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.

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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, June 17

Summer is ready to arrive and some of the best racing and wagering to be found throughout the month of June is in New York at Belmont Park, which has four weeks remaining in its spring/summer meet until racing moves upstate to the much-anticipated Saratoga summer stand. This weekend’s feature at Belmont is Saturday’s running of the Grade 2 Bed O’ Roses Stakes, which will be headlined by champion female sprinter Goodnight Olive as the 6-5 morning line favorite in a field of five. Elsewhere on the Saturday 10-race card at Belmont, I have been able to identify a pair of prime betting opportunities that could result in a profitable weekend for handicappers, so let’s focus on races 6 and 10 at Belmont to find the best way make some money this weekend. Best of luck.

Belmont Park, Race 6, claiming, post time 3:41 p.m. ET

Saturday’s sixth race is a $25,000 claiming race going 1 1/8 miles on the turf that drew an eight-horse field. The morning-line favorite in the field is #5 Be Here, but that horse hasn’t been in the best form lately, exits back-to-back fifth-place finishes, and now takes a suspicious class drop that does not instill confidence. There appears to be other, better options in this field at higher odds, so let’s take a look at a couple of horses that could upset. #4 Landbiscuit closed from last to third in good return outing off a 10-month layoff in a six-furlong turf sprint prep race as a new gelding, and then was meant for a stretchout on the grass last time but got rained off the turf and finished second. Landbiscuit likes the Belmont turf and will be tough to beat back in a grass route race today, which seems to be where he belongs. #3 Healing shows good turf ability if you go back in the horse’s past performances, and he signaled a return to fitness with a runner-up finish two races ago in an off-the-turf race where he lost only to the solo speed wire-to-wire favorite. He’s been trying to get back onto the grass, and today should be the day for an improved effort at good odds, weather permitting.

The Play: Bet #4 Landbiscuit (9-2) to win and play him in exacta boxes with #3 Healing (12-1).

Belmont Park, Race 10, claiming, post time 5:51 p.m. ET

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Saturday’s nightcap is a six-furlong turf sprint for fillies and mares, a claiming race for non-winners of two lifetime, that drew a full 12-horse field. In what otherwise looks like a wide-open race, the clear standout looks like #6 Quick Power Nap, who has gotten rained off the grass in both recent starts since returning from the seasonal six-month layoff. Still, she  ran a solid effort for third in her 2023 debut. The last time this filly ran on the turf was way back at Saratoga last summer, and that race was a strong wire-to-wire win with a solid speed figure. All of Quick Power Nap’s best career outings were in turf sprints, and this filly is clearly dying to get back onto the grass and fits nicely against this competition. The only challenge in this field who could be ready and able to compete with Quick Power Nap in this spot is #8 Smokin’ Hot Kitty, who add blinkers for her first start off the claim last time by trainer Horacio De Paz, who immediately cuts this filly back in distance from routes into this turf sprint at six furlongs. The change could do her well because Smokin’ Hot kitty’s lone career win so far came not in a rout race, but in a turf sprint race at Saratoga last summer. Many of the losses since then have come at tougher levels of competition, and Smokin’ Hot Kitty becomes an immediate contender with this drop in class.

The Play:  Bet #6 Quick Power Nap (7-2) to win and box her in the exacta with #8 Smokin’ Hot Kitty (4-1).