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.

Keeneland, Race 9, $400,000 Stonestreet Lexington Stakes, post time 5:16 p.m. ET

The Grade 3 Stonestreet Lexington Stakes is the final official race on the road to the Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve. While the Lexington did not draw any horse that will make the Derby this year, it still enlists a competitive nine-horse field that will make the race interesting to bet on. It seems that the morning line probably has it right in this race with #3 Bullard, #6 Gosger, and, and #7 Praetor listed as the three favorites, but the member of that trio who seems to be unjustly disrespected is Bullard, who is listed as the best odds of the three at 9-2. Bullard won his first two career outings including a victory in the Grade 3 Bob Hope Stakes at Del Mar last fall when he beat Madaket Road, who at that time was a first starter but who has since gone on to finish in the top four of several stakes races including a runner-up finish the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes. Bullard got beaten by another tough customer, Barnes, last time in the Grade 2 San Vicente Stakes but he was not embarrassed in that first career loss. Bullard has yet to race as far as this race’s 1 1/16-mile distance, but the suspicion is that trainer Michael McCarthy would not be coming all this way and bringing Bullard’s regular rider Umberto Rispoli if he thought his horse would falter. Meanwhile, Praetor is the morning-line favorite based on two straight wins at a mile for Chad Brown. He should be tough making his stakes debut here. Gosger turned some heads last time when getting his maiden win going a mile at Gulfstream Park in his second lifetime start. He earned a good speed figure for that victory and still has plenty of chance at further improvement.

The Play: Bet on #3 Bullard (9-2) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta boxes with #6 Gosger (7-2) and #7 Praetor (2-1).

Keeneland, Race 10, $650,000 Jenny Wiley Stakes, post time 5:48 p.m. ET

Saturday’s Grade 1 feature race at Keeneland has drawn a field of nine fillies and mares set to race 1 1/16 miles on the turf and has attracted the 1-2 finishers from January’s TAA Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf Invitational Stakes Presented by SirDavis American Whisky, #5 Be Your Best and #8 Sacred Wish. There is a lot of good competition on hand in this race as you would expect in a Grade 1 feature at Keeneland, but all of the foreign invaders seem to have slight knocks on them and I’ll be betting on a Be Your Best and Sacred Wish repeat, especially at their tantalizing morning line odds of 6-1 and 8-1, respectively. Be Your Best comes in on a three-race graded-stakes winning streak and now picks up Irad Ortiz Jr. in the irons. The presence of the speedy #7 Kehoe Beach will scare some bettors off the Be Your Best bandwagon, but Kehoe Beach should actually help Be Your Best by giving her a target to rate off of. While the pace scenario may be tricky to navigate, that’s why you have Irad aboard and this is why he gets paid the big bucks. Sacred Wish rallied to finish just a neck short of Be Your Best at Gulfstream Park last time and the race before that she was a Grade 1 winner in Del Mar’s Matriarch Stakes. She rarely runs a bad effort. The main intrigue in this race is figuring out the foreign invaders that are among the top contenders; however, each of them comes with their own faults. #1 Excellent Truth is making her first start off an eight-month layoff, #2 Choisya perhaps faced questionable competition recently in Dubai, and #6 Jabaara is being stretched out further than she’s even been before at this distance with just a 7 ½-furlong all-weather prep race in her back pocket for 2025. Of that trio, the preference would be Choisya. While she does have her question marks, one of those question marks does not concern her present form, which is excellent based on back-to-back stakes wins at Meydan at one mile and at 1 1/8 miles. This 1 1/16-mile distance should be right in her wheelhouse.

The Play: Bet on #5 Be Your Best (6-1) to win and play her in exacta and trifecta boxes with #2 Choisya (4-1) and #8 Sacred Wish (8-1).