The Preakness Stakes is the 2nd leg of the Triple Crown and is performed at Maryland's historical 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, much 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 great prestige for all of its runners.

The Preakness is one of 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 factor for horses looking to go far on their own in the reproducing shed when their time on the track is completed.

Obviously, the popular race is offered to bet on in a variety of methods. Make certain to take a look at our best horse racing wagering sites 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 used to be that players would require to be at a racetrack or an off-track pureblooded parlor (OTB) to put wagers on horse racing. Thanks to the expansion of online wagering, gamers now have a variety of options to bet from the convenience of the own home in states where horse gambling is legal. Here are a few of the online wagering alternatives:

Online Racebooks for the 2025 Preakness Stakes

Twinspires Racebook

The business that brings you the Kentucky Derby has its own wagering platform. This site uses free Brisnet Past Performances to all tracks as long as you bet the cost of the item on the track you chose.

It also consists of betshare (desktop just) which allows players to divide bets into multiple shares and sell to their friends. This implies that gamers can play much bigger tickets with little amounts of threat. When the bet succeeds, Twinspires will divide the payment similarly to each player's account based upon the size of their share.

Preakness Promotion: $200 Signup Bonus for new members.

TVG Racebook

TVG might be familiar to numerous as it is typically the horse racing network featured in choose cable bundles. Along with being a television network, TVG runs an online betting platform too. Like Twinspires they have free Equibase Past Performances as long as you wager the expense of your past efficiencies on the track you chose.

Its user interface is fairly simple to follow and the mobile version is one of the most convenient to browse. For new gamers, they make it exceptionally easy to copy tickets created by their experts. TVG uses a number of promos that can assist users successfully reduce takeout such as the cash Back Special promo.

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

BetOnline Sportsbook & Horse Racing

BetOnline is an incredibly popular outlet for sports betting, however they also provide horse wagering lines too!

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

Preakness Stakes Betting Options

The Preakness offers the complete complement of horse racing bets. All bets by means of on-site wagering or from online wagering platforms enter into a parimutuel, or gamer vs. gamer, pool. This is a plain contrast to the gamer vs. house model used in sports wagering.

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

WPS Bets

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

It is more tough to pick the winner than it is to choose a horse that might end up in the leading 3. For this reason, the payouts are nearly certain to decrease the simpler the bets get.

In 2020 a filly named 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 implies you are putting $2 to win, location, and reveal on the horse. This costs $6. The benefit is that you can still pay if your horse is available in 3rd. However, this technique is best to be used when the horse you like is outside of 10-1.

Another is what is called a ladder bet. This is far more beneficial when betting a horse at shorter chances. In the ladder, a player sizes their win, location, and reveal bets differently to make sure a small profit if their horse surfaces in any position in the top 3. A typically utilized $20 ladder is a $3 win, $5 location, and $12 program bet on a single horse.

Vertical Exotics

Another bet category is referred to as vertical exotics. Undoubtedly these kinds of bets are the most popular on Preakness day. They are played by regular horseplayers and newbies alike.

The most attractive part of these wagers is that they can offer much larger payments than WPS bets, but they are also exceptionally hard to hit because they need you to not only identify who will win, but who will come in 2nd, 3rd, and sometimes 4th.

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

Boxing Wagers

A popular technique for brand-new gamers is to "box" horses. In this situation, you cover all possible combinations of your wager. For instance, a $0.50 trifecta on 1/2/3 costs simply $0.50. However, if the horses end up 2/1/3 you do not win because you had the 1 and the 2 in the incorrect order.

Boxing repairs all of that. In the example above you might acquire a $0.50 trifecta box on 1,2,3. The cost increases to $3 for the wager as you purchase all of the 6 possible surfaces that consist of the 1,2, and 3 as the top 3 horses. In this case, you would pay out on the 2/1/3 surface.

Players can box as many horses as they want, but tickets get pricey quickly. A two-horse exacta box costs simply $2 while a 3 horse box costs $6 and a 4 horse box costs $12. Remember you are buying all possible results that include your numbers. Be careful not to box a lot of short-priced horses that will lead to payouts less than your financial investment.

Horizontals

Horizontal wagers require gamers just to select winners, but to win the bet players must select winners of successive races. The downside is that one upset can result in 2,3, or 4 other truly good opinions being rendered worthless.

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 year's Kentucky Derby winner, Sovereignty, will not take part in this week's Preakness Stakes. Here is the field of horses running, along with their early odds:

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 use a number of quality horse wagering websites when seeking to bet this Saturday, including the BetOnline Racebook.

Preakness Stakes Picks

Much like the saber-metrics age of baseball, horse racing has an unique and varied set of statistics featured in the previous efficiencies to help players examine a horse's ability. To someone not familiar with how to read them, it can be like reading a book in a different language.

Not to worry! Whether you are brand 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 clearness to the horse racing puzzle.

Premium bundles are readily available for as low as $4.99 and provide a broad selection of handy tools consisting of speed and speed analysis, win percentage estimations and expert choices.

The History of the Preakness

The Preakness was first run was in 1873 and the winner is adorned in Black-Eyed Susans, the state flower of Maryland. It is usually the 2nd leg of the Triple Crown though it was relocated 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 a rich and tumultuous history. It was created before the Kentucky Derby, but took breaks in its running and has actually 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 several times in which horses of all ages might contend. In a handicap race, extra weight is carried by horses based upon age or accomplishment which ought to in theory adjust the competition.

Modern History

In the last few years the monetary situation at Pimlico has resulted in many reports of the race being moved once 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 worked with local municipalities to bring the required upgrades to Pimlico and keep the race there for the foreseeable future.

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

Traditions

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

In an effort to keep the excellent times rolling Pimlico produced 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 events, runners, and trends leading up to the Preakness and throughout the Triple Crown series. Don't forget to inspect back thens leading up to the race for our exclusive Preakness wagering guide.