Help me learn to "watch" a race

As other posters ... such as the learned Blackthroatedwind ... have and will tell you ... it's a complex subject ... but ...

... to boil it down to the two simplest factors ... they are ...

[1] Watch to see how well a horse quickens his pace when the jockey asks him to. If he accelerates quickly and moves past rivals easily ... and/or lengthens quickly if on the front end ... that's a very good sign. If he only inches up to rivals ... or fails to lengthen out ... that's bad news.

[2] Make note of the horse's time for the final furlong. Did he do it easily and in fast time? Very good. Did he have to work hard and still come home slowly? Very bad.

If a horse does well by these two criteria ... he's likely to come back and run another good race ... and vice reversa.

[Scav]

I love playing horses maidens that ran evenly the time before, meaning they just sat in 4th place the whole time...I also like playing horses that dueled with a horse inside and outside of them, if you notice, horses that are in the middle of that RARELY win the race, and most likely will pull themselves up because panic is coming from both sides....An angle this old timer taught me...

The other thing is a HARD race. You can tell an easy win from a hard win, watch the jock. If a jock works the horse feverishly all the way to the wire, I will make a mental note like 'all out' or 'all over him' and try to beat them next time

I like to follow pace but the most important thing you can sometimes tell what part of the track is dead.

[miraja2]

This is a simple thing that you probably already know, but I think a lot of new cappers make this mistake.
If a horse closes like a freight train down the stretch in a race that is say, 7f, that does NOT mean that he will automatically like going 8f in his next race.
Similiarly if a horse set the pace and was caught going 7f that does NOT automatically mean he will wire the field if he goes 6f in his next.
So how can you tell? Here is where watching races gives you a big advantage over just reading the forum. Look for some of the things the previous posters mentioned, and it will give you real insight in to the ideal distance for a horse.

[Gauchos0522]

Not so much watching races but I'm sure you have a certain track you bet on more than another. Try to watch the races and look for biases on certain days kinda what hoisttheflag said in his post. I've been making a killing doing this at my home track Del' Park. I try to play the races I have a good opinion on due to the tracks and what horses used the bias and what horses went against the bias. Just beat a 3/5 shot the other day whos last 2 wins came at Delaware on very speed and rail biased tracks (he used the bias) while a 6-1 horse came 3rd twice in a row on extremely speed biased tracks (he came from off the pace). The track 2 days ago was playing very fair and made a killing on the 6-1 horse as he flew by the chalk.

[TheSpyder]

Just woke up and thought I'd catch up on posts.

Where else can you see such detailed answers to racing with insight, objective differences, and as complete knowledge. You guys are awesome. I've played the ponies for 35 years from US to England.

Steve, you ought to make a collection of such answers and make it into a book and use the proceeds to invite everyone to Saratoga!

Good work guys/gals.

Spyder from SC

[ArlJim78]

If you've got an online account with access to replays, you're going to find that many times it gives you an edge over other players just using the form. I'll give you an example that I run into over and over.

Let's say you're looking at a maiden race, where the second and third place finishers are returning from the same previous race. In the previous race let's say that they were only separated by a half length and that they seem like the only logical contenders for todays race. You might think it will be hard to separate these and find a horse to key or use on top. But I find that often if you study the previous race closely several times from both angles, you can usually determine which horse is more suitable for todays race. It could be that the horse that finished second made a gradual steady close from the rear while not participating in the pace at all with no real excuses and the jockey was pumping him with his hands for a long time and was hard ridden in the stretch. While at the same time the horse that finished a half length back in third broke like a shot from the gate, dueled with another horse through the early fractions while racing wide on the turn, put away the horse that he was dueling with and then proceeded to run to the wire with good energy only to give way in the final yards to the winner and the second place horse that had the easy trip.

Then you look at todays race and you see that the the race is a half furlong longer and there is no other horse with early speed. Usually the public choice will be the closer because he finished in front of the other one last time and with the extra distance he should keep opening up, right? What ends up happening is you bet the speed horse that finished third because you know that last time he had to work much harder in the speed duel but did it on his own without the jockey asking him for everything and today when he gets the early uncontested lead he will cruise and the extra half furlong will mean diddly squat.

This is just one example but other times using the same race scenario you will look back at the previous race and find that the speed horse that finished third got out on an uncontested lead then looked tired and wobbly in the stretch and the closer that finished second came sharply from the back of the pack with good acceleration and was not all out.

Just two illustrations but the point is that the number of things you will pick up by looking at previous races is extraordinary just looking back at the horses to see how they were running in key parts of the race.