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.

This Saturday is Rebel Stakes Day at Oaklawn Park as the road to the Triple Crown winds its way through Hot Springs, Ark. with the Rebel Stakes featured on a 12-race card that includes a total of four stakes. Three of Oaklawn’s four Saturday stakes races are graded, and the undercard feature is the $600,000 Razorback Handicap, which is also a solid headline race for handicappers to sink their teeth into. For this weekend’s winners, let’s take a closer look at the Rebel Stakes for 3-year-olds and start things off the race before with some picks for the Razorback Handicap for older horses. If you can catch these two winners, you should be well on your way to a profitable day of racing and wagering this Saturday at Oaklawn. Best of luck.

Saturday, Feb. 24

Oaklawn Park, Race 10, $600,000 Razorback Handicap, post time 5:45 p.m. ET

The Grade 3 Razorback Handicap has drawn a highly competitive field of 13 older horses ready to go 1 1/16 miles for a $600,000 purse. The race looks wide open for handicappers, but the clear choice in the field is #8 Magic Tap for leading trainer Steve Asmussen. Magic Tap showed promise in 2023 as a 3-year-old and looked better than that last time out when winning an Oaklawn allowance race at 1 1/8 miles in his first race as a 4-year-old. Magic Tap’s Beyer speed figures are consistently in the mid-90s, which matches up nicely against this competition, and he’ll be perfectly spotted from a pace perspective stalking the leaders close up in a race where there is plenty of speed entered to ensure a set-up for his stretch rally. There are plenty of options for the exotics in this field and some of them offer good value in the morning line odds. #2 Frosted Departure has been a sprinter on and off in his career but he stretched out to this 1 1/16-mile distance two races ago at Oaklawn and blew the doors off a good field that included Silver Prospector by more than seven lengths. #11 Notary owns five wins in his last seven races, including a stakes win last year at Hawthorne and a five-length win last time out at this track and distance against some the same competition he’ll face again Saturday. Finally, #4 Ain’t Life Grand figures to be overbet in this spot in his return from a seven-month layoff but certainly has dirt route form in the past performances that’s good enough to compete in this spot.

The Play: Bet to win on #3 Magic Tap (9-2) and play him in a three-horse exacta box with #2 Frosted Departure (15-1), and #11 Notary (10-1). Finally, bet trifectas keying Magic Tap on top and using Frosted Departure, Notary, and #4 Ain’t Life Grand (7-2) underneath.

Oaklawn Park, Race 11, $1,250,000 Rebel Stakes, post time 6:23 p.m. ET

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At a purse of $1.25 million, the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes is an extremely rich prep race for the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve, so it’s not surprising that it has drawn a quality 13-horse field of 3-year-old hopefuls looking for Derby qualifying points and a big payday. That being said, the Rebel has turned up top-heavy this year with #7 Timberlake looming as a standout in the field and #11 Just Steel looking like a clear second choice. Both Timberlake and Just Steel make sense. Last fall, Timberlake won the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes and was fourth in the FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Presented by TAA and now will be making his 3-year-old debut off a layoff. Just Steel exits a second-place finish in Oaklawn’s Grade 3 Southwest Stakes, but he has drawn a far outside post that won’t help. The door is open if you are looking for a longer-priced horse to put on your tickets with the favorites, and the horse amongst the others with the biggest upside at this moment in time is #1 Carbone, who showed a lot of promise winning the first two starts of his career by open lengths for trainer Steve Asmussen, including a two-turn mile race at Oaklawn two races ago. Carbone flopped in the Southwest Stakes last time in an effort Asmussen blamed on a lost workout and disrupted training regimen during Oaklawn’s weather-related closing that led to the Southwest’s one-week postponement. You can’t fault those who are willing to give Carbone another chance in the Rebel, and if you are willing to do that you should be rewarded with a contender at double-digit odds on the tote board.

The Play:  Bet #1 Carbone (15-1) to win and box him in the exactas and trifectas with #7 Timberlake (6-5) and #11 Just Steel (7-2).