This is one hell of a field. The nine horses who will participate in the Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at New Jersey’s Monmouth Park have been announced, and Lawyer Ron is the slight favorite coming out of the 1-hole at 5-2.

If you believe the man who set the morning line at Monmouth, Lawyer Ron has the least value of the top contenders. “It was very difficult to separate the first three horses,” Brad Thomas told the Associated Press. The other two horses in question are Street Sense and Curlin, each at 3-1.

All of a sudden, Any Given Saturday has some value at 4-1. He was the cheval du jour after taking August’s Haskell Invitational at Monmouth, one of three straight wins heading into the Classic. But fifth favorite Hard Spun might be even more compelling at 8-1 after beating Street Sense at the Kentucky Cup Classic last month. There will be no easy choices among this quintet.

Don’t know a fetlock from a forearm? No worries. Betting on the horses doesn’t take countless hours of legwork (nyuk, nyuk). Here are three simple rules to follow in preparation for the upcoming Breeders’ Cup.

1: Pick a winner; this is a simple horse race. Strategy plays a much smaller role compared to, say, football. The fastest horses generally prevail; avoid the long shot unless your research tells you that horse actually has a solid chance to win.

2: Know your conditions. Some horses do better at sprints, or on grass, or in the rain. Look at the race conditions in question, and see how well your target horse has performed in those conditions.

3: Log in. There are plenty of experienced eyeballs on the top thoroughbreds, reporting their findings on the Web. If a horse doesn’t seem quite right heading into a race, you won’t know about it unless you read the news.