Money Secrets at the Racetrack

By Barry Meadow

If you want to make serious money betting the races, you know that handicapping is only half the battle. The other half is knowing how to bet.

Money Secrets At The Racetrack is the only book written by a professional player that covers every aspect of money management. It's the only one that gives you exact methods on how to make the most money at the track.

There's nothing in here about handicapping. You pick the horses–-then this book shows you exactly how to play to make the most money on your selections. It shows you how to make the best bet for the odds, every time.

It explodes those crazy myths you've heard around the racetrack-–myths perpetuated by losers. There are no wacky betting schemes, crazy double-up methods, or bizarre due-column strategies-–just the straight stuff.

Simply put, this book shows you how to win.

Money Secrets At The Racetrack goes into every type of bet available at the racetrack and shows you exactly to properly play each of them. Whether you're a big player at Belmont or a weekend warrior at Gulfstream, this is the one book you need to reach your personal profit potential.

Money Secrets At The Racetrack is written in plain English and all its advice is easy to use at the track. It's written for the average fan who wants to win substantial money.

There's no reason to restrict your play to only one type of bet. Once you have this book, you'll look at profit opportunities wherever they present themselves. In some races, you'll bet to place only. In others, you'll play three exacta combinations. Sometimes you'll play multiple tickets in the pick 4. Or maybe you'll bet two horses to win. Or hammer the trifecta.

Once you read Money Secrets At The Racetrack, you will look at racetrack betting in a new and exciting way. Suddenly, everything will become crystal clear. Exactly how much to play on which combinations. When to pass. How to maximize your own bankroll, no matter what size.

The big winners in racing today are those who are up to date on the latest winning methods–-the methods that are in this book.

No matter what your game, if you're interested in making serious money, you simply must have this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780945322061

Book preview

Author

INTRODUCTION

Money Secrets at the Racetrack is a different kind of book about betting at the races.

There’s no handicapping method or selection system in this book. It doesn’t tell you how to pick winners.

It does tell you how to make money.

There are dozens of books that will explain handicapping to you. This volume makes no attempt to compete with these efforts.

There are fewer books that discuss money management. Most of what has been written about the subject has either (a) been wrong or (b) required an advanced mathematics degree to understand. I hope you’ll find that this book falls into neither category.

The secret of making money at the racetrack—whether you’re playing thoroughbreds, harness horses, quarterhorses, or greyhounds—is to exploit errors in the crowd’s line.

The public loses the amount of the state-track takeout and breakage. Though this varies from state to state, and from one type of racing to another, the takeout tornado will sweep up roughly 20% of all money bet.

To win, you must understand your game well enough to make an accurate line for your contenders. If you can—and you follow our strategies—you’ll win.

Racetrack betting is unlike those games with fixed percentages against you. Playing the pass line in craps, for instance, yields a disadvantage of 1.4%. While it is possible to lower your total disadvantage (by, for instance, taking triple odds at a casino that offers such a play), it is impossible to reduce the 1.4% disadvantage on pass-line bets. That’s why there is no such animal as a professional craps player.

The racetrack, though it offers an overall 20% disadvantage, is actually a much better game than craps—because, if you’re sharp enough to beat your competition, you have an edge. Let’s say that you determine that a certain horse has a 35% chance to win its race, but its odds are 5-2. Every time you bet in this situation, you have an edge. For each $200 you bet, you’ll receive, on average, $245 (35 wins x $7 mutuel).

The key to winning at racetrack betting is to find these overlays, and then bet them correctly. Underbet and your bankroll doesn’t grow as fast as it should. Overbet and you can easily go bankrupt, even if you play with an advantage. All our bet charts in Money Secrets at the Racetrack have been scaled towards the conservative side—but as you win, you can increase your stakes.

I’ve tried to keep the mathematical explanations to a minimum. They’re included only to explain how our strategies were developed. You won’t need a fancy computer with expensive software to use any of them. Just attach our charts and a set of blank sheets (more about these later) to a clipboard, carry a $5 pocket calculator, and you’re set.

While handicapping techniques change nearly from day to day (a track bias might overwhelm all other factors for a week, for instance), money management skills never vary. Once you understand the principles in this book, you’ll never have to relearn them, or alter them if you switch from one sport to another.

Throughout this book, to avoid having to say thoroughbred, standardbred, quarterhorse, and dog, we’ll often just say horse. Exotic bets will be called by the same names throughout—exacta, trifecta, pick 3, pick 4, pick 6, and others. But no matter what sport you favor, or which bets you prefer, Money Secrets at the Racetrack will point you towards profitable plays. Whether you bet $2 a race or $2,000, this book will show you exactly how to earn the most profit with the least risk. You’ll learn how to uncover winning wagers—and (depending on the size of your bankroll) exactly how much to bet when you find them.

The material in Money Secrets at the Racetrack is not just theory. It works. Learn it, use it—and win with it.

PARI-MUTUEL BETTING

Odds are the crowd’s opinion, reflected in dollars. To win, you must beat the crowd. Before explaining how to do this, let’s take a brief look at the pari-mutuel betting system.

