How to Avoid Bad Bets on Horse Races Using the Shoebox Method

If you’re like most of us horse players, it is sometimes hard to be patient and wait for the right bet at the right odds before making a wager.  Sitting out race after race can be boring and time consuming, not to mention unprofitable.  As I have said before, there is only one thing worse than sitting out race after race and that is playing race after race.  The problem is, of course, no one can bet a bunch of races and hope to win.  It just doesn’t work that way.  As in most things in life, you have to pick your spots and go cautiously.

Like most horse players, even though I’ve known that simple rule, there have been times when I’ve fallen off the wagon and started making bets based on last minute hunches or other equally as dangerous urges.  The result is always the same.  I waste my profit on losing bets I shouldn’t have made.  Does this sound familiar?  How many times have you been scanning your racing form or program while you waited for a later race and all of a sudden, you see something in this race that you missed before?  You rush to the window and manage to get the bet in only to lose.

Another losing scenario is that you have handicapped a race and made a good choice.  You have put your bet down and the race is about to go off.  You start to second guess yourself and the more you think about it, the worse you feel about your choice.  At the last minute you rush up and bet wildly on another horse.  Maybe your original choice comes in, but you’ve lost the profit because you bet the other horse, or even worse, maybe neither one of your picks came in and you lost double.

Here is how to train yourself not to do that.  It is a little trick I learned from an old horse player.  He called it the shoebox method.  From now on, every time you have a last minute hunch or just can’t sit out a race, write down the bet on a piece of paper and put it in your pocket.  After the race, write down the result of the race on that same slip of paper and write how much you would have won or lost on the race.

When you go home, have a shoebox for winners and a shoebox for losers.  Put the losers and winners in their respective boxes.  After a month or so, look at the boxes and see which one has the most slips. Do some accounting and add all the winners and all the losers.  The figures will probably surprise you and will also help you to see why you’ve been losing so much at the horse track.  This is a great training method because, when you write the bet down, it solidifies it in your mind and helps you to avoid actually betting it.

Seeing the actual amount you would have lost also helps you to realize just how costly and foolish those bets were.