3 Types of Horse Racing Bets
If you’ve never spent a day watching horse races before, there’s a whole world of excitement waiting for you at your local turf or dirt course. As the ponies rocket around the turns towards the final stretch and finish line, the adrenaline is palpable as your fellow spectators cheer on their favorite entrants. While the spectacle is truly breathtaking, you might want to add an extra layer of fervor by placing a wager, but how do you know what to do at the betting window? You can click here to get information from Daily Racing Form, but here are three categories of bets that you could place at Woodbine Race Track or any other venue.
Win, Place and Show
If it’s your first day at the track, it might be a good idea to keep things simple, and these bets are the foundation for any type of wagering. When you put money on a particular entrant to win, place or show, you’re saying that you think that the horse will finish in the top one, two or three places, respectively. The return on your investment will obviously diminish based on your wager’s risk. For a more advanced version of this, consider betting on a horse "across the board," which means that you could collect three times if your choice finishes first.
Predicting the Order of Finish
Now that you know about the basic bets, it’s time to get into more exotic wagering, and that starts with intra-race betting. If you think that you can predict the exact order that the horses will finish in a specific run at Woodbine Race Track or any other venue, you could make some extra money over traditional straight wagers. You can pick the first two finishers in a quinella, or you can up the stakes by predicting the order that those two entrants will cross the finish line with an exacta. Other bets across those lines include the trifecta and superfecta, which place money on the sequence of the top three or four competitors, respectively.
Multi-Race Wagers
Once you move beyond the constraints of a single race, you can get into the world of making some serious returns on your investment, albeit with significantly lower chances of victory. A daily double allows you to pick the winners of two pre-designated races that the track announces before the action kicks off. These can range up in probability and payout to the pick-6, which could deliver some life-changing money if you’ve correctly laid money on the winner for six different runs during the day. Parlay wagering also allows you to take the winnings from one wager and roll it into a bet on a different run for exponential growth. As with all gambling, the lower the odds, the more you stand to take home.
Get Involved With the Races
Now that you know about the three categories of bets that you can place at Woodbine Race Track, Pimlico or any other venue, you’re primed to make a splash on your first day at the races. As always, be sure to wager responsibly, and read your program to get the most possible information before betting.