The track, as the money-holder, keeps a commission or takeout. This amount varies from 12% to more than 30%, depending on state or province law, sport, and type of wager. Due to the takeout, the track has little financial interest in which horse wins.

Let’s assume a 20% takeout. No matter who wins, the track will give back about $800, less a few dollars for breakage.

Without the takeout and breakage, the payoffs would have been $6.66 for #4 and $80 for #6. Breakage is usually computed to the next lower dime in the United States and nickel in Canada; #4 would pay $5.20 in the U.S. and $5.30 in Canada.

Usually, breakage has little effect on high payoffs but a major impact on low ones. For example, let’s say a trifecta returns $591.60 for $2; without breakage, the number would have returned, at most, $591.79. However, a $2.20 show payoff might have been slashed from $2.39—reducing the profit by nearly 50%.

Exactas and other exotic bets are computed in the same way as win bets, although the state/track takeout is frequently higher:

Take a $100,000 pick 3 pool in which $142 has been bet on the winning combination. This may consist of some $2 tickets, an $11 bet, another for $5, etc. Assuming a 25% takeout, here is the computation:

The picture changes with bets that involve a carryover, or consolation payoffs. These plays include such bets as the super high 5 and the pick 6.

Let’s take a $2 pick 6 with a 24% takeout, and assume the $100,000 pool is augmented by a $60,000 carryover from the previous day when no one hit all six winners. Furthermore, let’s figure that 75% of today’s net pool and 100% of the carryover pool will be shared by those picking all six, and 25% of today’s net pool and none of the carryover will go to those picking five winners. If four tickets have all six winners today, and 110 tickets have five, here are the payoffs:

Note that in this example, more than half the payoff for six winners came solely from the carryover. The track gave out more than $135,000 on a day it took in only $100,000. This is a gambling rarity—a positive-expectation play—and has proven a boon to groups that can afford to lay out large tickets. See the chapter on multiple win exotics for how best to exploit this opportunity.

A multiple win exotic with a 24% takeout is often a much better bet than a win bet with only a 16% takeout. Take a daily double. Assume $50,000 is bet to win in the first race and all the money given back to winning bettors after its completion is plowed back into the second race:

Players who bet the daily double with a 24% takeout would receive $38,000 back. Since win bettors are cuffed with the takeout on two races, they would get back only $35,280—even though the bite is just 16%:

The pick 3 is even better:

Despite the larger takeout, pick 3 winners get back 28% more money than they would have had they bet the same horses in the straight pool (assuming the horses have been bet to win and in the pick 3 in the same proportion). Pick 4 winners get back better than 52% more. It’s no wonder that sharpies with fat bankrolls prefer to put much of their money into multiple win exotics.

However, you may not have an edge in, for example, three of the races in the pick 4. In that case, it’s better to put your money on the one race in which you do feel you have an advantage.

The two questions you must consider before attacking any pool are:

What are the true odds for this proposition compared with the odds offered? If the true odds on a horse should be 4-1 (he’ll win in this situation one time in five), you’ll be a winner if you bet him at 6-1 but a loser if you insist on playing him if he’s only 3-1. Bet only when you have an edge.

How likely is this bet to win? An edge is good, but if you rarely cash, it’s not so good:

Every bet offered at a racetrack contains a tradeoff between risk vs. reward, and advantages vs. disadvantages. If you bet to show, for example, you rarely suffer a losing streak. If you play the pick 4, breakage is no factor. The pari-mutuel facts are summarized in the chart, which features the most popular bets at North American racetracks at the time the original version of this book was written, in 1988 (a 2019 listing appears in the afterword). The charts make certain assumptions, which may not be true in particular cases:

Note the rapid escalation of losing streaks as the percentage of bets collected decreases. If you play the wilder exotic bets, you’d better have a wad of cash under the mattress:

The various types of bets share almost no common characteristics, which is why the strategy for each is different. All, however, can be exploited—and this book will show you how.

DECISIONS VS. SELECTIONS

To make money betting at the track, you must learn about horses, races, and money.

Learn about horses and races to become proficient enough to make a price line, which is your assessment of the relative chances of each horse in a race. Learn about money to best exploit flaws in the public line.

Picking winners is overrated. You can make money at the races even if you pick very few winners. You can lose money even if you pick plenty.

Shopping for bargains, not just picking winners, is the key to making money at racetrack betting. Seek overlays—those animals being sent away at more than their true odds.

How to find the true odds is the greatest challenge of handicapping. But whether you use a computer program, a system, or your own analysis of the past performances, this skill will determine whether you will be able to earn long-term profits at the track. Here is the one rule you must understand: Analyze chances, rather than attempt to pick winners.

Every race may have a hundred different scripts. In one scenario, a horse who usually breaks slowly suddenly jets from the gate; in another, a speed duel fails to materialize; in a third, the favorite is pinched at the start. Though you get only one chance to play a race, think long term—if this race were run 100 times, how many times would each horse win?

Actual odds are set by crowds. And