posted December 5, 2007 at 18:45 in Triple Crown Articles

In baseball, you have the majors, the triple A league and double A ball and just like a sharp horse bettor may find that diamond in the rough on a small circuit, double A baseball is a proving grounds for youngsters that will someday get to the ‘Show’.

Only the best equine minor leaguers make the majors because they inherently don’t have the talent but cagey bettors can make money on the minor circuits.

To transfer Double A ball to horse racing, bettors have to use a little imagination but a very good starting place when horse betting on minor circuits is to not back horses that have won or ran second in their most recent starts.

Just like all cagey horse bettors know, good horses can keep their form for longer periods of time so it just goes to reasoning that cheaper horses are only in good form for a finite period.

One of the best things about the smaller circuits is that is can be much easier to identify contention. Some horses are just so overmatched on paper it’s nearly impossible to project them into the winner’s circle.

Conversely, novice bettors in the minor leagues will sometimes over value a recent winner and here is where the clever bettor lies in wait.

You have to zig when others zag in this sport to make money. You have to think outside of the box and that means looking for runners that will wake up today off some poor efforts.

The conventional wisdom of betting a horse that has finished in the money or within a couple of lengths of the winner has to be turned upside down.

Doubters may say, can this work? Well, a short history at a minor league track like Turf Paradise can offer some useful data so let’s go to Phoenix.

For this exercise to point horse racing bettors to winners, we will eliminate runners that hit the exacta in their last race and look for runners that have been third or worse. In maiden races, we’ll toss runners that ran second or third.

The good news about this theory is that the prices will be good. The bad news is that you may be betting into the teeth of a sharp horse.

So here is how it shook out on the final weekend in November. There were 15 races run at Turf Paradise and only 3 races werewon by repeat runners and one of those was a horse that remains unbeaten.

Of the other dozen winners, not one had run 2nd so the majority of winners already have fit our format.

The winning prices ranged from 4-5 to 24-1 with the average winning mutuel among the dirty dozen of about 7-1 or $16 and change.

That’s a nice return on investment if you can isolate some of those prices but the big picture for the cagey horse bettor is to not succumb to just betting a horse that WAS in good form, but to look for a runner that can BE in winning form TODAY.

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