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, Oct. 26

The fall’s premier Belmont at the Big A race meet is heading down the home stretch but there is still some excellent racing and wagering to come. This Saturday’s action at Belmont at the Big A includes three stakes races headlining an 11-race program topped by the featured Grade 2 Mother Goose Stakes for 3-year-old fillies. The undercard feature, the Grade 3 Bold Ruler Stakes, is also an excellent race. For this weekend’s winners, let’s focus on these two top stakes races Saturday in New York. Let’s pick some winners, and let’s make some money. Best of luck.

Belmont at the Big A, Race 7, $175,000 Bold Ruler Stakes, post time 3:17 p.m. ET

The Grade 3 Bold Ruler is a six-furlong sprint that has drawn a well-matched, seven-horse field where the favorite has a chance but one or two horses in the race have what it takes to beat him. That favorite will be #2 Top Gunner, who successfully stepped up against stakes competition last time to win the $100,000 Parx Sprint Stakes. That was a good win but does it make him the horse to beat against this field that includes some better horses? #5 My Buddy B also won a stakes at Parx two races ago in what actually was his only winnable recent race. His other two recent races included a non-embarrassing loss to the likes of Skelly and Nakatomi – who are both headed to the Cygames Breeders’ Cup Sprint – in the Grade 1 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap, and a loss last time in the Grade 2 Stoll Keenon Ogden Phoenix Stakes at Keeneland, where he lost to Nakatomi and Federal Judge, who also is headed to the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. My Buddy B is a horse that owns nine wins in 20 career races, which equals a horse that tends to win when he’s placed in proper spots like this one appears to be for him today. The other main contender in the Bold Ruler is #1 Little Vic, who is a Grade 3 stakes winner on this track back when he won the 2023 Tim Fool Stakes. He appeared to return to best form last time out when he won a tough allowance optional-claiming race right here at this track. He fits based on his best local efforts.

The Play: Bet on #5 My Buddy B (5-1) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta boxes with #1 Little Vic (9-2) and #2 Top Gunner (8-5).

Belmont at the Big A, Race 10, $250,000 Mother Goose Stakes, post time 4:51 p.m. ET

Gun Song (Eclipse Sportswire)

The venerable Grade 2 Mother Goose Stakes now sits in this spot on the fall racing calendar as a late-season destination for 3-year-old fillies racing 1 1/8 miles on the main track. The most recognizable faces in this race are two fillies exiting second- and third-place finishes, respectively, in the Grade 1 Cotillion Stakes in their most recent starts – #5 Gun Song and #3 Tarifa – and in this spot both of them will be among the horses to beat. From that dynamic duo, the preference here goes to Gun Song, whose second-place finish by a neck was impressive since it came against the top 3-year-old filly in the land, Thorpedo Anna, who will be first or second favorite in the upcoming Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar. Based on that effort, plus her win earlier this season in the Grade 2 George E. Mitchell Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, you could have made a case that she herself earned a trip to the Distaff for her next start, but instead she ends up here in the Mother Goose, where she seems like the standout top contender. Tarifa, meanwhile, ran a solid third in the 1 1/16-mile Cotillion, but will need to make up 3 ½ lengths on Gun Song and the added sixteenth-of-a-mile in distance today probably won’t be enough of a factor to turn the tables. The other horse that makes a lot of sense in the exactas and trifectas in this race is #6 Life Talk, trained by Todd Pletcher, who is a big overlay at anything close to her 5-1 odds on the morning line. Life Talk ran a solid second last time in a Churchill Downs stakes race in her first race back from nearly a six-month layoff. She should take a big step forward today in her second race off the layoff, and that makes her dangerous if you remember that she was a big winner of the Grade 2 Demoiselle Stakes right here on this racetrack as a 2-year-old.

The Play: Bet #5 Gun Song (8-5) to win and box her in exactas and trifectas along with #3 Tarifa (5-2) and #6 Life Talk (5-1).