When handicapping a horse race it is best to have a specific goal in mind. Obviously you are trying to determine the ability of each horse so you can decide which ones are most likely to win, place, or show, but you are also looking for a way to turn that information into a profit if you bet on the race. So you are not only looking for the most talented or capable horse, but also one that will pay well.

Finding a horse with ability that will pay well isn't easy. Like the stock market and every other free market, the betting pools are self adjusting, meaning that the horses will receive as much betting action as they deserve, most of the time. That is the key, most of the time they receive the correct action, but sometimes they don't.

While the key to picking winners is a key horse, the key to betting is value. In my opinion, as a man who makes a living helping other people find good bets, a good bet is a key horse that will win or place a high percentage of the time and also deliver value. How often can such a horse be found? Here's an example, last weekend I handicapped a total of 9 programs for 5 different thoroughbred tracks and 6 programs for 4 different harness tracks. The races were spread over a three day period from Friday to Sunday.

In all those races there were 36 key horses in the thoroughbred races and 40 key horses in the harness races. But because my clients want a very high probability and use those horses not only for win bets but also as key horses in exotic bets, I further narrowed it down by identifying which of those horses were also fit and ready. I identify fit and ready horses by handicapping each race and determining the true class of the race and then seeing which horses have shown recent ability to compete on that level.

Those horses are key horses that are also fit and ready and they are rare. At the thoroughbred tracks I found just 12 such horses and at the harness tracks I found 17. The reason that there are more at the harness tracks even though I handicapped fewer races there is because harness horses race more frequently and therefore have a better chance of demonstrating current form and ability.

So in a three day period, using 15 different programs that covered both harness and thoroughbred horses, I identified 29 betting opportunities that were the cream of the crop, the very best. Both groups returned a positive ROI, though it was much higher for the thoroughbreds. The point is that these horses showed recent form and other factors that made it possible to identify them as superior wagering opportunities, but the crowd missed them. In fact, though each horse had an edge over the rest of the field one harness horse paid $20.20 to win and the top thoroughbred payoff was $14.80.