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.

Noel Michaels’ Weekend Winners is brought to you by Horseplayers.com, the official online qualifying site of the Breeders' Cup Betting Challenge (BCBC) and National Horseplayers Championship (NHC). Horseplayers.com offers low-cost feeders every day and BCBC and NHC qualifiers every weekend, and it’s the only site where you can qualify for the $1.25 million BCBC. It’s free to sign up – click here to get information about registering and how to enter contests.

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

Saturday, April 15

The Keeneland April meet is in full swing, and you can count on great race cards each and every day of the short, but sweet season. This is especially true on Saturdays, when the stars come out and top-notch racing is featured up and down the card. This Saturday is certainly no exception with three stakes races on the program, including the final official prep race on the Road to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve with the running of the Grade 3 Stonestreet Lexington Stakes going as Race 9. The Lexington is shaping up to be an interesting handicapping puzzle as well as an excellent betting race, as are the other two stakes on the card. Let’s also take a look at the turf sprint stakes on the card, which is the Giant’s Causeway Stakes that goes as Race 8. Don’t miss racing at Keeneland this Saturday. Good luck.

Keeneland, Race 8, $250,000 Giant’s Causeway Stakes, 4:44 p.m. ET

The competition runs deep in the Giant’s Causeway, which will showcase top filly and mare turf sprinters going 5 ½ furlongs on the grass. The race will feature a full field of 12, and the best of the bunch might be drawn on the far outside with #12 Star Devine picking this spot for her 2023 debut off a 4 ½-month layoff. Notably, she was second in this same race last year while coming back fresh off of even more time between races, so we know she runs well off the layoff. She lost only to the Wesley Ward heavy favorite Campanelle last year and she’s looking for revenge his year against a field that is very strong but lacks a monster like Campanelle. Star Devine won impressively when last seen in an Aqueduct turf sprint in November, and when she loses she tends to do so against the very best horses in the division such as Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Caravel, who beat her by just a length last year at Belmont Park and by just 1 ¾ lengths last fall here at Keeneland. Wesley Ward has two representatives in this year’s field, including  #3 Happy Soul, and while she may not quite be at Campanelle’s level, she does have a very good record and will love this shorter 5 ½-furlong trip. She’s mostly been a dirt horse, but she finished second by a head in her lone turf sprint to date when Ward tried her in the $471,000 Music City Stakes at Kentucky Downs last fall. Leave her off your tickets at your own risk. Finally, the other horse you don’t want to ignore is win machine #4 Oeuvre, who has won nine of her last 10 races for trainer Chris Block, including four turf sprints at three different tracks. She dominated the top female turf sprinters at Fair Grounds this winter and never throws in a clunker.

The Play: Bet #12 Star Devine (6-1) to win and use her in three-horse exacta boxes along with #3 Happy Soul (4-1) and #4 Oeuvre (9-2).

Keeneland, Race 9, $400,000 Stonestreet Lexington Stakes, 5:16 p.m. ET

Kentucky Derby hopeful Disarm (Coady Photography)

The Grade 3 Lexington Stakes drew and field of 11 3-year-olds ready to go 1 1/16 miles on the main track in the final points race on the Road to the Kentucky Derby. This is mostly a race for horses that are looking to races later in 2023, but the Lexington is being used as a true Derby prep race for #6 Disarm, who will get enough points to get into the Kentucky Derby starting gate with a first-, second- or third-place finish for trainer Steve Asmussen. He was good enough to run second by 3 ½ lengths vs. a 12-horse field in the Grade 2 Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby last time out, so that certainly points him out as one of the top contenders at very least. The three most intriguing challengers in this race were late bloomers that got started too late to get onto the Derby trail but who made strong impressions for strong barns in their maiden wins that propelled them into stakes company today and potentially beyond. That trio includes a good-looking pair for trainer Brad Cox that graduated at Fair Grounds, #3 Demolition Duke and #5 First Mission, and #8 Empirestrikesfast, who won at first asking at Gulfstream Park last time out for trainer Bill Mott. Empirestrikesfast defeated Todd Pletcher’s Dreamlike by three-quarters of a length in that promising career debut while the pair was almost nine lengths clear of the rest of the field. Dreamlike has since come back to flatter Empirestrikesfast when he ran third by a head in last weekend’s Grade 2 Wood Memorial Stakes Presented by Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct.

The Play:  Bet #6 Disarm (7-2) to win and box him in the exactas along with #8 Empirestrikesfast. Bet trifectas using Disarm and Empirestrikesfast in the top two positions on top of #3 Demolition Duke (6-1) and #5 First Mission (3-1) in third.