Since horse racing began people have been betting on the outcome. Betting can be fun and also profitable, if your money is on the right horse. But what makes people bet on a horse?
Odds
3 to 1, 4 to 1 and 12 to 1, but what does it all mean? The odds represent the ratio between the amount of money staked by parties to bet. For example 3 to 1 means that the Bookmaker stakes three times the amount of money staked by the bettor.
The shorter the odds the more likely the horse is going to win and more likely you’ll win. It’s the biggest indicator of how good a horse is to a casual horse racing viewer. The odds give them the most information without having to research beforehand.
Form
Form is seen by many as the best indicator of predicting how a horse will perform, form is the record of how the horses have performed in recent races. By researching the form of your chosen horse or horses, you would be able to pick the best performers of the pack.
The form of a horse runs from left to right, the oldest races on the left and the most recent on the right. Numbers between 1-9 shows the position the horse finished in the race and the number 0 indicates if the horse finished outside of the top 9.
Cheltenham is the home of jump racing, and they carry their own abbreviations too:
F = Means if the horse fell.
R = Means if the horse refused.
BD = Means the horse was brought down by another runner.
U/UR = Means the horse unseated the jockey.
For many this is their chosen choice for backing a horse, as it gives them that little bit more information than the betting odds.
Name
This is the ‘fun’ option in terms of backing a horse, and probably the favourite option for the casual racer during big races.
Many people choose based of the name if they can relate to it, may be a spin on their favourite film or just a completely crazy name such as ‘Shakalakaboomboom’, who ran in the Cheltenham Festival in 2014.
Some good names in this years Festival are, HMS Seahorse, Telmesomethinggirl and Melon.
