Hey everyone. Just wanted to say hi and introduce myself. I'm quite new to horse racing and very new to the site here. I started watching horse racing to pass the time at work. I like to gamble on bet365.com and horse racing was one of the few things I could stream live at work to help pass the time. I found it quite interesting and very exciting.
I've spent a couple hours browsing the site and readng about pars, handicapping, different racing styles etc... and I've got a better understanding of how it works... But still some questions I'm hoping someone can easily explain.
Question 1: I see there is many different classes. My understanding is it's a bit like baseball. You have MLB, AAA, AA, A. Naturally the best horses race in the "MLB" class if you will.
Does each race track only race 1 class of horses? Or will they host all kinds of different classes?
Question 2: The site I use to bet only allowws you to pick a winner. If you really want to let your hair down you can parlay another horse to place. I've seen people discuss their tickets and it seems like some pick 3 possible winners, 5 possible places, and like maybe different choices for show.
Never seeing a real racing form or betting slip this seems quite confusing to me. Are these tickets more along the lines of what a seasoned horse racing fan may do? Or are these quite standard bets?
Question 3: Race data and history. Clearly to make good bets you are referencing sometime of data or history of these horses. Where do you get this helpful information? Is there a site which has all the information? Or do I need to go to different race track sites to gather the information from each one? Basically... is there an "ESPN" of horse racing type site that has this info easily available?
Random stuff... I was reading about matchups and pars... I kind of understood but not enough to make an educated decison on anything. How do you look at tandems? I gather it's horses that have previously raced against each other.. But how does me comparing 2 horses relate to the other horses in that race? What if none of the other horses have raced each other before?
As you can tell I'm very new to all this, but I'm quite eager to learn. If someone could help give me a couple pointers of how to get started that would be terrific. Kind of a "horse racing 101" would be perfect.
A little about me.... My name is Ryan, I'm 29, from Nova Scotia Canada. I work for RIM (We make the blackberry) and I'm a huge fan of sports and gambling.
Anyways... Hello again to everyone and I look forward to any help I can get
