How Do I Become a Better Horse Handicapper

BySam
By Published Updated
On this page 13 sections
  1. Read Handicapping Books
  2. Model the Best Handicappers
  3. Use Online Racebook Betting Options
  4. Look Beyond Speed
  5. Use Form and Appearance to Pick Winners
  6. Become a Trip Handicapper
  7. Make Your Own Angles for Horse Racing Betting
  8. Use All the Tools at Your Online Racebook
  9. Always Handicap
  10. Learning from Losing Bets: The Underrated Path to Improvement
  11. Use a Tip Service
  12. Practice One Skill at a Time
  13. Review a Winner with the Same Care as a Loser

Many of the emails that we receive at EZ Horse Betting are concerned with improving handicapping skills. How do I become a better handicapper? This is what many people want to know. We have assembled 10 tips that can help you improve your ability to pick winners at an online racebook. Later, take a look at other horse handicapping topics we have for you.

Read Handicapping Books

Almost all professional handicappers will tell you that they have built a large handicapping library. There are literally hundreds of books available which address how to pick winners. Popular authors in this field include Andrew Beyer, Tom Ainslie, and Barry Meadow.

You can find books that appeal to your own personal handicapping style. Focus on speed, pace, or form. It’s up to you. Amazon can be a good source for horse racing books at a reasonable price. You can also visit the local bookstores in your area for deals.

Model the Best Handicappers

Success in many endeavors can often be attributed to one thing – modeling. The same can be said for handicapping. Many people who make a living in horse racing have studied the methods of Andrew Beyer, John Conte, and others who left a lasting mark on the art of horse betting.

Find a horse betting hero that you can relate to, study what they have done, and put the same principles in practice. The legendary gambler Pittsburgh Phil may be the most imitated horse racing bettor in history through Racing Maxims & Methods of Pittsburg Phil by Edward Cole, originally published in 1908. Even though he has been dead for many years, his influence on horse betting still lasts.

Use Online Racebook Betting Options

An online racebook can offer convenience where you are eligible to use it. You can bet from home. You can use a phone or a tablet. Some providers offer rebates or promotions, but eligibility, qualifying wagers and withdrawal terms vary. An offer is not automatically unrestricted cash.

Accessibility is the major way that online racebooks have changed the game. You can now get more tracks to play, and racing is available around the clock when you also include international race courses. Check the specific tracks and bet types available: online menus do not necessarily match every track’s on-course offerings.

Look Beyond Speed

There was a time when learning how to recognize and identify speed horses was the answer to how do I become a better handicapper? When speed figures were first introduced in horse racing, no one really had access to them. If you could make them or find them then you would have an edge. Today, they are readily available and almost everyone uses them.

Horse racing betting is a game where you have to have an edge over your fellow bettors. You will need to look beyond speed today to identify horses that are ready to win. When you can find a new edge you will have information that other bettors either lack or are too lazy to search out. Other factors to consider when you handicap are pace, form, and class. Along with speed, these are the big four considerations that you need to use.

Use Form and Appearance to Pick Winners

Andrew Beyer, the creator of the Beyer Speed Figures, once said that he believed that learning how to handicap trips would be the next big thing in horse racing betting. He also said that observing the overall form and appearance of a horse before the race would be able to give horse players an edge.

Appearance can contribute context, but dapples or a shiny coat do not establish medical soundness. Sweating can reflect weather and exercise as well as excitement. Note changes from the horse’s usual presentation without diagnosing health or automatically discarding a selection from a brief paddock view. Our present-form guide explains the limits of these observations.

One of the disadvantages of betting horses online is that the ability to observe horses up close and personal has been lost to a certain degree. But some online racebooks have very good video feeds, and you can see the horses in the paddock before the races well enough to make an evaluation.

Become a Trip Handicapper

We just mentioned what Beyer said about trips in horse racing. Trips are a reference to how a horse traveled in its most recent races. The way to decipher this information is to evaluate the racing chart for each race. You can find charts from services like Equibase.

A racing chart expands upon the information that is included in the past performances. This expansion includes a detailed running line. If a horse won the race, you might be able to see if the horse was on the lead all the time. If no other horses threatened it during the running of a race, the horse may have had an easy trip that is not as impressive as it seems. Likewise, a horse that won despite interference deserves closer review. Assess the incident and check what the rating already includes before applying an upgrade.

