Welcome to Noel Michaels’ Weekend Winners, the place to go for weekend best bets and spot plays from veteran handicapper and tournament-play pioneer Noel Michaels. Check back every week for a couple of highlighted selections designed to help you cash a few bets and make some money.

Noel's selections have been featured just about everywhere horse racing picks can be found, including in print in the Daily Racing Form, The HorsePlayer Magazine and American Turf Monthly, online at DRF.com, Twinspires.com and USRacing.com, from the paddock on-track at Arlington International Racecourse, and on the air on HRTV, TVG, NYC OTB Extra, NYRA's Talking Horses, and on broadcast TV on WAVE-3 Louisville, ABC KOLO-8 in Reno, Nevada, and channel 72 Long Island Cablevision.

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6 Beginner Betting Tools

1. Start simple with an easy guide for how to bet on horse racing.
2. Not sure what that word means? Horse racing terminology is a language of its own. Allow us translate for you.
3. What the heck is a speed figure? This beginner’s guide to speed figures has everything you need to know.
4. Betting on horse racing can be intimidating. Team ABR put together some Dos and Don’ts for the new fan getting started betting on racing.
5. We all make mistakes when it comes to betting on horse racing, here are eight lessons learned from experience.

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Saturday, April 8

Spring is in the air in New York, and for horseplayers that can only mean one thing – Wood Memorial Stakes day at Aqueduct. On the 11-race card on Saturday will be both turf racing and graded stakes racing, which are two things that have largely been absent in New York racing since November. The Wood Memorial Presented by Resorts World Casino is one of three major prep races Saturday for horses pointing to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve, and it headlines a program that contains three other stakes races including the Grade 3 Bay Shore Stakes for 3-year-old sprinters. Let’s take a look at the Wood Memorial and the Bay Shore at Aqueduct for this week’s featured stakes races. Good luck on Saturday.

Aqueduct, Race 6, $200,000 Bay Shore Stakes, 3:09 p.m. ET

The Grade 3 Bay Shore Stakes for 3-year-olds sprinting seven furlongs has drawn a seven-horse field and is an evenly-matched betting race where you can make a case for several of the runners. The morning-line favorite is #3 Victory Way, a Bill Mott trainee exiting a debut win, but there are other quality alternatives in this field that are as fast or faster and have more experience. The most interesting horse in this spot is #2 Gilmore, who appeared to be pointing to longer races and, specifically, the Turfway Park route to the Kentucky Derby. He was shifted out of the barn of Bob Baffert for that purpose after finishing second in the $100,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields. Now in the barn of Brendan Walsh, they have evidently surmised that Gilmore’s best game will be sprinting on the dirt and instead entered him in this seven-furlong dirt spot. Gilmore’s lone career win came on the dirt at Los Alamitos, and just the fact that the horse lands in the Bay Shore is the tip-off that he will likely be a handful and the horse to beat on Saturday. Another interesting contender is #7 Prove Right, who looked too good last time winning by nine at Laurel Park to be ignored today. At his best, he finished third in last fall’s Grade 3 Nashua Stakes going one mile at Aqueduct.

The Play: Bet #2 Gilmore (7-2) to win and box him in the exacta with #7 Prove Right (6-1).

Aqueduct, Race 11, $750,000 Wood Memorial Stakes Presented by Resorts World Casino, 6:16 p.m. ET

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The Grade 2 Wood Memorial going 1 1/8 miles for 3-year-olds hoping to advance onward to the Kentucky Derby drew a field of 13 horses. The trainer to beat in this race is usually Todd Pletcher, who has won two Wood Memorials in a row, three of the last four, and seven overall. This year, however, it seems that it is Brad Cox who is the trainer who has this race in his crosshairs with a 1-2 punch that will be tough to beat. Pletcher’s Kentucky Derby first stringer, Forte, ran in the Curlin Florida Derby Presented by Hill 'n' Dale Farms at Xalapa and is already on his way to Louisville as the probable favorite. Pletcher appears to have taken what’s left of the 3-year-olds in his barn and entered them here in order to see if any is capable of a breakthrough. Of his three horses entered – #1 Dreamlike, #9 Crupi, and #11 Classic Catch – the one with the best chance looks like #1 Dreamlike, a marvelously-bred horse who finished second in both of his starts so far and who earned a nice speed figure in defeat last time in a Gulfstream Park route. Can Dreamlike or the others beat the Brad Cox entrants? Probably not. The 5-2 morning-line favorite is #13 Hit Show on the strength of his 5 ½-length win in the Grade 3 Withers Stakes at this course and distance, and he will indeed be tough if he repeats that effort. That might prove difficult, however, from out in the parking lot in post position 13. That makes the “other” Cox runner, #5 Slip Mahoney, the horse to beat. Slip Mahoney exits a remarkable second-place finish in the Grade 3 Gotham Stakes at one mile at Aqueduct where he appeared to have lost all chance at the break leaving him at the back of the 14-horse field. Slip Mahoney is not a closer. He owns good tactical speed and ideally should be on or close to the pace where he belongs, given anything better than a disastrous start. There’s not a lot of speed entered in the Wood Memorial, so expect Slip Mahoney to press the pace of #7 Arctic Arrogance and take over when that horse tires. From there he should have enough left to hold off the late closers, giving Cox yet another live bullet in his holster heading to Churchill Downs the first Saturday in May.

The Play:  Bet #5 Slip Mahoney (6-1) to win and box him in the exactas along with #13 Hit Show for an all-Bred Cox exacta box. Finally, give Pletcher his respect and throw-in #1 Dreamlike (7-2) for a three-horse trifecta box.