In this blog post, I cover what it takes to win with any horse racing system. Most people believe that there is some secret sauce or some sixth sense needed to pick a winner at the races, but this is not the case.

If you're truly serious about making a consistent and long-term profit by betting on horse racing markets, then you need to have a system with a proven track record but, most importantly, you need to have the right mentality and attitude towards your betting.

I will do my best to dissect this topic so you can truly understand what it takes to win with any horse racing system you choose to use.

The first thing you have to understand is how the professional traders and tipsters bet on their selections and turn a profit. Despite popular belief, professional gamblers do not place bets on emotional and irrational gut feelings or hunches. They base all the decisions on simple algorithms and mathematical likelihoods. They take value from the markets!

Every single professional trader out there will base their selections, bets and trades on a combination of the following:

• Jockey selection.
• Starting positions.
• Betting activity on the betting exchanges.
• The weather.
• The behaviour of the horse before the race.
• The conditions of the track.
• The history of the horse.
• And so on...

Each professional tipster, trader or gambler will have their own set criteria on which they base their selections. You have to remember that their choices are based on what the most likely outcome is and not based on any emotional triggers or any media frenzied blog posts which claim a horse has to win because it's destined for glory due to its pedigree.

Professional tipsters use the law of large numbers and averages to return a profit in the long run. They do not care about an individual race or a single horse because for them it's all about producing a positive return on investment over the course of their entire strategy, not just a simple weekend or during one festival.

Each successful professional tipster or trader will have an edge over the market. What the edge is will always be unique to each trader, but it allows them to produce profitable horse racing systems with which you can win with because, in the long run, they return a slow but steady profit.

Let me give you some examples.

• a horse has a history of running very poorly when it rains over hurdles
• a different horse tends to run well on soft ground
• a horse prefers to run in the rear and make ground later in the race
• horses just dropped in handicap through bad luck

These types of conditions are never a single indicator of why you pick a horse but combined together and suddenly you have a marginal edge over the likely outcome of a race.

This means that if certain horses were to run under certain conditions, 7 of 10 times your winning selection, whether it's a lay bet or back bet, would win. This would, in turn, mean that you can produce a positive return on investment in the long if you have good bank management system and staking system place.

This is why you need to find a reliable horse racing system which you can use because it cuts out all the hard work for you.

Think of it this way:

When you toss a coin, there is a 50-50 chance it lands on heads or tails. When a horse races, the horse will either win or lose.

If you had a way of knowing that the coin toss was in fact 60/40 in favour of heads you have the edge over that outcome and in the long run you could produce profitable return by placing bets on heads.

You would have long periods when tails would appear to be getting better results, but in the long run, you would come out ahead - no pun intended!

This is the same principle as the mentality behind being a professional gambler or trader. You find an edge in the market where you know, based on research and thousands of trial bets, that when conditions X, Y, and Z are met your horse is likely to meet this result - this result meaning a win or a loss.

Just in the same manner of speaking that if ten coin tosses show up tails ten times in a row, it doesn't mean that in the long run, you will not get more heads than tails overall. 

Does that make sense?

So, whichever horse racing system you choose, you have to be in it for the long run and think of this as a long-term investment.

Put aside the money you're willing to invest and use 1% or 2% of that amount as your staking amount. Read this article about bank staking management when betting on horses; this will give you insight into how you manage your money. 

You then merely follow whichever system you have chosen and stick with it even when there is a downward trend and trust that the logical choices made by the tipster or trader will pay out in the long run.

At the end of the day using horse racing system is no different from investing in the stock market or shares, the only difference is that horse racing revenue return will be much more substantial and generally much quicker.

Whenever you are putting your money at risk, you have to leave your emotions on the sideline. Forget the stereotypical Hollywood movie scene of a punter who places a huge 50/1 bet on a horse based on some gut feeling or dream they had the previous night. Those types of bets are purely emotional and hold no reasonable value behind them and in the long run they will lose.

If you are reading this and you are merely looking for a quick £50 profit so you can pay for some pints at the weekend, I'm sorry to say, you have the wrong attitude, and you need to change it if you're serious about making money online using horse racing.

Although, that is not to say that you can't use the profit you make on horses for your personal pleasure as long as it is part of your bank management and long-term plan.

So as I touched on in the previous paragraph, you need to set aside a certain amount of money and commit that money to this long-term investment.

Look at some of the tipsters from Betting Gods, which I have reviewed, you can see that some of them to go through weeks at a time with losing runs which means you have to have the bank balance available to cover those losses and be in a position where you can ride the profit trend when it comes.

You need to have a strong stomach and a clear head and take your emotions out of the picture altogether.

If you're wondering how you choose the correct horse racing system, then I'm here to tell you that that is more of a personal preference rather than anything else. You can:

• Following a tipster.
• Learn to trade the betting exchanges.
• Start matched betting.

These are the three main ways of making money using some kind of system where you use an edge in the markets to return a profit. Each one of these three has specific pros and cons, but for the purposes of this article which in my mind is for people who are looking for particular horse racing systems which they can immediately implement, I would suggest you start following a tipster.

This is because it takes away any decision-making on your behalf and there is no work involved at all, you simply paste that and walk away.

I also recommend you try the Value System from Mike Cruickshank, which again, requires no skill or knowledge about the horse racing markets because you simply place the bets you are told. The law of averages and large numbers take care of the rest.

If money is an issue, and you do not have at least £500 spare to start implementing one of these systems, I would suggest you try Bonus Bagging. 

This is a simple strategy where you can bank guaranteed profits from the bookmakers on a very short-term basis as the bookmaker offers are usually a one-time thing.

You can quickly build a bank of £500/£1000 in a matter of 10 days which you can then use to start with one of these horse racing systems.

Whenever you undertake any financial risk such as this, you have to understand there are no guaranteed profits. Every single website which provides horse racing tips or any strategy on sports betting will always offer long and detailed statistics about the previous results. You use this to get an idea of how risky and how aggressive that particular strategy is.

Some are very low risk and use minimal stakes and have a long history of producing slow but steady profits. Others will be more fluctuating and unstable because they have a more aggressive approach of using larger stakes, but they have more substantial profits due to this.

It is up to you to choose which service is best for you, I have given you a few options above, but at the end of the day your capital is at risk, and there is never a guarantee with any horse racing system of this nature.

However, having said all this, the great thing about investing in tipsters and so on is that the staking amount is generally tiny, usually around £10 per bet. So if you have a £1000 bank and you are staking £10 per bet, then your risk is always going to be very minimal. 

This means that if, for whatever reason, you feel uncomfortable continuing with the service you chose you can stop and your losses will be minimal.

Equally, any losing runs will almost certainly be contained by your bank because, if the tipster has ten horse losing streak, you only lost 10% of your bank which is easily recoverable when you hit a winning horse.

I think this is why horse racing investing is so lucrative and accessible because the risk is very manageable and you can see everything happening right in front of you.

I hope this clarifies how you can win with any horse racing system and if you have any questions at all and please do leave a comment below with any thoughts you may have.