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.

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.

Saturday, Dec. 30 will be a big day of racing and wagering at Gulfstream Park as 2023 prepares to come to an end. Gulfstream will host an 11-race card with three graded stakes on a program that is unofficially a preview day for next month’s Pegasus World Cup Day. For this week’s winners, let’s concentrate on the grass stakes on the card including the Grade 3 Suwannee River Stakes, a prep for the Grade 3 Pegasus Filly and Mare Turf Invitational, and the Grade 2 Ft. Lauderdale Stakes, which will serve as the local prep for the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational. Both races have drawn big, competitive fields and will offer good wagering opportunities. Best of luck and Happy New Year!

Saturday, Dec. 30

Gulfstream Park, Race 8, $150,000 Suwannee River Stakes, post time 3:32 p.m. ET

The Grade 3 Suwannee River Stakes drew a field of 10 fillies and mares set to race one mile on the turf. Most of the field can be considered contenders, especially when you’re talking about exactas and trifectas, so if you can catch the exotics in this race the payoffs should be good no matter who wins. In an evenly matched event like this that is actually a prep for a later race, why not take a shot at a price? For me, that horse is #8 Sister Lou Ann who gets Jose Ortiz aboard and is an overlay on the morning line odds at 12-1. Sister Lou Ann exits a runner-up finish on Gulfstream’s all-weather Tapeta track in a tough assignment where she had to do all the dirty work chasing a loose, lone speed wire-to-wire winner. She posted a stakes win in a $490,000 turf race at Kentucky Downs three starts ago with Ortiz aboard, and she seemed to love this turf course when she last raced at Gulfstream two seasons ago including a wire-to-wire stakes win in June 2022. She’s versatile from a pace perspective because even though she prefers to rate, she can also go to the lead if it’s called for. For the exotics, we’ve already got our big-priced horse on the tickets, so now let’s choose the most interesting of the other main contenders. They include #4 Full Count Felicia, who won the $100,000 All Along Stakes at Pimlico two races ago and finds an easier spot here than the Grade 2 Goldikova Stakes she attempted last time against the likes of Queen Goddess and Closing Remarks; and #9 Fast as Flight, who two starts back won the $172,000 Anchorage Stakes at Ellis Park.

The Play: Bet to win on #8 Sister Lou Ann (12-1) and box her in the exacta and trifecta with #4 Full Count Felicia (3-1), and #9 Fast as Flight (5-2).

Gulfstream Park, Race 11, $200,000 Ft. Lauderdale Stakes, post time 5:04 p.m. ET

Click image to purchase shirt.

The Grade 2 Ft. Lauderdale Stakes has attracted a 10-horse field ready to go 1 1/8 miles on the Gulfstream turf course. This is another race where the field contains several contenders, and the favorites may not necessarily be the best bets. Morning-line favorite #9 Running Bee has run some fast figures and goes out for trainer Chad Brown, but he’s a front-running horse who will square off against fellow speedball #4 Main Event to set a pace that should help neither of them. He was unsuccessful in his only prior stakes try to date and he’s just one race removed from a year layoff, plus his odds figure to be short so let’s lean toward others. The best chance at the best odds in this field could be #5 Kingmax, a foreign import who went 2-for-2 on the grass at Monmouth Park before a stakes loss on an all-weather surface last time. He’ll be overlooked here but he’ll be back on the grass and just might be good enough. Deep closer #6 Fort Washington also might be overlooked. Fort Washington closed for a pair of third-place finishes last spring in similar turf stakes races and could do so again Saturday. The wild card in the race is #7 Stone Age, who is more than qualified to win but rarely races at a distance this short and seems to be using this spot with an eye looking ahead to next month’s million-dollar Pegasus Turf. The danger about ignoring him, however, is that he might just be better than his Ft. Lauderdale foes anyway, even if he’s not pointing for this race and the distance is not his best.

The Play:  Bet #5 Kingmax (12-1) to win and box him in the exacta and trifecta with #6 Fort Washington (10-1) and #7 Stone Age (7-2).