Make Your Own Angles for Horse Racing Betting

You can purchase books that are full of horse racing angles. Some of them are useful, others border on ridiculous. Rather than rely on other sports bettors to create your angles, try your hand at making some of your own.

A simple notebook will do the trick. You can keep notes on the bets that you have made and the handicapping methods that you have used to make them. You can then look back on the notes as a reference to determine what worked and what did not. The plays that worked may contain the seed of a new handicapping angle.

Question a new angle before treating it as a betting rule, especially when you discovered it by looking back at winners. Some of the best betting approaches were developed in exactly this way. You can stop using a failed idea, but keep its results in your research record so you do not later rediscover only the successful fragments.

Use All the Tools at Your Online Racebook

Online racebooks today are fond of giving tools to bettors. These can include free race replays as well as free past performances. Use the tools that answer a question in your process. Check whether access depends on a wager, subscription or account activity before calling it free. More tools can repeat the same information or consume time without improving a decision.

Keeping your expenses low is vital to success in horse racing betting. It is just like any other business when you think about it. Choose useful resources by their full cost and relevance, rather than feeling obliged to use every available feature.

Always Handicap

Even when you are not betting on a specific race card, you can be handicapping. Sometimes, handicapping without betting is a great way to become a better handicapper. You are under no pressure to win or risk your bankroll. That kind of freedom will encourage you to take more chances.

Keep a record of your bets in this manner. You can then use that record to look back and see if the choices that you made would have produced a flat bet profit over a specific period of time.  

Learning from Losing Bets: The Underrated Path to Improvement

Most bettors spend far more time analysing their winning bets than their losing ones. This is psychologically understandable but analytically counterproductive. The winning bets tell you what went right — which may be as much a product of luck as skill. The losing bets, particularly the ones where your reasoning was sound but the result went against you, contain far more useful information about the gaps in your handicapping process.

After any significant losing bet, ask yourself a series of questions: Was there information available before the race that I did not adequately weight? Did I misjudge the pace scenario? Did I overestimate a horse’s class relative to its recent competition? Was I influenced by the odds or by public opinion rather than my own independent assessment? Answering these questions honestly and systematically, over time, builds a specific picture of your handicapping weaknesses that generic advice cannot provide. The goal is not to beat yourself up over losses but to treat each one as a data point that refines your process.

Some of the best improvements come from races where you had a clear opinion, made the right call analytically, but lost to a factor you could not have foreseen — a stumble at the gate, a wide trip, a pace collapse no one could have predicted. Such a loss does not by itself prove that your process is sound or unsound. Review whether the risk was foreseeable, how you allowed for it and whether similar forecasts hold up across many races. Distinguishing these process-correct losses from genuine analytical errors is one of the key skills that separates improving bettors from those who remain stagnant. For a structured approach to the review process, our handicapping worksheet and checklist provides a useful framework. And our guide to tools for informed handicapping covers the resources that support continuous improvement.

Use a Tip Service

If you are one of those people who just does not feel comfortable in their own handicapping abilities, you may want to consider the use of a betting tip service. Some of these services can be affordable and produce consistent winners. Others can be close to a scam that is designed to part you from your money. Choose wisely.

There is no shame in using a horse racing betting service if you are comfortable with it. Improvement means better judgments about probability, price and total cost, not merely cashing more tickets. A high win rate at short odds can still produce a loss. Use our tip-service guide to compare complete records and fees. Account eligibility and race coverage are separate checks in the racebook comparison.

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Practice One Skill at a Time

Choose a small set of races and focus on one question, such as identifying the likely early leader. Write the forecast before watching the replay, then record the actual opening positions and what you missed. Keep the exercise separate from a bet so that learning the task does not require risking money.

Once the pace forecast becomes clearer, add a price judgment. Avoid changing five parts of the process at once: if the results improve or worsen, you will struggle to tell which change mattered. Keep a dated note when you alter a rule and compare later decisions with the earlier approach.

Review a Winner with the Same Care as a Loser

Suppose your selection wins after the favorite loses its rider. The ticket is a winner, but the outcome does not confirm your original assessment of the favorite’s ability. Conversely, a well-priced contender can lose after receiving an ordinary trip simply because it was never certain to win.

Ask the same questions for both results: Was the pre-race evidence available and understood? Did the price meet your threshold? Did the ticket match your opinion and spending limit? This consistent review is more useful than praising every winner and explaining away every loser.

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