HUH???

That's like saying the favourite shouldn't have been the favourite because it didn't win the race. Want to expand on that a little? You're not suggesting that the top rater should win every race are you??

Don't know about anyone else, but if I could get MY Ratings to consistently show a Profit, I'm sure I wouldn't make them publicly available.
What would be the Point?

If you want Ratings that DO make a Profit, then you shall have to purchase them.
But funny how so many Ratings are about from various places, but i don't recall anyone stating that their ratings make a Profit on a Flat Staking Investment.
Perhaps Punters Choice has that Information.
But then you would need to Purchase that I guess.

The Market that the Animals start at is pretty much a consensus of all methods and ratings that are around, and as soon as a Selection method becomes available that does better than the others, the Market soon reflects the Method and those selections start shorter and eventually begin paying the 15% or so less than what they should.

EXACTLY!

If the Favourite had every opportunity to win the Race, and didn't, then surely it shouldn't have been Favourite.
Surely the Caulfield Cup Winner shouldn't have been 50 to 1.
Any Winner should never have been a 50 to 1 Chance.

The TOP Rater should run like a top Rater.
If it don't, then the Race needs to be analysed afterr the event to find out why it didn't perform.
But as Punters we like to spend our time trying to predict winners of future races and nowhere near enough time is spent looking at previous Races.

Those that have videotapes of previous Races are the Punters who have the opportunity of finding those animals who are way over the odds, regardless of whether they are top Raters or not.

But that's the argument moeee,

It doesn't matter whether the horse won the race or not, as long as it was value.
It's easy to pick a horse as a top rater and rate it at evens and it wins, this does not mean the ratings were accurate because it won, the accuracy is not in the result but in the value.

For example, I can rate 100 races where the top rated horse is rated at evens and even if 50% of them win, this is still not justification.

The real justification comes when I back only those that I can get $2.20 on and I make 10% POT. This is the only proof that the ratings are accurate and outperform the market.

There are many ratings services out in the market, which claim x% of top raters win, x% of the top 2 win x% of races and they are mostly correct.
However, they are of little use when backing the overlays produces a negative result.

The winner of the Caulfield Cup should not have been a top rated horse simply because it won, but certainly the price was an overlay, just as Weekend Hussler and Littorio were a bit too skinny, but they should not necessarily have been further down the ratings just because they didn't perform on the day.

I personally don't think it's possible to get all the winners top rated no matter which method one uses - it's all about value.

With all due respect moeee, the BEST horse does not win every race. And conversely, the winner of the race is not the best horse in the race just because it won.

A true 50% chance will win every second race. It can be the 'best' horse in both races, but as a true 50% chance it will only win one. Just because it's beaten on the day by a rank outsider (who manages to win it's first race after 50 starts and is paying it's correct $50) does not mean that the $2 is no longer the best horse in the race, nor that $2 was not the correct price for that horse.

Cheers,
Chris.

I can't see the odds changing for a coinflip because heads came up.

Some of this sounds like manufactured 'special pleading', especially when we start talking about 'correctly' rating a horse and recognising overlays[?]. We win only if we correctly pick the winner regardless of ratings or overlays. Any mechanical 'science' of picking winners requires 'all' facts to be known and that will never be possible in this game. Art and intuition plays a big roll in picking winners. There will never be a mechanical science of picking winners as horses and Jockeys aren't machines and many unknown variables decide a winner more often than not.

I picked up a 15/1 shot today (Kyneton r5/5 SUPERIOR SHADOW 16.60w Stab) and my decision to back it had nothing to do with science, ratings or perceived overlay, just good old form study and a bit of art and intuition.

With all due respect Stebbo, I never said the BEST horse wins every Race.
And the TOP Rater is not necessarily the BEST Horse in the race.
But the Top Rater should have run very close to winning the Race.
If it didn't, then there must have been an excuse, or the Ratings are Crap.

I rated a Race today and my TOP Rater ran Last, and my 2nd Rated ran unplaced.
They both began well and bumped into each other putting one of them out of the Race.The other may have worked too hard early.
The winner wasn't Rated a Chance.
Obviously the winner was capable of winning the Race, and I didn't expect it to perform at its Peak today.

And this is where most selection services go wrong.
Predicting whether an animal will perform at its Peak Ability today , or like in the Caulfield Cup, where the Top Raters didn't , for reasons that are obvious now.

A question I have for those who bet ratings for overlays, is how many do you back in a race? If for example oyu rate a race, and there are 5 horses which are overlays, would oyu back them all? Or would you only focus on the top 2 or 3 in your ratings?

In theory I guess if you have efficeint ratings that are more accurate than teh market, oyu would bet them all, but I would assume that it would be next to impossible to have ratings which are that accurate?

I suppose it depends upon how you define BEST. In this context, I define BEST as meaning the horse with the best chance of winning the race. Granted there are other definitions of BEST.

Given my definition, then I would think it mandatory that a ratings system put what it has calculated to be the BEST horse on top.

Cheers,
Chris.