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.

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.

Sunday, Sept. 30

This Sunday is one of the premier days of the fall season in New York racing at the Belmont at the Big A (Aqueduct) meet with four graded stakes races headlining an 11-race card. A great day of racing and wagering will include the Grade 1 Vosburgh Stakes, a Breeders’ Cup Challenger Series “Win and You’re In” race for entry into the Qatar Racing Breeders’ Cup Sprint that has attracted superstar Cody’s Wish, whose morning-line odds are 1-5. (Please note: Saturday's races were postponed a day from Saturday to Sunday due to inclement weather forecasts in New York.) For the purposes of today’s selections, however, let’s concentrate on a pair of the big-time stakes a bit later on the card with a pair of races that also have potential Breeders’ Cup implications – the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Stakes and the Grade 2 Woodward Stakes. Both races have drawn the type of competitive, high-quality fields that you would expect to find in well-established important stakes races on the New York fall calendar. Best of luck, and enjoy this weekend’s races.

Belmont at the Big A, Race 6, $500,000 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Stakes, 2:40 p.m. ET

Rebel’s Romance winning Breeders’ Cup Turf (Eclipse Sportswire)

The 2023 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic has drawn a field of nine older horses set to go 1 ½ miles on the grass as a potential prep for the Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf. The headline runner in the field, favorite, and horse to beat is the defending 2022 Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf winner #5 Rebel’s Romance, who runs for the Godolphin connections of trainer Charlie Appleby and jockey William Buick, who have been lethal foreign invaders the last several years in important Grade 1 races all over the world, including the Breeders’ Cup. True, perhaps Rebel’s Romance has not had the kind of season in 2023 they had hoped for with only a seventh-place finish in Dubai and a DNF (did not finish) when he clipped heels and lost the rider last time in the Grade 2 Bowling Green Stakes on his dance card so far. Although we will never know what would have happened in the Bowing Green if he had finished, it certainly looked like he was absolutely loaded when buried in traffic and definitely would have been tough to hold off had he gotten through cleanly. He has time to finish the year strong in this race and in the Breeders’ Cup, he outclasses this field, and you can count on these connections to send horses to the United States that are fit and ready to win Grade 1 races. Some of the other principals in this field like #4 Adhamo and last year’s Joe Hirsch winner #6 War Like Goddess seem out of their best form, while #9 Astronaut will be attempting a comeback from a long layoff in a pretty tough spot. That leaves the red-hot #8 Pioneering Spirit and #2 Solider Rising, who has been knocking on the door in tough turf spots much of the year, as the best horses for the exotics along with the favorite. Pioneering Spirit has won five of his last six with the lone loss being a third in the Grade 1 Resorts World Casino Sword Dancer Stakes. Solder Rising was second in the Sword Dancer, second in the Grade 1 Man o’ War Stakes, second in the Grade 1 Resorts World Casino Manhattan Stakes, and got wiped out in his loss in the Bowling Green when Rebel’s Romance lost the rider.

The Play: Bet to win on #5 Rebel’s Romance (9-5) and key him on top of #2 Solider Rising (5-1) and #8 Pioneering Spirit (10-1) in the exactas. In the trifectas, key Rebel’s Romance on top of the same two horses.

Belmont at the Big A, Race 7, $400,000 Woodward Stakes, 3:11 p.m. ET

The Woodward Stakes is one of the most storied races on the annual New York calendar and now finds itself as a Grade 2 race later in the season than ever in the final round of Breeders’ Cup prep races. A field of 10 was entered to go 1 1/8 miles, and a first- and perhaps even a second-place performance in this spot could be enough to send a couple of these horses onward to the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic for their next race. The horse to beat could be #1 Charge It, who has shown flashes of becoming a top-lever performer at times in his career including two races ago when he went wire-to-wire to win the Grade 2 Suburban Stakes at Belmont by 4 ¾ lengths. His best effort seems a bit better than the top efforts of the other U.S-based competition in this race. The Woodward has attracted a fascinating foreign contender this year with #3 Algiers coming off a runner-up finish in the Group 1 Dubai World Cup Presented by Emirates Airline in his last start back in March. Showing up in this spot indicates they’re pointing for the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and they can achieve that goal with a strong showing in the Woodward. Therefore, you can bet he will be cranked-up and ready to roll. In addition to the World Cup, Algiers also blew the doors off two other Group 1 races on dirt last winter in Dubai. Handicappers looking for a read on Breeders’ Cup Classic-bound Dubai World Cup winner Ushba Tesoro will undoubtedly have their eyes glued on Algiers’s performance this Sunday.

The Play:  Bet #3 Algiers (6-1) to win and use him in an exacta box with #1 Charge It (7-2).