posted August 28, 2007 at 18:05 in Triple Crown Free Picks

Perhaps the biggest difference between betting on horse racing and other types of sports betting is that to be successful at betting on horses one must have the ability to find the overlay.

In horse racing parlance, the overlay is a horse that’s going off at higher odds than one’s personal betting line dictates. To understand more clearly let’s look at football betting.

In NFL betting, an overlay occurs when a team is giving up less points or getting more points than the bettor believes the team should. For instance, if the Oakland Raiders are underdogs to the San Diego Chargers and the betting line is 8.5 in favor of the Chargers and you believe that the Chargers are no more than 6 points better than the Raiders, then the Raiders are considered an overlay bet.

Horse betting lines work the same way, in the sense that horses that go off at higher odds than the horse bettor believes the horse should be going off at are solid horse bets.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples that illustrates the concept of overlays.

The first race we will look at is the Kentucky Derby. The favorite in the Kentucky Derby was Street Sense. He went off at 9 to 2 and ended up winning the Kentucky Derby. Now, personal handicapping is an art, but based on Street Sense’s history at Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby is held, the horse should have been going off at horse betting odds of 2 to 1 or maybe 5 to 2. The reason is that Street Sense’s best race occurred at Churchill Downs. Not only did his best race before the Kentucky Derby occur on the same track but he scored with a much better speed rating than any of the other horses had ever received.

Street Sense’s trainer, Carl Nafzger, had won the Kentucky Derby in 1990 with Unbridled. Therefore, his trainer knew how to get a horse to the Derby and also knew how to win it. To place things even more into Street Sense’s favor is the fact that his jockey, Calvin Borel, calls Churchill Downs home.

All of these factors pointed to Street Sense being a short-priced favorite in the Kentucky Derby. The fact that he went off at odds of 9 to 2 means that Street Sense was an overlay in the Kentucky Derby.

There was also an underlay in the Kentucky Derby in the horse Curlin. Curlin went off at 5 to 1 in the Kentucky Derby. Although those are higher horse betting odds than one got on Street Sense, make no mistake, Curlin in the Kentucky Derby was an underlay while Street Sense was an overlay. Going into the Kentucky Derby Curlin had only run 3 times. He had just broken his maiden in January. His trainer had never won the Kentucky Derby nor saddled a horse that had finished in the top four in the race.

Curlin had never run on the Churchill Downs surface. Had never run a mile and quarter before. Had never run in a field with more than five other horses. In other words, Curlin was hopelessly outmatched when it came to running against a seasoned veteran like Street Sense. In order to place a wager on Curlin, a true horse bettor would want at least 6 to 1 odds and not the 5 to 1 that he or she received on Curlin. That made Curlin an underlay.

What really illustrates the concept is that two weeks later, in the Preakness Stakes, the two horses changed overlay/underlay positions. While Street Sense was the overlay in the Kentucky Derby, it was Curlin who went off as the overlay in the Preakness.

The Preakness Stakes always sets up much differently than the Kentucky Derby. Although Curlin went off as the 3 to 1 second choice, in reality his odds should have been closer to 2 to 1. The Preakness set up as a two horse race once it was confirmed that Hard Spun, the speedster in the Derby, was going to face pace pressure in the Preakness.

This meant that the two logical horses to bet on were Curlin or Street Sense. Street Sense, coming off the Kentucky Derby win, went off at terribly underlaid odds of around 6 to 5 or so. Curlin’s 3 to 1 was as close to a gift as any horse bettor is likely to encounter. There were far less horses in the Preakness than the Derby and save for Hard Spun, who was likely to get cooked in a speed duel on the lad, all of the other horses in the race were untested.

Curlin had learned a valuable lesson in the Kentucky Derby and there was no doubt that the horse would take that lesson and apply it to his run in the Preakness. He did so and beat Street Sense by a nose.

It doesn’t always work out this way, of course, but by trying to find overlays, and not necessarily which horse is most likely to win, horse bettors are much more likely top show a profit in the long-run.

What every horse bettor should think about before placing his or her horseracing bet is which horse has a chance of winning relative to the odds that the horse is going off at. That’s how overlays are found and the only way to show a profit betting on horses is to bet on overlays.

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