What Are the Best Horse Racing Tips For Beginners?

Betting on horse races can bring about some of the most excitement available in gambling. If you pay attention to what kinds of tips and odds are available for each race, you can make informed decisions on who to place a bet on.

As well as being fun, horse racing can offer a complex puzzle for those willing to study the form and tricks that will help to improve your chance of winning money. There are a wide variety of events and races taking place all over the world at any given time of year, so the opportunities to win are almost endless but initially it is better to focus on one country or regions racing so you can familiarise yourself with not only the horses but the trainers and jockeys too.

Here, we’ll explain some of the best tips available for turning horse racing from a sporting spectacle into a potentially profitable pastime.

Take advantage of free bets

It’s rare that betting pays off in the early stages, so using the initial advantages of being a new betting site member can prove vital.

Online sites have become renowned for their free offers to entice new customers in. You can get free spins no deposit @casinocom, for example. But you can also take advantage of a range of offers for horse racing across the many online bookies that reward new customers.

Using these free bets and offers to practice and get accustomed to the world of horse racing betting is key to trying to make it become profitable in the long run.

Calculate your bet

This may seem obvious, but going in blind is the quickest way to sinking your money into horse racing without getting anything back. Knowing your odds and how to calculate what you’ll win off of a racing bet is a key starting point for betting on horses.

If you’re betting online, most bookmakers offer a handy odds calculator. However, if you’re betting at a racing event and have no access to an odds calculator, then it’s important to know what your potential payout is and how to work it out.

To calculate a set of odds you need to both multiply and divide by your bet. For example, let’s take a €10 bet on 8/5 odds. To find your potential payout, you multiply your bet by the first number (10 x 8), divide the answer by the second number (80 ÷ 5) then add your original bet back (16 + 10). Therefore, placing a €10 bet on 8/5 odds has a potential payout of €26. This is a profit of €16 and your own €10 stake back.

Jockeys high, horses low

Betting on certain jockeys requires the knowledge of who’s the best of the best. The top 10 jockeys in the world win 90% of the races they’re involved in, while the best horses or favourites will only win around 38% of the time on average.

With this in mind, underdog jockeys can offer excellent odds for those more comfortable with the risk, while world-famous ones are safer bets for newer players getting used to the process. In particular, the recent rise in female jockeys and their win rates have proved them to be good bets for all kinds of punters.

Types of betting

There are a plethora of different kinds of bets one can place on a single race. These different kinds of bets can result in greater chances of winning too.

A Place bet, where the horse you bet on must only finish in the top 3 or 4 places, has decent chances of winning but the odds will be short. A Win bet, requiring the horse to finish 1st, has less chance of winning but the odds will be bigger and therefore represents a greater potential return.

Knowing these to start off with is key to betting smart, while there are other kinds of bets available to learn once you get a grip of the process.

Forecasts and tricasts involve selecting multiple horses to finish in the correct order within the one race which is often extremely difficult but can pay large returns on your investment.

Another option for those seeking larger returns is to combine several horses from different races in the one combination bet. The most straightforward of these bets is a double which involves two different horses in two different races. Both horses must win in order for the bet to win.

Most shrewd punters tend to steer clear of these high risk high return bets as they are very unpredictable and rely on a degree of luck. It is a much safer option, particularly for novice bettors, to stick to individual win bets also called single bets.