So far, we have gone overThe Basics of Horse Bettingand Exotic Wagering and Basic Racing Terminology. You are now able to blindly pick a horse, and go up to the window and give your bet. That’s great! But we have to go more in depth on one of those steps…how to pick the horse, and the daily racing form.
Reading theDaily Racing Form
The Daily Racing Form is the go-to form for all bettors. This is where you get (almost) all of the information you need to pick your horse. Most people will pick solely from the form, or couple the info in the form with going to the paddock to see the horse in the flesh. Doing both would probably be the best..bet!
As you can see from the image above of the daily racing form there is a lot of information on that form! We will be going over just the major parts to get a beginner bettor to understand a bit more about these horses.
Here we go!
From this top snippet of the daily racing form, we can see this is RACE 1 from HOLLYWOOD PARK. Reading the words underneath tell us the DISTANCE of the race, what GENDERS are in the race, how OLD the horses can be and other “Conditions”. This race is 6 Furlongs, claiming(click link to review race designations), and it is for Fillies who are 3 years old. Furthermore, it is restricted to 3yo fillies who have NOT won more than 2 races in the year 2011. Also, the calming price is $12,500 if you wish to claim the horse after the race. The graphic in the corner shows you where the race starts and ends! All daily racing forms will look like this.
This next part of the daily racing form tells use about our horse!!! This is post position 1, and the horses name is Roulette It Roll.
The current odds are 5-1, and it tells us the OWNER name and what the Jockeys Silks will look like (Black, Yellow Diamond M on back). And underneath that gives us our jockey, BLANC, B.
The 12,500 is the calming price for this filly. Then we have her stats! She is a Dark Bay or Brown Filly, 3 years old and born in March! We have her bloodlines underneath that and then her BREEDER and TRAINER.
Next, we have the “L” which means the horse in on Lasix, and 122, which is the weight in pounds that she will be carrying (Jockey weight and saddle weight). Next are her race records in various times, her LIFETIME record, then her record in years 2011 and 2010. We also have records of how she runs on certain track conditions.
Next part on the daily racing form may be the trickiest part! This is a snippet, as you can see in the whole image above it lists almost all of the races this filly ran. For our purposes we will be looking at the last race she ran, which is the FIRST line above. (The races are listed from most recent and back.)
We are only going to focus on the most IMPORTANT parts of these lines from the daily racing form, not all of it.
The first part,6Nov11-8SA 5 1/2f, tells us that onNovember 6, 2011 in the 8th race at Santa Anita was 5 1/2 furlongs and this filly ran.
Next,21.4 :45 :57.1 1:03.3 are the split times of the race. The last one, 1:03.3 is the final time for the 6 furlongs.
(F)Clm10000this denotes the race conditions were Calming race worth $10,000 for Fillies.
5 6 6(2 1/4) 5 (8 1/2) 3(8)These numbers are WHERE Roullete it Roll was in the pack. At the first split time, she was FITH, then next marker pole the dropped back to SIXTH. The final numbers3(8)denote she ended the race in THIRD, 8 lengths back from the leader.
Bejarano, R was her jockey,L 120, tells us she was on LASIX again, and carried 120lbs. And then it tells us who came in First, Second and Third in that race, which as we can see our girl Roulette it Roll is listed in third.
NOTE: the first two winners are listed in BOLD, that denotes those two horses are in the race TODAY with Roulette it Roll.
Got it?!
That is an introductory look at how to read the Daily Racing Form. It can seem overwhelming at first, but once you break it down, it’s not that bad!
All of this info on the daily racing form should help you make an informed decision on what horse to pick. There are lots of things to consider though, days of rest, how often the horse is raced, when was it’s last workout, etc. We will go over these in another post!
Happy Wagering!
