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.

The Breeders’ Cup is finally here, and with it comes two of the year’s biggest and best days of racing and wagering that we all have been waiting for. Let’s get right into it with the Breeders’ Cup edition of Weekend Winners and focus on two Saturday “best bet” races from Keeneland including the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile and the Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf. If we can hit it big, we can roll that money over in the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic in the finale. For my Classic analysis, please see the ABR staff’s separate Classic trifecta strategies article. Enjoy the 2026 Breeders’ Cup and best of luck!

Saturday, Oct. 31

Keeneland, Race 6, $1,000,000 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, post time 2:26 p.m. ET

The Dirt Mile did not get a headline field this year, but maybe that’s a good thing because it shapes up as one of the interesting betting races on the card. There will be chances to get good payoffs. #7 Bracket Buster has shown flashes of brilliance including two races ago when he won the $200,000 West Virginia Governor’s Stakes at Mountaineer Park by 15 lengths with a 108 Beyer Speed Figure. He won two 3-year-old stakes last year, finished a distant second to Sovereignty in last year’s Grade 1 DraftKings Travers Stakes, and has looked good so far in his current two-race comeback as a 4-year-old including his runner-up finish last time in the $300,000 Parx Dirt Mile Stakes, which he lost because he got shuffled back badly behind the tiring 80-1 early leader on the turn. With a clean trip, this could be the blockbuster breakout race Bracket Buster has been hinting at. We can add a longshot to our exactas and trifectas with #9 Forged Steel, who earned an automatic fees-paid berth into the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic when he won last month’s Grade 1 Goodwood Stakes at Santa Anita Park, yet instead goes in this Dirt Mile spot for trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. While both of Forged Steel’s graded stakes wins this year have come at longer trips, he has done well in two-turn outings at roughly this distance in his career and has the tactical speed to stay in the thick of the action throughout. He has looked very good when on his best game this year, and he is being drastically underestimated at 15-1 odds on the morning line. With a longshot firmly in our bets, the favorite in the race certainly also becomes playable in the exactas and trifectas, and that will be a good strategy with the 3-year-old #1 Further Ado, who exits a solid second-place finish in the Grade 1 Pennsylvania Derby. By far his career-best outing to date happened on this racetrack at Keeneland when he won this spring’s Grade 1 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes by 11 lengths, and when you add that to his 20-length Keeneland maiden win in the fall of 2024, it becomes hard to argue with the handicappers that conclude Further Ado is indeed a Keeneland “horse for the course.” If that’s the case, it will be difficult to keep him out of the exacta and/or trifecta.

The Play: Bet on #7 Bracket Buster (7-2) to win and play him in exacta and trifecta boxes along with #1 Further Ado (2-1) and #9 Forged Steel (15-1).

Keeneland, Race 11, $5,000,000 Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf, post time 5:36 p.m. ET

Minaret Station (Eclipse Sportswire)

A full 14-horse field of top grass horses has been drawn for the 1 ½-mile Breeders’ Cup Turf and this race is a total toss-up and one of Saturday’s tougher puzzles. Europeans usually dominate the Turf and that may the case once again this year, but it doesn’t especially look like many of Europe’s best horses came over for this year’s Turf which opens the race up for an American upsetter. Many handicappers rooting for the “home team” probably will gravitate to well-known winners such as #4 Far Bridge or #6 Burnham Square, but the real contender to become the first American winner of this race since Horse of the Year Bricks and Mortar in 2019 is #3 Minaret Station, who finally lived up to his immense potential last time and looked good doing it with a win in Belmont Park’s Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Stakes. He beat some of these same horses and gave the impression he was only just beginning to scratch the surface of his ability finally for trainer Will Walden and jockey Jose Ortiz. One thing in particular that opens the door for an upset in this race is the fact that the European challengers like #10 Tiffany, #11 Survie, #12 Diamond Necklace, and #13 Bay City Roller (who is making his third start of the month in three different countries) all drew far outside posts. At Keeneland, the 1 ½-mle Turf is a three-turn race – no picnic for the outside posts. A couple of those wide horses might work out decent trips, but all of them definitely won’t. The best chance of the lot belongs Diamond Necklace, who finished third in France’s Group 1 Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe last time and goes out for trainer Aidan O’Brien, who will be aiming for his unprecedented eighth win in the Turf. Horses coming out of the Arc have had a checkered past in the Turf, but 3-year-old filly Diamond Necklace is a four-time Group 1 winner from the barn of the only trainer ever to win a past running of this race with a 3-year-old filly (Found, 2015). Finally, let’s give props to the defending BC Turf champion, #1 Ethical Diamond. He didn’t have a great start to the season in 2026, but his form appears to have made a late-summer resurgence.

The Play: Bet on #3 Minaret Station (15-1) to win and play him in “Diamond” exacta and trifecta boxes along with #1 Ethical Diamond (10-1) and #12 Diamond Necklace (3-1).