Horse racing is one of the oldest and most popular sports in history. You can see people of different races, nationalities, and ages getting invested in horse racing. With the sport being one of the favorites for betting, you can expect that there would be betting myths that will be passed down from person to person and sometimes, even from generation to generation.
However, myths are not what keeps the bookmarks in business–it is bets of the people themselves. As such, you see many online sports bookmakers having attractive offers to entice new players and keep the current ones with them. Good review sites like Nostrabet.com offers insightful reviews, top, and bookie recommendations that will help you in your horse race betting journey.
As for horse racing betting myths. Here are some of the top myths that you should not believe, if you did in the past, and you should not pass on to others anymore.
Everything is fixed and rigged
This is perhaps one of the oldest myths, not just in horse racing, but for almost every sport for that matter. There will always be people who would insist that there is a “secret hand” that controls everything in sports, and the audience are nothing more but spectators of a scripted and rehearsed game. You can hear this, especially from people who had lost a bet due to their bets losing the game. Some people would then accuse the game of being rigged and fixed against them.
However, it has long been proven that this is not the case for horse racing or any sport at all. While there had been instances where rigging and fixing had been exposed in some sports, sports are still a fairly-played game in the general sense.
Always bet on the favorites
Perhaps one of the most common myths in all of sports betting, and not just that for horse racing is that the favorites in the odds are the best bet as the player or team that is the favorite will almost surely win.
However, it has been proven time and again that this is not the case. In fact, there had been numerous instances wherein the favorites suffered a huge loss to the underdogs of the odds. Unlike other sports, odds in horse racing are not calculated this way. Rather, it is calculated based on the amount of money and the number of bets placed per horse.
The winning shoe color
This particular sports betting myth is exclusive only to horse racing bettors. If you ask someone who had been betting on horse racing for quite some time now what is the most common and oldest horse racing myth, one of the possible answers they’ll give you is that you should bet on a horse with at least one white foot showing.
This myth has had it that horses with at least one white foot are carriers of a “winning” gene and thus have a natural edge over all other horses and would probably be the winner of the race. On the other hand, a horse with all four feet as white is bad luck, and you should not bet on it.
However, there has been no scientific proof of this or any scientific explanation that associates the foot color of a horse to its racing performance. This belief is nothing but just a tall myth that has been passed on from one generation of sports bettors to another but should be stopped.
