While handicapping horse races and making a profit is not an easy thing to do, it is possible. But most people who really succeed at making money betting on horse races over the long run, only do so after many years of practice and paying their dues. No matter how skilled they become or what they learn along the way, there are three basic steps to picking winners at the horse races.

1. Speed
2. Class
3. Form

Determining speed is a matter of figuring out an anddatos americanas hoy average for each horse based on past performance. This is a very simplistic look at a complicated subject, but for the purposes of this introduction to handicapping, we’ll stick to the basics. If each horse has had at least three races, one way to determine speed is to add the speed figures for each race and then divide by three. Another method that makes allowances for recency, an important aspect of horse racing, is taking the best speed figure for each horse in the last 30 days.

Class is an important factor because the higher up the class ladder you go, the better the horses and the tougher the competition. Once again, an average is reached by adding purses for each horse in the last three or four races and then dividing by the number of races. The problem with this method, of course, is that even though a horse raced in a graded stakes race, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it was really competitive in that race.

So once again, with recency in mind, using the race with the highest purse that the horse managed to hit the board in over the last 60 days might be a better judge of class. By hitting the board I mean placing in either of the top three positions, win, place, show. We are a little more lenient with our recency rules and allow 60 days in the class category. The horse who has managed to come in first, second, or third in the race with the highest purse is the top class horse in the race and the rest should be ranked according to how high the purse was in their races.

The final factor or step is to determine which horse is in good racing shape. Horses are athletes and must be conditioned to sustain the effort of racing. A good indication of being in form is a good recent race. By factoring recency into the class and speed steps, we have also started to make allowances for form. Form might be the most difficult factor to really measure because it can be fleeting and a horse may also bounce off a really good race.

To bounce means to race so hard in a race that the horse puts forth a lackluster effort in the next race because it is tired or still stressed from the last race. You may see that a horse has the highest speed rating of its career in its last race and expect it to do well in today’s race only to see it lag behind or give up the battle in the stretch. Be very careful about betting on horses who performed spectacularly in their last race, even though that sounds strange.

If you see that the speed figures are gradually improving for a horse, that is a good sign of form. If you see speed figures going down, that is a bad sign. I pay less attention to form than I do to the other three elements because I have already factored recency into the equation.

The next step is to look at the numbers you have assigned for each horse and to then choose any horse that has an edge in the class or speed category and is also in the top three of the other category. For instance, a horse with the top speed figure and second in class would be a likely winner. If a horse is the top class horse and first, second, or third in speed, then he or she would be a likely candidate to win the race.

This is a very simplistic method and does not take into account getting fair value odds. People who make a living betting on horse races first learn how to rate each horse, using the three steps and then use more complicated horse racing systems to determine which bets will actually produce a profit over the long run.