The Preakness Stakes is the second leg of the Triple Crown and is performed at Maryland's historic Pimlico Race Track. It is named for the first winner of the Dinner Party Stakes at the track.

The Preakness holds a race on the Friday before, just like the Kentucky Derby.

For the Derby-winning connections, it implies the next pursuit en path to joining the greats like War Admiral, Secretariat, and American Pharoah as a Triple Crown winner. However, the Preakness holds fantastic status for all of its runners.

The Preakness is among a handful of grade 1 stakes races provided for 3-year-olds in the United States all year. Winning a Grade 1 race is a crucial aspect for horses looking to make a name on their own in the breeding shed when their time on the track is finished.

Naturally, the popular race is offered to bet on in a variety of methods. Make sure to have a look at our finest horse racing betting websites prior to securing any bets.

2025 Preakness Stakes Event Details

When: Saturday, May 17 Where: Pimlico Race Course (Baltimore, Maryland). When: Approximately 6:50 p.m. ET. How to Watch: NBC

How to Bet The Preakness 2025

It utilized to be that players would need to be at a racetrack or an off-track purebred parlor (OTB) to put wagers on horse racing. Thanks to the proliferation of online betting, gamers now have a variety of alternatives to bet from the comfort of the own home in states where horse gambling is legal. Here are a few of the online wagering options:

Online Racebooks for the 2025 Preakness Stakes

Twinspires Racebook

The company that brings you the Kentucky Derby has its own betting platform. This website uses free Brisnet Past Performances to all tracks as long as you bet the cost of the item on the track you selected.

It also includes betshare (desktop just) which allows players to divide bets into several shares and offer to their pals. This suggests that gamers can play much larger tickets with little amounts of danger. When the bet succeeds, Twinspires will divide the payout equally to each gamer's account based upon the size of their share.

Preakness Promotion: $200 Signup Bonus for brand-new members.

TVG Racebook

TVG might be familiar to many as it is normally the horse racing network featured in select cable bundles. Along with being a tv network, TVG runs an online wagering platform also. Like Twinspires they have complimentary Equibase Past Performances as long as you bet the cost of your previous performances on the track you picked.

Its user interface is fairly easy to follow and the mobile version is among the easiest to navigate. For new gamers, they make it very easy to copy tickets produced by their analysts. TVG offers a variety of promotions that can assist users effectively decrease takeout such as the cash Back Special promo.

Preakness Promotion: $200 Risk-free wager for brand-new players.

BetOnline Sportsbook & Horse Racing

BetOnline is an extremely popular outlet for sports wagering, however they likewise offer horse betting lines also!

Mainly understood for sports wagering, BetOnline does offer horse racing for users where it is allowed their home state. For others, they might require to turn to alternative to position horse wagers.

Preakness Stakes Betting Options

The Preakness provides the full complement of horse racing bets. All bets through on-site betting or from online wagering platforms enter into a parimutuel, or player vs. gamer, pool. This is a stark contrast to the gamer vs. home model used in sports betting.

Horse racing bets are divided into 3 classifications. First is single horse bets, frequently described as WPS (pronounced "whips"). The bets are put on a single horse to win, place, or show. These bets have a $2 minimum and can be increased in increments of $1.

WPS Bets

Win: Your horse must finish 1st. Place: Your horse must finish 1st or 2nd. Show: Your horse must complete 1st, second, or 3rd

It is harder to select the winner than it is to pick a horse that could finish in the top 3. For this reason, the payouts are almost specific to reduce the easier the bets get.

In 2020 a filly called Swiss Skydiver upset Kentucky Derby winner Authentic.

Here were the $2 payments on Swiss Skydiver:

Win: $25.40. Place: $8.40. Show: $5.80

Across the Board and Ladders

In an effort to make WPS bets more hittable, lots of players will play a horse "Across the Board". This means you are putting $2 to win, place, and reveal on the horse. This costs $6. The advantage is that you can still pay out if your horse comes in 3rd. However, this strategy is best to be used when the horse you like is beyond 10-1.

Another popular strategy is what is called a ladder bet. This is much more useful when wagering a horse at much shorter odds. In the ladder, a player sizes their win, location, and show bets in a different way to ensure a little earnings if their horse surfaces in any position in the leading 3. A typically utilized $20 ladder is a $3 win, $5 location, and $12 program bet on a single horse.

Vertical Exotics

Another bet classification is referred to as vertical exotics. Undoubtedly these types of bets are the most popular on Preakness day. They are played by routine horseplayers and beginners alike.

The most enticing part of these wagers is that they can provide much bigger payments than WPS bets, but they are likewise exceptionally hard to hit due to the fact that they need you to not just determine who will win, however who will can be found in second, 3rd, and sometimes 4th.

