m 6f 110yds

This should also be kept in mind and should not be easily ignored. When a horse is nearing the end of his race and is almost “empty”, those last few meters can be the deciding factor in whether he wins or loses. You will often see a horse that has led easily lose to a horse that finishes fast with a little more stamina in the last few yards. This can be one of the most frustrating events he will encounter if he hasn’t done his homework. Finally we can look at the last important factor; The disadvantage. The handicaps are a particular event where the “best” horse in the race has the most weight to carry. Keep in mind that nothing will stop a horse faster than too much weight.

When the handicap assesses the horse it will give him a weight to carry in his next race and the theory behind the handicap is that all the horses in the race will cross the line together. Now I can’t think of an instance where this has ever happened, but I suppose it might. Trainers will manipulate and manipulate this to their advantage and you will often hear that a horse is ‘okay in the weights’. This means that even at the weight he carries today, he is said to be ‘ahead of the handicap’. Well, there you have it, my most important factors to consider when looking to place a bet. Master these and you’ll be way ahead of the average punter on the high street or betting exchange.