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 SatuTalking 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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Six 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.
6. Figure out how much each bet will cost in advance with our Gambling Calculator, presented by NYRA Bets.

The fall racing season continues to roll on this weekend and some of the best racing and wagering action to be found will be at Aqueduct, which will host a 10-race program on Saturday that will include a pair of stakes races restricted to 2-year-olds. For this weekend’s winners, let’s delve into Aqueduct’s two Saturday features, the Notebook Stakes and the Central Park Stakes. Picking the winners of these two races can propel us to a profitable winning weekend. Good luck and enjoy the races.

Aqueduct, Race 3, $100,000 Notebook Stakes, post time 12:40 p.m. ET

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A field of seven New York-bred 2-year-olds go to post in the $100,000 Notebook Stakes, including three horses that already have stakes experience. The horse to beat, however, is a horse making only his second lifetime start coming off an impressive maiden win in his career debut. #1 Man in Finance won his only race to date here on this track back in September by a 7 ¾-length margin in an effort that has already been flattered when the runner-up that day, #6 Kenny Be, came back to win his next race by 8 ½ lengths. Trainer Danny Gargan takes the confident next step in this spot and this horse is the favorite to raise his record to 2-for-2. If you are going to play Man in Finance as the chalk, you are going to need to put some horses with potential value in the odds around him in order to bump of the value of your exactas and trifectas.  The field includes a pair of fillies from the barn of trainer Wesley Ward – #4 Phoebeinwonderland who will be ridden by John Velazquez, and #5 Shoot It True ridden by Frankie Dettori – and neither of them should be overlooked from a barn that never shies away from entering young fillies against the boys and has had plenty of success when doing so. Phoebeinwonderland won her career debut here in the spring when she beat next-out winner #3 Soontobeking, and Shoot It True already gained stakes experience versus males when she ran a respectable fourth in the $247,000 Kentucky Juvenile Stakes at Churchill Downs earlier this year.

The Play: Bet on #1 Man in Finance (8-5) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta boxes with #4 Phoebeinwonderland (10-1) and #5 Shoot It True (8-1).

Aqueduct, Race 9, $150,000 Central Park Stakes, post time 3:40 p.m. ET

Saturday’s feature race at Aqueduct will be the $150,000 Central Park Stakes for 2-year-olds going one mile on the grass. #9 Early Adopter and #8 Smooth Breeze were a head apart when finishing third and fourth, respectively, in the Grade 2 Pilgrim Stakes last time out and are the horses to beat in this spot based on that race. Since Smooth Breeze will be the better odds of the pair, he will be my win bet. Both of these horses stand out in this race coming out of the premier 2-year-old turf race of the season at the recently concluded Belmont at the Big A meet. Neither of the pair earned a fast speed figure in the Pilgrim, but that race featured a slow pace which hurt the final time of the race. The lack of an eye-catching speed figure should make both horses overlays Saturday. A fast pace in this race should be guaranteed with #2 Sounds Like a Plan likely to be challenged up front by any number of horses such as #6 Not for Hire, just to name one. That pace setup is great news for a Chad Brown-trained stalker like Early Adopter, and potentially good news for Smooth Breeze who has already shown a proven ability to rate. Smooth Breeze and Early Adopter are both good plays in this race, and Sounds Like a Plan could also hold on best of the speed horses for a spot in the money.

The Play: Bet #8 Smooth Breeze (8-1) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta boxes with #2 Sounds Like a Plan (6-1) and #9 Early Adopter (3-1).