A common strategy among punters is to go with the classic win-place bet   The premise being that if your horse that you chose out of the field runs a good race, but is nosed out at the end you still win some money or at least break even.  The win place is a common betting strategy that many pundits have pimped over the year as on of the a solid horse racing systems.  I won’t argue too hard as to this being a good system.  It definitely has its merits.  The only thing that I will say is that it seems somewhat of a defeatist attitude to place a bet that you completely hedge that is won’t come in (i.e. putting a place bet to cover the chance that your horse doesn’t win).  So here is a rundown of how to use a win place betting horse racing system.

The premise of course is to help ensure that we are cashing tickets.  The human mind is an interesting animal.  There have been several studies that the human mind is better off with a bunch of small wins and one monumental loss than it is with a bunch of small losses and one monumental win.  Think about that for a second, our minds would rather us losing big than winning big if the only two options are what I just laid out.  That is something to keep in mind when it comes to betting on the ponies.  Small wins.  And in many cases that is what this system will allow you to have.  Granted if you do pick the right horse you win both bets and are in for a pretty good payday, but if you only win the place bet you likely will have small overall win.  Cashing tickets is good for the human psyche.  I won’t downplay that portion of this system, it does lead to cashing many more tickets.

Ok, apart from the human aspect of this equation, let’s look at the way we should employ this racing system.  Much like any wager, we really need to be finding a horse that isn’t the favorite and using a win place bet to wager.  This is somewhat common knowledge, but the point is a good one to keep in mind.  Unless you are getting 3-1 or better on a horse it is really hard to make any money betting on it.  Depending on the track the favorite horse can be as low as even odds are worse.  This is no way to win at the track.  The fact is that if you find a way to win 40% of your bets you are doing especially well. At even money you are losing long term with this strategy.  And likely if you cash tickets in 25% of your bets you are doing pretty well as compared to most people.  So like all of horse racing, we want to look at the favorite of the betting public and see if we have any legitimate reasons to believe they won’t win the race (or even better won’t finish in the money).  If we can’t do that then you are much better off skipping the race.  If you can find a good reason that the public favorite is a false favorite then game on.  Go through the rest of the horses and select a horse that you are confident has a chance to win and place your bet.  At this point it truly is that simple.