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.

Oaklawn Park is offering an excellent 12-race card of racing and wagering on Saturday that will feature the $800,000, Grade 3 Southwest Stakes, which is a key step on the track’s road to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve. Three other stakes races headline the card, including the Southwest’s filly counterpart, the $250,000 Martha Washington Stakes on the road to the Longines Kentucky Oaks, which will run as Race 9. This week’s winners will focus on these two 3-year-old events Saturday at Oaklawn. Have a good weekend and enjoy the races.

Saturday, Feb. 3

Oaklawn Park, Race 9, $250,000 Martha Washington Stakes, post time 4:40 p.m. ET

Nine 3-year-old fillies are ready to go 1 1/16 miles in the $250,000 Martha Washington Stakes. The 6-5 favorite in the race is the Brad Cox-trained #8 Denim and Pearls, who exits a runner-up finish last time in the $200,000 Year’s End Stakes at Oaklawn, where she lost the lead in the late stages going one mile. She’ll face a longer distance in this race, and her odds will be low, so while she deserves to be on your exotic tickets, perhaps there are others in the field offering better odds for your win bets. The biggest threat could come from Cox’s “other” entrant, #9 In Good Taste, who exits a game maiden win at Oaklawn last time with a solid speed figure. It’s also far too early to give up on #4 Neom Beach, who was third last time in the Year’s End Stakes. She did all the dirty work up on a live pace last time out and will hope for a better trip in the Marsha Washington with Joel Rosario back for the mount.

The Play: Bet to win on #9 In Good Taste (8-1) and play her in three-horse exacta and trifecta boxes with #4 Neom Beach (4-1) and #8 Denim and Pearls (6-5).

Oaklawn Park, Race 11, $800,000 Southwest Stakes, post time 5:50 p.m. ET

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The Grade 3 Southwest Stakes was postponed from a week ago and a full field of 3-year-olds anxiously awaits the chance to take the next step on the Oaklawn road to the Triple Crown that will later continue in the Rebel Stakes and Arkansas Derby. The 1 1/16th-mile Southwest is loaded with up and comers and looks like it will be a good betting race that will launch its top finishers onward. There is one horse in the field who will not be Derby bound, and that is #5 Wynstock from the barn of trainer Bob Baffert, who will instead point his 3-year-olds this year to the Preakness Stakes and beyond. Baffert has a tremendous record down through the years of success when sending his horses to the Oaklawn prep races, and the Southwest looks like a prime showcase for this horse that has looked good winning two straight races including the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity last time where he fended off a challenge in the stretch to gamely prevail by a half a length. This pick, however, is mainly based on the fast that Baffert ships this horse in from the West Coast, and he doesn’t tend to waste time when he does so because he always means business. The other fascinating horse in the field is #7 Carbone from trainer Steve Asmussen. He has started his career 2-for-2 and both of those wins have come in wire-to-wire fashion, including when stretching out to a mile in his second start.

The Play:  Bet #5 Wynstock (4-1) to win and box him in the exacta with #7 Carbone (9-2).