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.

Saturday, Dec. 16

Oaklawn Park is proceeding through the December portion of its 2023-’24 season with several new stakes races headlining this month of the meet, including this Saturday’s $200,000 Tinsel Stakes. Oaklawn boasts big fields and good racing and wagering, and this weekend’s winners will focus on two events on the Saturday card, the aforementioned Tinsel Stakes and a very interesting maiden race that kicks off the late Pick 4. Enjoy bonus December racing at Oaklawn Park and good luck this weekend.

Oaklawn Park, Race 7, $115,000 maiden special weight, 4:18 p.m. ET

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Saturday’s seventh race at Oaklawn is a six-furlong maiden race that has drawn a field of 10 contenders, and cases can be made for most of the entrants in the race. Normally, it would be advisable to shy away from layoff horses in a race like this in order to side with horses with more current form, but the horse to beat in this race on Saturday is #7 Mr. Keating, who has hit the board in both of his career races so far, including a late-running second in a Keeneland sprint in his career debut. Mr. Keating is trained by Norm Casse, who has won with 3 of his last 15 horses (20%) returning from six-month layoffs, and Casse is rounding out a high-percentage year in 2023 where he won 25% of his starts including 34% winners at the last Oaklawn meet, 5-for-17 (29%) at the recently concluded Churchill Downs meet, and 7-of-12 for 58% over the summer at Saratoga. Mr. Keating already had speed figures that stack up favorably against this field six months ago, and he undoubtedly had matured even further since then which should make him faster than this competition for a barn that has won 11 of its last 22 Oaklawn starts with today’s rider Ricardo Santana Jr. aboard. Speaking of good trainer percentages, there is a first-time starter in this race sent out by a barn that does very well in that department, #3 Raging for trainer Brad Cox. Cox has won 26% with his first-time starters this year, and he’s off to a blazing-fast start to the current Oaklawn meet with three wins and two seconds with his first five starters. Raging has some good workouts and Cox forms a lethal trainer-jockey combination with Raging’s jockey Martin Chuan with the two teaming up to win with 7-of-15 starters since 2022 for 47%.

The Play: Bet to win on #7 Mr. Keating (5-2) and box him in the exacta with #3 Raging (3-1).

Oaklawn Park, Race 9, $200,000 Tinsel Stakes, post time 5:14 p.m. ET

War Campaign (Coady Photography)

The Tinsel Stakes has drawn a field of seven horses 3 years old and older ready to go 1 1/8 miles. The field contains two-to-three front-runners with #2 Strong Quality and #6 Ardanwood very likely to set a fast pace with possible company from #4 Speed Bias, who also prefers to be on the lead or no more than a length behind. This pace scenario at 1 1/8 miles should set the race up for a horse from off the pace, and that’s good news for #1 War Campaign, a stone closer capable of coming from far behind to win when he gets the kind of fast pace he projects to get on Saturday at Oaklawn. War Campaign won his last 1 1/8-mile dirt outing back in May at Churchill Downs, owns solid speed figures in his good races, and handles wet tracks nicely if such conditions arise on Saturday. The other off-the-pace runner in the race with a good chance to win is #3 Seize the Night, who has run some fast speed figures in the past performances when he has competed in two-turn dirt races, including back-to-back wins this spring in races at Ellis Park and right here at Oaklawn, where he racked-up his career-high Beyer Speed Figure in a come-from-behind victory over Speed Bias. Finally, if you are looking for the best of the speeds that is capable of sticking around for a spot in the trifectas, that would be Strong Quality, who exits an impressive wire-to-wire, 9 ¼-length win at Churchill in his last start.

The Play:  Bet #1 War Campaign (4-1) to win and box him in the exacta with #3 Seize the Night (9-2). Then play a three-horse trifecta box throwing in #2 Strong Quality (5-2) along with the two top picks.