Are they?
I didn't realize that.
In fact , i assumed that they were amongst the major players of the tote pools.
But I have not been to a Racetrack for over 10 years now , so things sure have changed.

Unless I am missing something, the exact thing one should be looking for with their ratings is the situation where, for example, our rated $5.0 chance is actually paying double, triple or more.

I really don't get spending the time & effort producing a set of ratings which all but mirror what the market believes is the true chances for each runner - I mean why bother, this has already been done for you, & IMHO will not be successful longterm.

norisk, thats essentially how i'm using my ratings now.

I use my ratings in two ways:

One way is to bet every race that completes ratings on, using 3 of my top 5 ratings and tilting towards value - this is a more stable and consistent method.

Second is to bet only selective races and where there is significant value in my top rated horse - this is a more volatile but highly profitable (so far) method.

I definitely wouldn't even bother with putting the time and effort into my ratings if it wasn't giving me some kind of value-edge compared to what the market is already perceiving.

Norisk, while I agree the situation you describe above is the ideal, I doubt many of us - me included - price their rated selections with any great degree of accuracy at all. The days of the massive overs left us in the 90's and these days with cheap high speed computing available to all, once hard to come by information now much easier to come by, and the influx of international money into the local markets, the market is extremely accurate.

Variance will of course throw us outliers like Manganese but as garyf suggests we'd go broke if we just concentrated on these.

Agree somewhat AP however strike rates for price brackets remain fairly static, & I when I see suggestions to ignore runners because they appear overvalued, I shake my head, defeats the whole purpose.

My ratings are far from perfect but they throw up good priced winners on a regular basis for long enough now to know it's not a fluke or statistical anomaly or the like & thanks to BF good overs are still available.

The additional factor i use are PPP i found this to help when the ratings had a couple runners with close scores.

In the end the best option for me is to stick with my percentages, no matter what the prices i still have better results for the top 3 selections than i would for say 4th to 6th selections.

Yes i get it wrong at times and the top selection at higher prices lose and lower selections at better prices do win, but in the long run my top 3 selection average over 50% winners with the top selection at around the 20% to 30% winners.

Since this is on par with most ratings services i am happy to stick with that, but as always the better class and form races produce the best results long term because i feel that most horses are trying to win these races.

If the best class race on the day is an Open then unless the trainer is just running to get his horse fit he would be trying to win.

This is where better prices can come from because people think that a particular horse is not able to win when that horse is trained to win that race.

UH OH???.

Based on this the last 5 years for me betting full time has only been,
A fluke so obviously i need to log on to the "seek job site" and get,
Me a 9-5 job quick smart before the money runs out.

Cheers.

Not sure what that little hissy fits about - just giving my opinion...

Exactly what i am doing.

Yes you have posted a lot of times GaryF.
And no I haven't read all your posts as deeply and as thoroughly as I perhaps should have.
But I was under the impression that you do not rate horses yourself , but in fact purchase ready made Ratings by Others.
If wrong , my bad , if not , then what you are doing and what many others are doing is apples and oranges.