What is a Wheel Bet in Horse Racing?

There are many different types of bets in horse racing.  One wager you may enjoy is called “wheel betting.”  When you place a wheel bet, you select a key horse to win, and then you choose a collection of horses to finish in the subsequent places.  There are a number of variations on the wheel bet, so the exact places depend on the exact type of wheel bet.  Optionally, you can also choose to have your key horse place second or third or so on.  The collection of horses you are selecting for the other places are the horses you are “wheeling” for those positions. 

So for example, if you choose a particular horse to place second, and a collection of horses to place first and third, you are “wheeling” the first and third finishers.  The only horse you are certain of is the key horse that you have selected for second place.  So wheeling is a great choice when you are confident you know how one horse will finish, but are not sure about any others. 

There are two main types of wheel bets (talking about straight wheel bets—we will get to exotic wheel bets in a moment):

·         Full wheel:  This is a wager where all the horses in the race are brought into the wheel bet.  You choose a key horse to finish in a particular position, and then “wheel” all the rest to finish in the other positions. 

·         Part wheel:  This is a variation on the wheel bet where you only choose some of the other horses to “wheel” on.  Once again, you have a key horse that you are determining will finish in a particular position.  You simply are not incorporating all the horses into your wager.

Just as you can place a wheel bet on a straight wager, you can place a wheel bet on an exotic bet.  In fact, you can do it with most types of exotic bets.  Here are some different types of wheel bets you can place on exotic wagers:

• Exacta Wheel
• Exacta Part-Wheel
• Trifecta Wheel
• Trifecta Part-Wheel
• Superfecta Wheel
• Superfecta Part-Wheel
• Daily Double Wheel
• Daily Double Part-Wheel

One great thing about online betting is that it makes it fairly easy to select the horses you want for a wheel bet.  In person, this can be rather complicated, but online, the selection is made simple by your betting site.  While you are at it, be sure to learn about box wagers.  This is another type of bet which you can use when you aren’t sure of the exact placement of horses in a race, but still want to get in on the action!