Handicapping With An Open Mind
May 8 2026
One of my readers, an ace handicapper himself, wrote me a note recently about handicapping races and being present when the longshots roll in. Longshots such as Golden Tempo, who won the Kentucky Derby (G1) at 23 to 1.
“I guess I have to have more of an open mind”, he wrote to me.
I think that is a common thought with horseplayers; trying to allow oneself to give longshots a bit more of a look. Think outside the box in a way. I don’t mean just randomly place bets on every 20 or 30 to 1 shot in a race and hope one wins. But spend a bit more time looking at horses in a race other than the main two or three horses that everyone else will be playing.
We are all betting against each other, remember.
And we all know only about 1 of every 3 favourites win, or 3 on a 10-race card. That leaves the door open for some prices to play in a day.
Large fields offer the best opportunities since 6 and 7 horse fields rarely have starters that go off higher than 10 to 1.
It is easy to develop biases against certain riders, trainers or even a horse you lost money on before. The key is to put that thinking in the back of your handicapping mind and look at each race as a clean slate.
*Play attention to where the winners come from during each race at Woodbine on Friday as there was material added to the Tapeta earlier in the week. The weather remains very cold at night with not much warmth during the day and that led to much kickback and speed favouring days in the last couple of weeks.
