If you’re thinking of betting on rough and tumble, you’ve got to start at the bottom. You’ve got to find out who the horses are going to be racing against. You’ve got to find out who they are racing against and what their chances are of winning and what their chances of losing are. There’s more to that, of course, but for now let’s just look at the major events.
If you’re a casual gambler and you’re going to bet on only one race, it has to be either an uncontested draw or a race where the horses haven’t been bumped. Contested races are the easiest to figure out; you just know who you’re supposed to bet on and you can pick your money. Most often you bet on the favorite. If it’s a tight race and you’re feeling good about it, you might even go with a low-odds win if you think the horse has a good chance of winning. You’re not taking the risk of losing money if you’re betting on the favorite.
When there’s no obvious favorite, you’re gambling on other factors. For instance, let’s say that one race is a sprint to the finish. There are several other choices for a sprint to the finish, each with its own statistics. You could bet on one or two of them and handicap the rest. If they all win, you make a profit, if any of them come in second, you lose money.
The trick is to figure out how to choose the horses that have the best chances of winning. One of the best methods is to figure out how many people are going to bet on those particular races. That means finding out who the top dogs are and who they’re likely to face. If there aren’t a lot of people who bet on those particular races, you’ll have a better chance of picking a true winner. But if there are a lot of people who bet on those races, you might as well bet on any race. That doesn’t mean that the horse you picked will win every time, but it does mean that you don’t stand a good chance of losing.
Of course, you have to be careful when you’re betting on horses. The biggest mistake that a bettor can make is to bet on a race where there aren’t a lot of good choices. If you do that, you’ll likely bet on the favorite, which will mean that you’ll lose money if it comes in first or second, even if you think you’ve picked the best horse.
So how do you know what to bet on? Some experts tell you to pick one type of bet and stick with it. For instance, if you only want to bet on a race where the favorites lose, then you should stick with jockeys, or horses that have already had a good season. On the other hand, if you think the horse you’re betting on has a strong chance of winning but you’re not sure, then you should try to find out some information about it. You could read an article or listen to a radio show about it. Or perhaps you could go online and do a little research, looking for news about the horse or for recent racing results.
