Horse Racing Betting Guide for Beginners

Despite the growing popularity of more and more sports, horse racing still holds an important place when it comes to betting. As online betting makes it more convenient and easier for you to place and win bets, PLUSPH‘s article helps you understand the basics of horse racing betting and then improve it later.

Horse Racing Basics

Horse racing takes place at professional racetracks with two or more horses controlled by jockeys. Horse racing is considered one of the oldest sports since Ancient Egypt and has become a royal sport in England and many other countries around the world.

To win the glorious victory of the match, the rider must control his horse to jump and overcome barriers to win. Horse racing has no scoring system during the competition. Players can find many different ways of horse racing, but in general, there will always be two main types of racing – Flat racing and Obstacle racing.

Flat racing – Horses will race on a track that is a straight line or an oval track without fences or obstacles. These simple races do not last more than 3 minutes.

Obstacle racing – These are races that last longer, up to 7 or 10 minutes. Horse racing requires tactics to overcome obstacles and other competitors to reach the finish line. The Grand National is one of these horse races.

In addition, some names that you will often hear when betting on horse racing that you need to know:

Trainer – Is the person who takes care of and prepares the skills of each racehorse before the match. This person makes daily decisions about tactics for the racehorses as well as reviews and selects the appropriate racetrack for each horse.

Jockey – The person who directly rides and controls the racehorses in the match; they receive advice from the racehorse trainers. The victory of each racetrack is often most clearly reflected through these racehorses.

Speed data – This is a useful tool to compare the abilities of racehorses fairly when calculating different lengths of the racetrack or weather conditions. Speed figures help adjust each horse’s race times to make it easier for players to compare and consider when applying to the current track.

The Most Popular Horse Racing Bets You Should Try

There are many types of bets you can find at online bookmakers. Here, we will go over the most popular ones and explain how they work:

Straight bets

Straight bets involve betting on a single horse and can be placed in three types:

Win Bet – Win bets only win if the horse you bet on finishes first. The payout will be determined by the bookmaker on the results board. For example, if you bet $100 on horse A at odds of 5/1, you will win $500 and receive your $100 bet back.

Show Bet – This is the simplest bet with the highest odds of winning. You will bet on a single horse and win if that horse finishes first, second, or third. These bets have a modest payout.

Place Bets – This bet is where you bet on a horse and win if it finishes first or second. If you are more confident, you can choose Place over Show for higher odds.

Double Bets

Place/Show or (Win/Place) Bets – This is simply a combination of two single bets. For example, in a Win/Place bet, if the horse you bet on finishes first, the payout is at the odds for both Win and Place.

Across the Board Bets – This is a bet where you bet on Win, Show, and Place. If any of the outcomes come out, you are paid at those odds.

Exotic Bets

You can place these exotic bets on a single track or multiple tracks. This is a combination of multiple single bets for you.

For single tracks

Exacta – Choose to bet on two horses to finish in the exact order of first and second. The odds of winning this bet are quite difficult, and the payout is also quite high for you.

Quinella – This is a similar bet to Exacta, but you do not need to choose the finishing order for the two horses, as long as the two horses you choose come in first and second.

Trifecta – This bet is quite difficult to win and requires the player to choose three horses to finish exactly in first, second, and third place.

Superfecta – This is the most difficult bet in the odd bets on a racetrack. To get this very high payout, you must predict four horses to finish in the exact order.

For multiple races

Daily Double – You choose to bet on a racehorse to win in both consecutive races. This is an opportunity to earn a higher payout than if you only bet on one race.

Pick 3 – You will need to bet on a racehorse to win in 3 consecutive races. This bet is also known as a Classix bet, and you can further increase the difficulty of the bet to Pick 4 (win 4 races in a row) or Pick 6 (win 6 races in a row, and extremely unlikely).