How can you not win on the punt???
 

You could randomly select a horse in each race and back it to win and lose 10% over time. This loss could be reduced by getting the best odds available, but 10% is a nice figure to use as a starting point.

To reduce your losses you could eliminate any horse that opens longer than pre-post. Do you own Due Diligence but the failure rate of horses opening longer than pre-post is astounding.

You could also eliminate horses that start at 50's or longer.

You could also eliminate horses that have a high Win S/Rate in Group 2 events and higher.

The above suggestions, I believe, would put you in profit.

Add the overbet factor of popular horses in leading stables and the list of things other than form that will tip the odds in your favour goes on.

You make a good point here, Barny.

One would need to throw more than 1 dart to get to your 'random selection' with your various filters however, or miss the race when the filters are executed? I guess you could strip out out the non-contenders 1st, then throw a dart at the remaining qualifiers OR pick the highest TAB no. An interesting high-level perspective on the punt I reckon.

In all honesty, I think that most of us here might make it much more complicated than it needs to be at times. Perhaps this is partly because;

1. Punting is what we prefer to do with our spare time so we are open to 'labouring the point' or even over-analysing the exercise to 'get the hours in' (or avoid doing something else?)
2. It is not 100% mechanical / intellectual as an exercise i.e. being a human behaviour is loaded with all the emotion, bias, predujices and limiting beliefs that we face in our everyday lives.

Having said that and despite the fact that we are all 'blood and bone' and prone to dumb decisions at times(myself included!), I am all for taking the straightest - simplest line line when it comes to achieving a given objective, assuming there is an element of logic to the approach, of course. Which is why I kind of like it when you come up with a big picture view like this, Barny.

Just getting out my dart set now...

Cheers LG

This is the reason i love ratings so much LG it does take away the emotion from the selection side of things, i prefer to put my emotions in to the result and plan to never be one of these people that just say "oh good i got it right and selected that winner" but want to be the type of person you see jumping around when you have a good day, i will never be ashamed to show my emotions this way or side step the question of "so what do you do for a living"

The simplest way would be betting NZ races.
No Rhyme or reason in their racing.

Perth racing is nice and stable with less runners around the form often lines up well.

The NZérs have found two new uses for sheep darkydog2002.

Meat and wool ............ ;)

excellent post LG.

As was yours, Barny.

Cheers LG

I'm absolutely CERTAIN that emotion plays a decent part in many a race and affects the odds quite substantially. I'll give an example ..... In quite a lot of races, the bookies just "know"" which horse the punters are going to come for, and they play their hand accordingly, like a decent poker player among mugs, the bookies can suck the punters in, and if you're on the ball, there's your 10% to 20% right there in the price bet on another decent chance that's not being "overbet". If you continue to take advantage of the emotion in the punt then you're helping tip the odds in your favour.

Tom Waterhouse, during the carnivals, is a huge source of information and confirmation that the bookies know what's going to happen, who's going to bet on what, and the ability of these professionals to offer the illusion that you're on the class horse / the one everyone wants is just masterful. End result is that when you get beaten you're in the same elite company as the pro's !!!!, that's got to be a good thing doesn't it ?????, as the pro's win over the long term, so will you over the long term ..... Ahhhh, you've finally made it !!!!! That's the illusion !!!!!!!! Tell me I'm wrong and there's not a small % to be had here .............

Hats off for your honesty here, Shaun.. I geddit mate

LG