You can play many types of horse racing bets. Ask an experienced handicapper and they will tell you that place and show bets are ones usually avoided. There are many reasons that you should not bother to use place and show betting to break even. We’ll keep our list simple and limit these to five horse betting bets.

1 – Place and Show Betting Are Generally Bad Bets

From a very basic standpoint, place and show bets are generally unattractive. They have a high takeout that is the same as a win bet, but they offer nowhere near the return of a win bet in most cases. The only way that a place or a show bet returns a sizable sum is when the horses you have bet on are longshots. The longer the odds are on a horse, the less likely that it is to place or show.

Few things at the track will mark you as an amateur bettor faster than place and show betting. Be prepared to face some scorn from your fellow handicappers when you decide to make these bets.

2 – Place and Show Bets Offer Poor Returns

We are speaking here of making horse racing bets to get even at the end of the day. Let us first say that it is sometimes better to walk away from a losing horse racing session than it is to keep throwing good money after bad. Your best bet may be to quit, save your bankroll, and try again the next day.

The chance that you will be able to pull yourself out of a hole with this type of betting is astronomical. The reason for this is that the money you will get even when you cash a ticket is only pennies on the dollar. You can expect about $0.40 on average for every $2 place or show bet that you win. Does that sound like a way to get out of the hole?

3 – You Should Be Focused on Picking Winners

The whole point of betting horse racing is to pick winners. The moment you begin to focus your energies on trying to find horses that can run second or third, you are lost. This simply means that you have no opinion on the race, and you are better off not betting at all.

There is too much handicapping information to sort through to make place or show bets. As a result, the bettor is usually not relying on any handicapping information at all by the time they take this radical step. Their work sometimes even comes down to looking at the tote board and making a bet that comes down to which horse seems to have the most attractive odds.

4 – Breaking Even is Losing in Horse Racing Betting

There are some gambling games where breaking even might be enough to help you stay in the game. In horse racing you will always be losing if you are breaking even. The reason for this is the old culprit known as take and breakage.

The take at a racetrack is the portion of the pool that is removed for the track. This amount means that you are never receiving exactly what you should be receiving when you win a bet. The breakage is the odd change that gets given to the track before the bets are paid out. The long story short is that you cannot be a long-term winner in horse racing when you are just breaking even.

You need to be averaging more than 3-1 on all of the bets that you make at the race track. This is the bare minimum return, and you will never get there when you are playing place and show bets.

5 – More Risk and Less Reward

There secret to winning money at an online racebook is to do something with consistency. You need to be betting a little in order to win a lot. When you are using place and show betting you are doing exactly the opposite. You are betting a lot in order to win a little. It’s the wrong recipe.

Horse racing betting is a game that is fraught with risk. You have all of the variables that must be considered when picking winners, and you also have to think about racing luck. Horses are fragile creatures. They get hurt often. You can sometimes do everything right only to have a horse hurt itself while on the lead in a race.

Winning bettors will attest to a tried and true approach. Those who are making less bets at higher odds are those who will win the most money in horse racing betting.

Do you want to win big at horse racing? We recommend that you abandon place and show betting altogether from your wagers. Instead, choose one of the online horse betting site that we recommend and focus on win betting. Did you know that some online racebooks will give you free past performances and also free money when you sign up and make a deposit to your account? It only takes a few minutes to sign up and you can be playing right from home on your computer, phone, or tablet. Check our Bovada racebook review, AmWager Review, Twinspires review or even our Betamerica review. All great choice if you are in the US. 5Dimes review for folks anywhere!