Time flies when you’re on the Triple Crown trail. The 2019 Preakness Stakes is this Saturday, May 18th at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland; at press time, Improbable is the +175 favorite at Bovada Racebook Preakness Stakes Odds, followed by War of Will at +275. With the post positions now drawn and the field set, online horse betting on the Preakness will begin in earnest, with a multitude of different betting options at your disposal.

If you watched the 2019 Kentucky Derby, you'll notice two horses are missing from the 2019 Preakness: Maximum Security and Country House. Maximum Security was disqualified after winning the Derby, he withdrew from the Preakness. Country House caught a virus and will not compete as well.

Aside from the futures market, the most popular way to bet on the Preakness Stakes is the simple “straight wager” known as Win/Place/Show. It doesn’t get much easier than betting on your favorite horse to win, but if you prefer something a little less risky, you can also bet on your favorite horse to finish anywhere in the Top 2 (place) or the Top 3 (show). Nyquist was the 7/10 favorite to win 2016's Preakness; he came in third, but he still paid out $2.20 on every $2 show bet.
 

Completing the Trifecta

Preakness Stakes betting is even more fun when you pick more than one horse. The exacta, trifecta and superfecta wagers will be very busy this Saturday; for these bets, you pick the first two, three and four horses respectively to cross the finish line, in exactly the right order. The more horses you put on your ticket, the bigger the prize gets. Last year’s Preakness superfecta was worth $327.50 for every $1 wager.

To make these exotic bets a little less risky, you can place a boxed wager and pick the horses in question to finish in any order. A boxed exacta is called a quinella; in this case, you pick two horses for the Preakness, and they can finish 1-2 or 2-1. Or you can split the difference and make a wheeled bet where you specify one horse to finish in a certain position, and the remaining horses in any order. For example, you could bet Always Dreaming to win the Preakness, then add Classic Empire and Lookin at Lee to finish 2-3 or 3-2.
 

Preakness Stakes Picks

If you’d rather stick with betting on the winner, but you still want to make a combo bet, you can bet on which horses will win consecutive races on the card. This could be two races (the famous Daily Double), three races (Pick 3) or four races (Pick 4). There are 14 different races on Saturday’s card at Pimlico, including eight graded stakes, so the betting options are almost endless.

Unfortunately, you can't use the coupled entry betting option for the Preakness; anytime more than one horse from the same stable/trainer appears in a race, you can group them together and get paid if any of them win. Unlike the Derby, legendary trainer Bob Baffert only has one horse in the Preakness.

If you're looking for the latest odds on the Preakness, check out the Bovada.lv/Preakess-Stakes page for odds and info on every horse.

Or, if you want to learn how to bet on straight and exotic wagers, check out our Preakness Stakes Betting Guide for a quick tutorial.

 

*Odds as of May 13, 2019