Horse Racing Online Betting at Gulfstream Park

The song goes ‘I’m walking on sunshine, and don’t it feel good’ but the clever horse bettors preparing for the upcoming Gulfstream Park meet are already burning the midnight oil trying to parlay the history of last year’s meet to cash this season.

The Sunshine State gets back on track Friday January 4 when 2009 racing in Florida kicks off with a bang. The meet will go to April 23 and those that have aspirations to hit the Triple Crown trail will be recognized and will try to springboard from this meet to the classic events.

The takeout, what the state gets because they allow racing, is fair in Florida compared to other jurisdictions. Straight win/place/show wagering are skimmed 15%, exactas only return 80 cents on every dollar while all other wagers leave the bettor with 75 cents coming back from every dollar bet.

A couple of seasons ago the main track was elongated to a mile and a eighth and the turf course lengthened to a mile from 7 furlongs. One-turn mile races on the dirt will likely be headed in most cases by sprinters stretching out. They figure to be potent but be careful about using horses breaking from the rail. Those runners will have to be used hard to avoid getting shuffled in all likelihood.

One gauge of how fast runners are really performing this year can be figured out by comparing Beyer pars to last season’s numbers.

On dirt the male bottom rung maiden claimers average a Beyer between 65 and 73.

As class in maidens improved, maiden special weight winners shoot to 87.

The cheapest claimers at Gulfstream start at 6 grand and go to $75,000 in open company. The spectrum ranges from 75 to the slugs to 20 points higher to the $75,000 sellers.

The numbers are very close on grass as Graded stakes performers were only a digit off comparing both surfaces.

The key to comparison is to find runners at the very same level this year and to eliminate or leave in horses that have achieved similar Beyers.

Overall, the number on the turf can be a bit misleading as so many horses either take to the surface or they don’t. The other thing horse bettors should pay attention to is what kind of conditions were evident when certain horses were posting the Beyers?

Was the conventional main track kind toward speed or was there in inside speed bias? Was the weather unusually hot or cold enough to effect how the track played or to skew where the winners were coming from? Or, was one particular style of running extremely effective during the test period?

Like anything else in life, horse bettors must use common sense when trying to differentiate action from one meeting to another but with the proper homework and with the proper tools like year or 2-year-old history of Racing Forms, and the winners able to be unearthed will surely pay for the blood sweat and tears on the kitchen floor.