The Five Point Rule in Horse Race Handicapping

Be aware of how many horses are within 5 power points of the top pick (the horse with the highest power points)

The larger the field, the better chance for a large payoff.

The most contentious races also have the potential for big prices.

The last few races on a card can offer some nice overlays.

There are going to be some races easier to handicap than others. Take a range of 5 points from the horse with the top RacingPicks.Com Power Rating and all others within the 5 point range. If there are many horses within that range, the race is very competitive. In this situation you should look at the pace shape very closely, see which horses have more to like and pay close attention to our true odds versus tote board odds. If you see a race with 5 or more horses within the 5 point range you are looking at a very contentious event. To bet those type of races sometimes the horseplayer needs to be creative but always look for value. See if there is a Value Odds

horse in the race. Also in large fields it can get chaotic at times. With this being said the horse with the top power rating is still the horse to beat but he's not a good play if his tote odds are lower than Our True Odds. Sometimes in a chaos race the horseplayer needs to play the race from more than 1 angle. We call this The Five Point Rule. In all races try to find a nice overlay - A horse with RacingPicks.Com TRUE ODDS of between 3-1 and 6-1 but is going off at much higher odds. Also the group with OUR TRUE ODDS of 8-1 to 12-1 could have huge overlay longshot potential to complete the exotics. Try to find an overlay in every race. Sometimes they are easier to find in these contentious races. See the chart below:


Most of our best overlay winners come from
horses with Our True Odds of between
3-1 and 6-1.

   OUR TRUE ODDS         50% OVERLAY
Odds/$1   Tote Odds     Generous Odds
  1.2       6-5           9-5
  1.4       7-5           2-1
  1.6       8-5           5-2
  1.8       9-5           5-2
  2         2-1           3-1
  2.5       5-2           7-2
  ----------------------------
  3         3-1           9-2
  3.5       7-2           5-1
  4         4-1           6-1
  4.5       9-2           7-1
  5         5-1           7-1
  6         6-1           9-1
  ---------------------------
  7         7-1          11-1
  8         8-1          12-1
  10       10-1          15-1
  12       12-1          18-1