Exacta ($ 1 minimum): You should pick the 1st & second finishers in order. Trifecta ($ 0.50 minimum): You need to select the first, 2nd, and 3rd finishers in order. Superfecta ($ 0.10 minimum): You need to choose the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and fourth finishers in order

Boxing Wagers

A popular strategy for brand-new players is to "box" horses. In this scenario, you cover all possible combinations of your wager. For instance, a $0.50 trifecta on 1/2/3 expenses simply $0.50. However, if the horses finish 2/1/3 you do not win due to the fact that you had the 1 and the 2 in the wrong order.

Boxing fixes all of that. In the example above you might buy a $0.50 trifecta box on 1,2,3. The cost goes up to $3 for the wager as you buy all of the 6 possible finishes that include the 1,2, and 3 as the leading 3 horses. In this case, you would pay out on the 2/1/3 finish.

Players can box as lots of horses as they desire, however tickets get pricey quickly. A two-horse exacta box expenses simply $2 while a 3 horse box costs $6 and a 4 horse box costs $12. Remember you are purchasing all possible outcomes that include your numbers. Beware not to box too lots of short-priced horses that will result in payments less than your financial investment.

Horizontals

Horizontal wagers need gamers only to choose winners, but to win the bet gamers should choose winners of successive races. The downside is that one upset can result in 2,3, or 4 other actually excellent viewpoints being rendered ineffective.

One horizontal that is quite popular is the Black-Eyed Susan-Preakness Double which requires a gamer to pick the Black-Eyed Susan winner on Friday and the Preakness winner on Saturday. This can be an enjoyable wager to stretch your gambling dollar throughout the two-day occasion.

2025 Preakness Stakes Field and Betting Odds

Unfortunately, this Derby winner, Sovereignty, will not partake in this week's Preakness Stakes. Here is the field of horses running, together with their early chances:

Journalism 6-5. Sandman 7-2. Goal Oriented 5-1. Clever Again 8-1. River Thames 8-1. American Promise 10-1. Gosger 15-1. Heart Of Honor 30-1. Pay Billy 30-1

Bettors can utilize a number of quality horse wagering websites when aiming to wager this Saturday, including the BetOnline Racebook.

Preakness Stakes Picks

Just like the saber-metrics period of baseball, horse racing has an unique and varied set of data featured in the past efficiencies to assist gamers evaluate a horse's ability. To someone unfamiliar with how to read them, it can be like checking out a book in a different language.

Not to worry! Whether you are brand name brand-new to the video game or an old pro, our partners at Daily Horse Picks offer a variety of AI handicapping resources to bring clarity to the horse racing puzzle.

Premium plans are offered for as low as $4.99 and offer a wide variety of useful tools including speed and speed analysis, win percentage computations and professional picks.

The History of the Preakness

The Preakness was very first run remained in 1873 and the winner is decorated in Black-Eyed Susans, the state flower of Maryland. It is generally the second leg of the Triple Crown though it was moved in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The race is run at a mile and 1/16 which is half a furlong much shorter than the Kentucky Derby.

The Preakness has an abundant and troubled history. It was created before the Kentucky Derby, however took breaks in its running and has even been moved far from Pimlico in the past.

Pre-Triple Crown Era

Before becoming a part of the Triple Crown the Preakness was run as a handicap race numerous times in which horses of all ages could complete. In a handicap race, additional weight is brought by horses based upon age or achievement which need to in theory adjust the competitors.

Modern History

In recent years the financial situation at Pimlico has actually caused numerous reports of the race being moved again with fellow Maryland track Laurel Park being named as the likely brand-new host. However, the Stronach group who runs both Pimlico and Laurel has actually worked with regional municipalities to bring the needed upgrades to Pimlico and keep the race there for the foreseeable future.

The 2020 Preakness saw Swiss Skydiver ended up being just the 6th filly to win the race and the very first since Rachel Alexandra in 2009. The Kenny McPeek filly beat 2020 Kentucky Derby winner Authentic. It was the very first time a Bob Baffert horse had won the Derby and failed to win the Preakness.

Traditions

While many Preakness goers get dressed to the nines, the race is renowned for its celebration environment. In the mid-2000s Pimlico was required to cancel its bring your own booze policy as viral videos showed the incredibly unsafe conditions of the infield party.

In an effort to keep the great times rolling Pimlico developed its more regulated version of the party called InfieldFest which was infamously led by its brief mascot "Kegasus".

Preakness Coverage

Betting News will continue to cover all of the occasions, runners, and trends leading up to the Preakness and throughout the Triple Crown series. Don't forget to check back in the days leading up to the race for our unique Preakness betting guide.