Daily restricted allowance of action and prime plays. Restriction serves 2 purposes, 1) helps keep the majority of play on the prime plays, and 2) it prevents me from getting steamed into self-destruction.
When my allowance is reached for the day .... then I'm done. Obviously I should want to be done at that point anyways, but if you don't set a limit (especially with online "not-in-hand" cash) you could easily zip the bankroll with foolhardiness.
When my allowance is reached for the day .... then I'm done. Obviously I should want to be done at that point anyways, but if you don't set a limit (especially with online "not-in-hand" cash) you could easily zip the bankroll with foolhardiness.
I have a set bankroll for the month. I don't play every day due to time constrictions but if it's the 15th of the month and my budget is blown then I shut it down. My budget is 6% of my monthly income and I keep detailed records. On months I finish in the positive, I withdraw the profit and transfer it to our vacation savings account along with what would have been the next months's budgeted deposit. If I am down for a month but still holding a balance I will only deposit the difference needed to get to a full month's budget.
2k is a great bankroll to start. What you want to do is first realize P5 and P6 are out until you build a larger bankroll. So are superfectas...sorry but you are in the building stages and can't take chances on losing your precious capital. Most players will want the big stab the P5 and P6 offer but with 2k you don't have a large enough bankroll to play and cover these bets properly. We will get there soon enough and the wait is worth it.!
Let's first set a ground rule that you should only risk 2% of your bankroll on any race you feel you have the best chance of an ROI (return on investment). This would be $40 or 2% of your 2k bankroll. Remember you want to grow this bankroll beyond one day at the track and blow up your bankroll before you have a fighting chance. Next we want to decide what is your total loss for a race day...well you have to decide how many days in a meet you would like to bet on or what races you are interested in and pass on all other races or events. At $40 a race right now we will only have a total of 50 races ($40 X 50 races = 2K) we can bet before we go bankrupt if we run bad. You may think to yourself 50 races that's not bad and it will give you plenty of chances to make your bankroll grow. Slow and steady wins the race when your bankroll is concerned. So let's decide to only bet stakes races on the card for the day we select. Usually on a race card there will be roughly 5 stakes races during the triple crown events...or you can select individually which stakes races you are going to play. The reason we are selecting stakes races is the best horses usually enter these events and you see the best horses ready to run to win. So there we have it...$40 for each stakes race and if we have 5 stakes races picked out for a race card we will risk $200 or 10% of our bankroll.
Now how do we spread our $40 the best way to cover the most horses and winning combinations in a race. Lots of theories on this have been around for sometime now and books have been written on the subject. We will use an easy method to do this but the more you can narrow and pare down the horses in a race the better and we want to settle on the best 8 horses in a race. Let's look at it up close. Most stake races are 8, 10, 12, or 20 horse races. So how do you cover all these horses? We will use the ABC key horse method. Here is how we will bet and what bets we will use:
A1 is our KEY horse
B, B2, B3 our second best horses
C1, C2, C3, C4 our third best horses
Odds do not play a part in where our horses are placed in our bets...our KEY horse can be a 20-1 shot or a 9-5 shot. We place them based on our handicapping in the ABC positions.
Stakes Race Win Bet
A1 $6 to Win
Stakes Race Exacta Bets with Key Horse
A1 with B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 $.50 Exacta for $3.50 total
B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 with A1 $.50 Exacta for $3.50 total
Stakes Race Trifecta Bets with Key Horse
A1 with B1, B2, B3 with B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 $.50 Trifecta for $9 Total
B1, B2, B3 with A1 with B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 $.50 Trifecta for $9 Total
B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 with B1, B2, B3 with A1 $.50 Trifecta for $9 Total
The main goal is to get it down to these 8 horses for the coverage on bets for our $40 layout. This is still a good amount of horses to have a covering bet on. Of course we want our longer shot horses to come in on top for a maximum payout. It won't happen all the time but when it does WE SCORE.
Good luck and I hope the horses run in your favor...!!! dbanana0-9
Let's first set a ground rule that you should only risk 2% of your bankroll on any race you feel you have the best chance of an ROI (return on investment). This would be $40 or 2% of your 2k bankroll. Remember you want to grow this bankroll beyond one day at the track and blow up your bankroll before you have a fighting chance. Next we want to decide what is your total loss for a race day...well you have to decide how many days in a meet you would like to bet on or what races you are interested in and pass on all other races or events. At $40 a race right now we will only have a total of 50 races ($40 X 50 races = 2K) we can bet before we go bankrupt if we run bad. You may think to yourself 50 races that's not bad and it will give you plenty of chances to make your bankroll grow. Slow and steady wins the race when your bankroll is concerned. So let's decide to only bet stakes races on the card for the day we select. Usually on a race card there will be roughly 5 stakes races during the triple crown events...or you can select individually which stakes races you are going to play. The reason we are selecting stakes races is the best horses usually enter these events and you see the best horses ready to run to win. So there we have it...$40 for each stakes race and if we have 5 stakes races picked out for a race card we will risk $200 or 10% of our bankroll.
Now how do we spread our $40 the best way to cover the most horses and winning combinations in a race. Lots of theories on this have been around for sometime now and books have been written on the subject. We will use an easy method to do this but the more you can narrow and pare down the horses in a race the better and we want to settle on the best 8 horses in a race. Let's look at it up close. Most stake races are 8, 10, 12, or 20 horse races. So how do you cover all these horses? We will use the ABC key horse method. Here is how we will bet and what bets we will use:
A1 is our KEY horse
B, B2, B3 our second best horses
C1, C2, C3, C4 our third best horses
Odds do not play a part in where our horses are placed in our bets...our KEY horse can be a 20-1 shot or a 9-5 shot. We place them based on our handicapping in the ABC positions.
Stakes Race Win Bet
A1 $6 to Win
Stakes Race Exacta Bets with Key Horse
A1 with B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 $.50 Exacta for $3.50 total
B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 with A1 $.50 Exacta for $3.50 total
Stakes Race Trifecta Bets with Key Horse
A1 with B1, B2, B3 with B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 $.50 Trifecta for $9 Total
B1, B2, B3 with A1 with B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 $.50 Trifecta for $9 Total
B1, B2, B3, C1, C2, C3, C4 with B1, B2, B3 with A1 $.50 Trifecta for $9 Total
The main goal is to get it down to these 8 horses for the coverage on bets for our $40 layout. This is still a good amount of horses to have a covering bet on. Of course we want our longer shot horses to come in on top for a maximum payout. It won't happen all the time but when it does WE SCORE.
Good luck and I hope the horses run in your favor...!!! dbanana0-9
Great post affirmed - very much appreciated that you took the time to lay it out. I've started to dabble in horse racing for fun and I can't handicap to save my life - I don't even know where to begin or what to look for. But what I can do is manage risk to T and that doesn't take any experience, insight or skill - just a plan and discipline to stick to it. I feel like this is a great leg up in that regard and thank you much
Use the above system and good luck this weekend. Any scratches move in Master Fencer at C4 and all others move up.
2019 Belmont Stakes
A1 Key Horse Tacitus
B1 Horse Intrepid Heart
B2 Horse Sir Winston
B3 Horse Tax
C1 Horse War of Will
C2 Horse Joevia
C3 Horse Everfast
C4 Horse Bourbon War
2019 Belmont Stakes
A1 Key Horse Tacitus
B1 Horse Intrepid Heart
B2 Horse Sir Winston
B3 Horse Tax
C1 Horse War of Will
C2 Horse Joevia
C3 Horse Everfast
C4 Horse Bourbon War
