"Which Races Should You Avoid Betting On?"

Recorded September 2025 for This Is Where Most Punters Lose – Don’t Be One of Them. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

Why I pen out whole meetings

A big part of betting well is knowing which races you simply leave alone. I have talked before about heavy tracks and about the rail being out, and my position has not changed much. Heavy tens are races I would generally pen out. I did have a bet on one at a city meeting a few weeks back. I put a lot of work into it, I found horses that had performed well on heavy ground, and I lost on the meeting. When I ran the analysis beforehand it did show a profit, but that was off a small sample of bets, so it is not something I would lean on. You might find the odd single bet worth having, but as a rule I would cross the meeting off.

What a heavy track actually does to a race

It is not just the wet surface. The track becomes biased, and often the inside is off. You do not see it as much at Rosehill or Randwick, but plenty of tracks turn into lanes. Lane one might be off, lane two not too bad, lanes three and four off, lanes five and six good, then seven and eight something else again. That is inconsistency across the track. There is also inconsistency across the meeting, because the start of the day can play very differently to the end once some of the lanes chop up from the rain beforehand.

Rain on the day is its own problem. Some horses cope with it and some do not, and there is very little historical data per horse to tell you which is which. Even when a horse is a known wet tracker, that is usually already factored into the market, and factored in well. So you are taking on a query with no edge attached to it.

First-uppers and first starters

First-uppers who have not trialled are another one I mark with a big question mark. You see it in Victoria, where they are not required to trial. You can look at the jump outs on racing.com, but often there is nothing to go on. If a horse has not been seen, you do not know how it is going to perform.

First starters are the same, only more so. If they have not trialled you know nothing about them at all. Betting moves are not as good a guide as they once were, either. When I tested my old model, races with a certain number of first starters were not profitable. I did not lose much, but there was no profit there. The same applied when there was a high proportion of first-uppers in the field.

Where the queries sit matters

This is the part people miss. A couple of unknown horses at long odds do not worry me much. The problem is when the queries sit on horses inside the first four in betting. If you like the second favourite and there are two short-priced runners in the race you cannot form a view on, that bet is worse than it looks. You are not just guessing about them, you are guessing about how much of the market they should really be taking.

When you go through a meeting, ask where the unknowns sit in the betting. If they are near the top, leave the race alone and move on.

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More from Kingsley

• Why Betting Against Top Weights Pays in Group Races
• "What Should I Do When My Punting Gets Out of Control?"
• Why Is a Horse $2 When the Ratings Don't Support It?

From the full video: This Is Where Most Punters Lose – Don’t Be One of Them

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