Why Race Selection Is The Skill You Need to Develop

Why is race selection is the number 1 skill to develop as a horseplayer and how to then leverage that into the best game theory.

Mar 03, 2025

Are You Betting Races You Should Pass?

Every day, horseplayers study past performances, analyze pace, pick contenders, and build tickets. They put in the work. But even the best handicapping skills can’t overcome one fatal mistake:

Betting into races where you have no edge.

It’s not your handicapping that’s holding you back — it’s your race selection.

The truth is, the smartest bet you’ll make might be the one you never place.

Two phrases need to be defined before moving forward: game theory and race selection. Game theory is the betting strategy to what you are playing. In casino games, this is “playing by the book.” It is much easier in pure table-based, math games because there are not as many random variables you have to face like in horse racing. Race selection is the skill we’ll discuss, and that is utilizing your handicapping to know when to bet. To utilize game theory, you must select the right races.

Wanted to clear that up and how I believe you should view these two phrases. Seems like both get thrown around together in the horse racing world.

Why Race Selection is the Most Underrated Betting Skill

What’s the process most players have? Handicap the race, pick the horses you like, and bet. What many miss is that each race offers a different level of opportunity or lack thereof.

The players who profit long-term? They don’t just find winners, they only bet when the scenario of the race favors them. That’s using the skill of your handicapping to leverage the betting in your favor. That’s what many would say is game theory.

Betting Is a Game — and the Public Is Your Opponent

You’re betting against the opinions and money of everyone else in the pool.

In every race, your goal is to:

Find mispriced horses
Exploit the public’s mistakes
Maximize that edge

If you cannot get past the first two steps, you need to seriously consider passing the race. Think about the process again:

Handicap the race and decide if there is any edge to your contenders
See the best way to bet the race to extract the most money

The sharper the public, the smaller your edge. The softer the public is, the more mispricing you can exploit. This goes back to game theory. When you can’t swing the edge in your favor, you need to scale back your betting.

Remember, the key to being profitable is selecting the right races to bet on. You must find a game to take advantage of first.

If you are getting leverage in a race where you have a horse at a 30% chance to win, and the tote board is showing 22%, it is time to get aggressive.

Every race is a different game. If you don’t have an advantage, why are you playing?

The Most Profitable Move Is Often Passing

Game theory teaches us that sometimes the smartest action is inaction. There are a lot who like to equate horse racing to poker, and for good reason. Poker players fold far more often than they play. Top sports bettors pass on games with tight lines.

Horseplayers? They bet way too many races they shouldn’t.

That’s the mistake holding so many great handicappers back.

So, how can you combat this? There are many strategies that you can employ, but they all come back to the same core tenet: race selection.

You Have to Master Race Selection

Game theory goes hand in hand with race selection.

I’m willing to guess we all have the same thought when looking at a race. Who’s the favorite, and can I beat them? That is the premise of the game. I’m right, and you’re wrong.

Your expertise in handicapping is what finds these races.

What’s more important is finding out WHEN the situation calls to eliminate a favorite and play a race. The favorite is the favorite for a reason. They almost always fit into the race.

How can you find which races you need to target?

Framework For Making Better Race Selections

Remember the race classification we’ve talked about? That is a great system to decide when to bet and when to pass. It gets you started with determining how the top two choices in a race stack up.

A chalky race is one where the top two choices have a 60% or higher chance to win
A predictable race is where the top two choices have around a 50% chance to win
Open races are when the top two choices have a less than 50% chance to win
Chaos races are when the top two choices have a less than 40% chance to win

This is the starting point of game theory in horse racing. In the races where the favorites are major players, you can’t leverage the odds in your favor. The open and chaotic races are where you need to begin to live.

Targeting Open and Chaotic Races

These races can first be the tote board. A favorite who is 5/2 or higher, with the rest of the field offering overlay odds, gives you the best betting chance. I’d say it’s a given that you look to play these races in this manner. Be willing to embrace ways to win bet and be open to looking to bet more than one horse to win. Chances are the favorite probably doesn’t stack up too well in these races to begin with since they are not taking heavier action. Horses with bigger upside are the play.

