G'day. You're right Neil. We've got plenty of on-line totes/bookies/exchanges to scan through, looking for "better" prices, if we wish to do so.
Tailwag. Write that book!!!!!
You're right about picking up on "who's who" when you're on-course;though, since I'm following the longer-priced runners, the trainer is often the one to "sniff" around. Sometimes this means actually seeing some lesser-known trainer (who knows what these one's look like?)puttimg a few hundred on some rank outsider, but this is VERY difficult. However, when you spot something "suspicious" with a trainer you DO recognise, then you have to start snooping.
For example (I already mentioned this once before) I saw Bruce McLachlan sitting in the owner's box at a mid-week Brisbane meeting when a 33-1 shot bolted in and the jubilation thereafter between Bruce and the two owners. The point, however,was that BM had THREE horses in that race, with not a sign of the (beaten, more-favoured) horseowners anywhere!! Lesson drawn: when Bruce has the horse "ready" he only bothers calling the "right" owner to sit with. Find out which horse that bloke with Bruce owns!!!!

It's all so very interesting when you stop and try and analyse it. For many years I went to the races and had a mindset of a punter. Then for a few other years I was an owner and I thought differently. These days I am harnessing computers to do the remembering for me as I get older, I have never had a good memory for dates, times, prices etc. but can wave and say G'day to almost every person on most local tracks from the gatekeeper to head Steward and everyone in between.

The point of this illustration is that there are many aspects to having a punt. You attack it from your point of view and your circumstances. You are in the main, either a race goer or stay at home punter (the TAB is home in this sense).

Whatever led you to today and this forum, along the many many highways and detours has prepared you for a unique mindset, one where you try to understand everyone else and for the most part try to neutralise your own impressions.

You do this, or should be trying to do this, so that your results are not tainted with too much of you, but rather a true neutral set of results based on data that is accurate, and sourced from wherever you get it to fulfil the purpose of your system.

Even the attribution of weighting your criteria for ranking purposes should be as neutral as possible in the early stages of formation of your system. Only after it has been developed to a high degree, might you then flavour it with your own opinions and tastes in the form of 'Tweaking' it for better results. At that stage you would have already had a baseline results percentage to work with.

So, my point is that there are differences, enormous differences between the home punter and race goer and unless you are one of those rare disciplined race goers who can stick to his system at the track whilst the whole world is yelling a one-goer, then you are indeed a unique and special breed, and a better man than I :-)

Okay, that's the rave for today. If you're young and reading this, it might sound like a crock, if you are middle aged it will sound feasible, if you are at the 'Bell-lap' of your life, then you will see overwhelmingly what I am on about.

Tailwag