5 mistakes NHC 2020 players say bettors should avoid

We all make mistakes when betting the races, but identifying them and learning to correct both vital toward improving return on investment. As players gathered last weekend at Bally’s Las Vegas for the National Horseplayers Championship, five contenders offered their advice on what to avoid both in the contest ranks and every day at the windows.

Ashley Taylor, who finished fourth in NHC: “Listening to other people is a big mistake. One of the races today, I heard someone talk about a horse, and I thought about it. And I shouldn’t have listened to them. Overall, I think it’s just going with my gut, going with my numbers and my homework and not changing my mind at the last second. I do a lot of homework and put a lot of effort into it and trust that what I thought -- then actually apply that to my bet.” Sean Nolan: “Sometimes you can over-study. Getting swayed by tiny bits of information that goes against what you’re seeing overall, you can’t do that. I don’t really play horses that have blinkers on for the first time. You see a workout report that says this horse worked out fantastic in blinkers and I’ll bet in and the horse will get rank and run off, and I’ll wonder why I did that. It’s not so much making mistakes but for folks to just be true and what works for you. You just have to say consistent. Once you start changing, you start chasing the game.” Wendy Long: “Deviating from the things that normally work for you is a mistake. If you have certain jockey/trainer combinations that you really like, and you go, ‘Well, you know, I usually would bet that combination but this horse has the better odds,’ and so you move away from what works for you. And that always bites you in the butt.” Rich Nilsen: “I had (a mistake) early yesterday that is hard to shake off. I had a ‘troubled trip’ note on a horse at Fair Grounds. I had even made a note saying make sure he’s not an overlay. He was 5-1 on the morning line and went off 17-1 and won so that was a killer. You can’t make mistakes like that.” Edward Deicke: “A mistake that I used to make but I fixed was not initially going through and eliminating horses coming off of their form cycle. I use ThoroGraph and can see horses with similar form cycles from the year before and see where they may regress. Now I eliminate those horses right away.”