How to bet on the Preakness
The Preakness is the second leg of the Triple Crown for three-year-olds, run after the Kentucky Derby and before the Belmont Stakes. You bet it like any American race, into a pari-mutuel pool, and what sets it apart is the Derby: who comes back from it, who skips it, and how much the crowd remembers it.
Getting a bet down
The Preakness is pari-mutuel. Your money goes into a pool with everyone else's, the track takes its share, and the winners split the rest at the final odds. How to bet on horse racing covers the pool and the bets on the card, and how horse racing odds work shows how the price is worked out.
At the track, you give the race, the amount, the type of bet and the horse's program number. Away from it, an off-track betting outlet or another track showing the race puts your bet into the same pool.
Betting the Preakness online means an account-wagering service, which also bets into the pool. Whether one can take bets from you depends on where you live, and racing has rules of its own, separate from sports betting, so an ordinary sportsbook account may not cover it. If you go through an offshore racebook instead, it usually keeps the bet and pays track odds only up to a cap in its rules. I'd open the account and fund it well before race day, and I'd read that cap before betting anything that could pay big. Horse racing betting sites goes through the difference.
The Derby horses and the new ones
The Preakness comes only a couple of weeks after the Derby, and that short gap shapes the race more than anything else about it. Some Derby runners come back. Many don't, because their connections would rather rest them or point them at the Belmont. Their places go to horses that skipped the Derby, which the trade calls new shooters.
So every Preakness is a question of fresh legs against proven class. The Derby horses have run the biggest race of their lives very recently. The new shooters are rested, but most of them skipped the Derby for a reason, whether they weren't ready for it or couldn't get into the field. I don't think either side wins that argument as a rule. I'd look at each horse on its own, and I'd be suspicious of any system that says otherwise.
The field is usually smaller than the Derby's, and that changes the exotics. In a 20-horse Derby there are 6,840 possible trifectas. Say the Preakness draws 10 runners: then there are 720, and 90 possible exactas. Your box covers more of the board for the same money, and the payouts come down to match. The pricing of those tickets is on exacta, trifecta and superfecta bets.
The Derby winner's price
If the Derby winner runs, he is the story, and in a pari-mutuel pool the story sets the price. Television spends a fortnight on him, the once-a-year bettors know his name, and some of them bet him for the souvenir ticket as much as the payout. That money pushes his odds down, and every other horse's up.
That doesn't make him a bad bet. It makes his price the thing to judge. Say he goes off at 6-5. A $2 ticket pays $4.40, so he has to win more than 45.5 percent of the time for the bet to pay its way, against a field that includes horses that never ran in the Derby and come in rested. Ask yourself if he is that good a chance. If he is, bet him. If you think he is closer to one in three, the price is wrong, and the value has to be somewhere else in the field.
The Triple Crown bet
Some books offer a fixed price on the Derby winner sweeping the series, and the Preakness is where that bet gets talked about. It is a two-leg parlay on races that haven't been drawn yet, and it can be worked out the same way. Say you rate him a 45 percent chance in the Preakness and a 35 percent chance in the Belmont. Both together is 45 percent of 35 percent, which is 15.75 percent, a fair price of about 5.3-1. If the book offers 3-1, it is charging you heavily for the story. If he fails in the Preakness, the bet is gone, and so is most of the attention on the Belmont.
Before you bet
Set the day's budget before the first race on the card, because the Preakness usually comes late in a long day and the early races take their share. If you only bet the big races, a win bet or a small exotic is plenty, at a stake you would happily spend on the afternoon. The thinking that lasts beyond one race is on horse racing betting strategies, and the race before it is on how to bet on the Kentucky Derby.
I'd treat the Derby result as one race, not a verdict. The crowd treats it as a verdict, and that is the only edge this race hands you.