Guide To Picking a Winner
There is no doubt that picking a winner has gotten easier over the last few years, with the extraordinary amount of information easily available to punters the odds on selecting a winner are now in our favour.
This is not to say that picking a winner is ever easy! but you should use all of the available free information out there to help you find a horse to back. As always the best guide to a horse's future performance is past performance.
The easiest way to find out a horses past performance to get hold of the 'Race Card' for the day's racing. You can normally find race cards on the excellent site www.racingpost.co.uk it's totally free to use and if you register online you'll get even more information. For a small fee you can even watch videos of recent races. It also has a great free tipsters page, results and market movers.
Once you have the 'Race Card' to hand you can easily see all the important facts and figures on a particular runner. Here's an example of how a race card looks.
Form
On the race card there are a number of areas you need to pay particular attention too, the first is the 'Form' section which is highlighted in red above. This tells you how the horse has perform over the past six races. The numbers indicate the position the horse finished in its most recent races. So 1 means first, while 0 normally indicates a placing out of the first four.
If a dash is present (-) in between figures this separates the current season from last. The slash (/) separates this season from the season before for a horse which did not race last season. F means a faller. U says the horse unseated its rider, P is pulled up, while R shows the horse refused to start.
Obviously you're looking for a horse which has an impressive set of numbers, like 111231 rather than a horse who has P0FF44. What the numbers don't tell you is the quality of the horses in the past races!
Weight
Weight plays a critical part in selecting winners. You can see how much weight a horse is carrying by looking at the race card. The weight is expressed in stones and pounds, in the card above the horse is carrying 9st 6lbs.
Most major races in the UK are classed as handicaps, which basically means the horses in the race have varying levels of ability. The idea of the handicap/weight system is that the better horses in the race carry more weight than the poorer horses. So in theory, all horses in a handicap have an equal chance of winning.
You need to take the weight a horse carries into consideration, the less weight a horse is carrying the better chance it has of winning. However, many horses can carry top weight and still outperform the rest of the field.
The Draw
The draw denoting a horse's position in the starting stalls, at some race courses this can be critical to picking a winner. At small race course like Chester which is just a mile in circumference, low-drawn runners in sprint races have enjoyed considerable advantages down the years.
So well known is the benefit of an inside berth in a Chester sprint that some trainers have actually been known to withdraw their horses when they have been allocated a double-figure draw.
In the race card example above you can see that the horse has been drawn in stall number 2, low numbers are usually better than high.
Distance
Another important factor is the distance that the horse prefers again previous form should highlight this and you should consider this important factor before making your final selection.Trainer and Jockey
A huge Horse racing tip is to follow trainers and Jockeys who are in form. Also some trainers and jockeys are specialists at certain courses, particularly their local one, so bear this in mind.So as you can see there are many factors to consider when trying to pick a winner and well this is one of the reasons why so many people find racing so interesting.
Age
In some races age can play a factor in selecting winners, the Grand National is one such race. It has been 20 years since a horse younger than 9 years old has won the race! Above you can see the horses age is 5.
