Welcome to Noel Michaels’ Weekend Winners, the place to go for weekend finest bets and spot performs from veteran handicapper and tournament-play pioneer Noel Michaels. Test again each week for a few highlighted choices designed that will help you money a couple of bets and make some cash. Noel’s choices have been featured nearly all over the place horse racing picks might be discovered, together with in print within the Day by day Racing Kind, The HorsePlayer Journal and American Turf Month-to-month, on-line at DRF.com, Twinspires.com and USRacing.com, from the paddock on-track at Arlington Worldwide Racecourse, and on the air on HRTV, TVG, NYC OTB Additional, NYRA’s Speaking Horses, and on broadcast TV on WAVE-3 Louisville, ABC KOLO-8 in Reno, Nevada, and channel 72 Lengthy Island Cablevision.
Six Newbie Betting Instruments
- Begin easy with an straightforward information for the best way to wager on horse racing.
- Unsure what that phrase means? Horse racing terminology is a language of its personal. Permit us translate for you
- What the heck is a velocity determine? This newbie’s information to hurry figures has every part you might want to know.
- Betting on horse racing might be intimidating. Staff ABR put collectively some Dos and Don’ts for the brand new fan getting began betting on racing.
- All of us make errors relating to betting on horse racing, listed below are eight classes discovered from expertise.
- Work out how a lot every wager will value prematurely with our Playing Calculator, offered by NYRA Bets.
Saturday, Feb. 15
Honest Grounds turns into the focus of the racing world this weekend with a 14-race card headlined by the $500,000, Grade 2 Fasig-Tipton Risen Star Stakes for 3-year-olds on the highway to the 2025 Kentucky Derby Offered by Woodford Reserve.
Honest Grounds, Race 12, $175,000 Honest Grounds Stakes Offered by Horse Racing Nation, submit time 6:30 p.m. ET
This Grade 3 race going 1 1/8 miles on the turf drew 10 entrants for a handbag of $175,000. The horse to beat is #2 Gigante, a Steve Asmussen trainee who established his turf credentials again in the summertime of 2023 with a win within the Grade 2 Secretariat Stakes at Colonial Downs. Since then, he has undoubtedly executed his finest operating on the Honest Grounds turf course, the place he’s received two stakes along with a second-place end in final 12 months’s Grade 2 Muniz Memorial Basic Stakes Offered by Horse Racing Nation. The latest of these stakes wins got here two races in the past on this course, and he even added an off-the-turf win within the Colonel E. R. Bradley Stakes final outing. For the exactas and trifectas, the highest challengers within the discipline embrace #1 What Say Thee, a Mike Maker trainee with stable velocity figures exiting a November turf mile win at Churchill Downs. He has received 4 of his final six races and 6 of his final 9. The opposite prime challenger is #8 Taking Sweet, a graded stakes-placed turf runner from the barn of coach Cherie DeVaux who was only a half a size behind What Say Thee final outing with Irad Ortiz Jr. selecting up the mount.
The Play: Wager on #2 Gigante (7-2) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta containers with #1 What Say Thee (9-2) and #8 Taking Sweet (4-1).
Honest Grounds, Race 14, $500,000 Fasig-Tipton Risen Star Stakes, submit time 7:30 p.m. ET
The Grade 2 Risen Star Stakes has attracted a 13-horse discipline of 3-year-olds able to race 1 1/8 miles. It may be mentioned that the loaded discipline incorporates a dozen challengers versus one singular standout horse to beat, with #4 East Avenue able to make his 2025 debut after a really promising begin to his profession final 12 months. He received Keeneland’s Grade 1 Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity in front-running style in his second profession begin and was despatched off favored within the FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Juvenile offered by TAA, the place a disastrous begin value him any and all probability. He’s a very good wager to rebound on this spot, whilst the favourite. The important thing to earning profits with East Avenue will rely upon how we wager him, and my suggestion is to key him on prime of three horses within the trifecta. Coach Todd Pletcher is normally a significant participant in races like this and he ships in #3 Vassimo off of back-to-back wins in Florida to start his profession. Pletcher may have saved this horse at Tampa Bay Downs for final weekend’s $200,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes, however he evidently thinks sufficient of him to go for a swing for fences on this spot. Common rider Irad Ortiz Jr. travels to Honest Grounds for the mount and the 8-1 morning-line odds symbolize an overlay. The obvious challenger to East Avenue within the race is #2 Jonathan’s Manner, one other horse who disenchanted within the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile however confirmed loads of skill in different races, corresponding to his win within the Grade 3 Iroquois Stakes and his second-place end within the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Membership Stakes. Lastly, it appears that evidently it’s approach too early to surrender on #9 Constructed based mostly on his loss final time within the Grade 3 Lecomte Stakes. He led from begin to end to win Honest Grounds’ $96,000 Gun Runner Stakes in December after which confirmed versatility from post-position 12 within the Lecomte when he got here from off the tempo to solely miss by a neck to undefeated Disco Time.
The Play: Wager #4 East Avenue (9-5) to win and key him on prime in trifectas with #2 Jonathan’s Manner (4-1), #3 Vassimo (8-1), and #9 Constructed (5-1) beneath.
