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.

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.

There’s only a few more weeks of 2025 remaining and the year has flown by. The Gulfstream Park Championship Meet is already rolling right along and the quality of racing and wagering at the meet is beginning to hit its high point. Gulfstream will host a very bettable 11-race program this Saturday headlined by a pair of stakes races for 3-year-olds on the grass – the Tropical Park Oaks and the Tropical Park Derby. For this weekend’s winners, let’s focus on these two tough, wide-open races. If we can sort out the winners, we should be well on the way to a profitable day at Gulfstream Park. Best of luck.

Saturday, Dec. 13

Gulfstream Park, Race 8, $125,000 Tropical Park Oaks, post time 3:47 p.m. ET

A full field of 3-year-old fillies is set to go 1 1/16 miles on the turf in the Tropical Park Oaks for a purse of $125,000. It’s not a graded stakes race but it’s a graded stakes-caliber field and a great betting race. The horse to beat is #3 And One More Time for trainer Mark Casse, who returned from a year layoff last time to win a mile turf race at Woodbine in her 3-year-old debut. She was the winner of Woodbine’s Grade 1 Johnnie Walker Natalma Stakes as a 2-year-old and it was good to see that she posted a solid speed figure in her return win. She should improve further Saturday in her second outing after the long layoff. #4 Destino d’Oro is another graded stakes-caliber contender in this field that should be included in your wagers. She was the winner of this summer’s Grade 3 Pucker Up Stakes at Ellis Park for trainer Brad Cox, and her two losses since then have both come in extraordinarily tough spots in the $2 million Blackwood Dueling Grounds Oaks Invitational Stakes and in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes Presented by Dixiana. Destino d’Oro is a versatile filly that can stalk the pace or close from far back, and Cox seems to have found an ideal spot for her form to take a positive turnaround, #5 Mischief in Motion has run well in similar stakes spots to this one in her last two races and is another serious contender in this race. She won Delaware Park’s $151,000 Christiana Stakes in wire-to-wire fashion two races ago and then finished second by a length last time in the $75,000 Cellars Shiraz Stakes at this course and distance after racing too close to a blazing fast pace. If hot-riding Emisael Jaramillo (9 wins in 34 mounts, 26% at the meet) can throttle down her speed a notch today, she could have enough gas left in the tank to threaten to go all the way.

The Play: Bet on #3 And One More Time (5-1) to win and play her in exacta and trifecta boxes along with #4 Destino d’Oro (3-1), and #5 Mischief in Motion (10-1).

Gulfstream Park, Race 11, $125,000 Tropical Park Derby, post time 5:17 p.m. ET

Another full field of stakes horses has been assembled for the nightcap on the 11-race card, the Tropical Park Derby going 1 1/16 miles on the grass. Go home a winner with a bet on #7 Chapman’s Peak, who has been in great form in three straight turf races with a maiden win at Kentucky Downs, an allowance win at Keeneland, and a near-miss second-place finish in a very tough edition of Churchill Downs’ Grade 3 Commonwealth Turf Stakes in quick succession in his last three races. He is still improving in every race and will be extremely tough to beat. Three horses in this field are exiting the Grade 3 Hill Prince Stakes at Aqueduct including the winner #3 Tiz Dashing, who put it all together for his career-best race after running competitively this summer in a pair of graded stakes spots at Saratoga. He’s another 3-year-old that is still getting better and has a solid chance to end the year with a win. Finally, we have #12 Souper Forces and #6 Layabout who exit a 1-2 finish in last month’s $75,000 Showing Up Stakes on the turf at Gulfstream Park where Souper Forces prevailed by a half a length. Actually, it may have been Layabout, however, who ran the better race of the two after sitting too close to the fast pace from post position 11. Layabout’s draw is better in this race, as this time it is Souper Forces that drew the extreme outside post. Layabout is a former stakes winner on this turf course and he picks up Junior Alvarado for the mount.

The Play: Bet on #7 Chapman’s Peak (5-2) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta boxes along with #3 Tiz Dashing (7-2), and #6 Layabout (10-1).