rooburger, just by way of input, I watched a very interesting profile of a professional punter by the name of John Goff based in York England (many years ago) it was a documentary type programme, which followed his expliots for several weeks.
He was very well known at the tracks and his tactic was to first weigh up the odds on offer, then he had OTHER people place bets on several horses that were being offered at "over the odds" @ fixed odds, he then went and personally placed bets openly on several of these horses, which caused great hoards of people to follow suit, which in turn caused the odds to decrease dramatically and the odds of the other main chances to blow, of course he then had his "people" place bets at the inflated odds on these, so that no matter what, he collected a %.

He was in fact "making a book" but just tilting things in his favour LEGALLY!

So YES he was beating the book by Maths. I, in my humble way tried to emulate this tactic when it happenned naturally, but of course it was so rare that I couldn't claim any fame.

But I think though in the sense that you are talking about it is unlikely by MOST to beat the book by maths, I think the people who WIN long term are just pure lucky ( laugh at the word luck at your peril) or and most often are people who have such an incredible knowledge and understanding of horses, odds etc etc that they can come out in front.