Other situations where you can see the race as open or chaotic is from your handicapping. This is where you are eliminating the favorite. The chaos that others cannot break down but you can decipher is what gives you the edge. This can be multiple scenarios such as race shape, class movement, or track biases.

Race Shapes That Give the Public a Hard Time

Fields with multiple early runners are prime for chaos in the betting. The public tends to overvalue certain early runners that will not be fast enough to get the lead or able to outrun everyone from gate to wire. This is where you can eliminate all the early runners and key the pressers who are giving more value because of the confusion.

The opposite race shape is a great spot to find yourself in, too. Pressers are not front-runners. The public will normally latch on to a presser who had a losing race while on the lead. That is a positive for you because they will likely be taken over again in the later stages of the race since they’re not in their preferred running style.

Start charting what race shapes you can identify best and be ready to leverage this in your betting.

Class Movement and Competitive Level

Horses moving up or down in class are easy to see. What is important is finding where a horse is capable of winning.

An important question you have to answer for yourself is, “How many chances do you give a horse at a level?”

I bring this up because if you go back through a runner’s prior races, you’ll find daily horses who keep trying at a level and continue to not win. They may be competitive but are not winning. They are money burners and horses to eliminate at those low odds.

One of the best angles for class is the Allowance N1X races. These races are full of horses who have just a maiden win to their record and are refusing to drop to the claiming ranks where they belong. You’ll see plenty of 1-for-15 horses who are going off at 3/1 or less and are helpless against a field full of horses with multiple wins. The public tends to be scared of claiming horses who are moving up to this level. What they aren’t realizing is that these horses moving up are multiple-time winners and have the real edge over the horse who has lost in the Allowance N1X level 6+ times.

Running Against Track Bias in Prior Races

Massive performance improvements can, a lot of times, be chalked up to a horse coming in off a race against a track bias. That can be a poor post position or running against the grain of the running style needed that day to win. There’s nothing better than seeing these horses go off at overlay odds and the public thinking their last race against the grain is going to happen again in the upcoming race.

This also can be big for horses shipping into a new track. Some tracks favor speed more than others. It's the same with post draw in certain races. Keeping up with the biases and trends is the way to know when a horse has upside in their next start.

Lastly, look at how the track is playing for the race you are handicapping. Are there any biases, and do any heavily backed runners not fit that profile? That can be a reason for a horse at shorter odds not firing as expected.

What Races Should You Skip?

This is an easy list and one I’d assume you’d agree with:

Races with heavy favorites - pass
Short fields - pass
Races with many variables, such as first-time starters or surface switches - pass

Do favorites lose these races? Sure. But how often? Not often enough, because we would all be rich by now targeting these situations.

What do you do when you have a 6 horse field with a 3/5 favorite? After complaining, start looking at the few horses that might be able to win but need a big improvement to do so. You jam in a bet because you don’t want to miss out just in case, and you end up wasting money better spent on a targeted wager.

Remember, what is game theory? Betting when we have the edge over the public. More importantly, think about the variables you are facing in these races where you have to speculate more than normal in your handicapping.

Are you able to leverage a true opinion with so many unknowns or heavy favorites? Guessing not.

Get comfortable with passing these races and not wasting energy looking at them. The public is sharp; quit giving them money on your throw-away bets trying to beat the inevitable.

This Week’s Challenge: Think Before You Bet

This week should be your start to targeting better races. Begin asking yourself if you have a true edge in this race. Do you have a reason to eliminate a top choice? Is the public overbetting a factor that is negative in your analysis? Are you in a situation to extract as much money as possible?

If yes, then go to your game theory. In horse racing, this is easy: bet aggressively.

By being more concerned with only betting in the right races, you can play more aggressively in the pools. You know there is one or more short-priced horses that do not stack up, and that gives you the leverage in the betting.

The smartest horseplayers aren’t just great handicappers. They’re elite game players — who know the best bet is often the one they skip. This is the way to turn yourself into a “great bettor” that everyone says they need to become.