Racetrack betting markets are like any other financial market. The price of a horse reflects all of the hopes, fears, dreams, WAG's, SWAG's, careful analysis, and silly guesses of all of the bettors on that horse and is reflected in the horse's price. The more popular metrics are more thoroughly incorporated into that price and provide no overlay opportunity. You need to find out what everyone else is doing and go the opposite direction.

OR Find out what makes everyone else go in the opposite direction and stay put?*

One thing I have learnt about price of late is that are many versions of price to consider, other than SP. e.g. if one gets on early enough onn a fixed basis, LOT can be turned into POT and a low return can become acceptable or even 'considerable'

LG

*Assumption being that this doesn't affect a horse's true chances of winning too much!

Eliminating under $3 on wet tracks made a major difference for me.

Astute observation, milord. Overlays have a way of doing just that!

Thanks Magister Ludi. My quest was that you proceed and nominate some of these obscure metrics to ponder.

i follow your posts darky, and i remember very well your longshot winner at last years Melbourne carnival. and well done on getting rid of barney, the thread closed down and my post congratulating you got lost i think. its a better place now.

One very useful metric is a quantitative measurement of race entropy.

I, for one looked at this in wonder. I am sure that a majority here did the same. I was going to the standard Pauline response but instead I will simply request "Please quantify" One of my attributes is that I can lift heavy things.

A race with an infinite number of horses with an equal amount of money bet on each horse is a perfectly competitive race. If all of the money were bet on a single horse, it is a perfectly uncompetitive race. Most races, of course, are somewhere in between these two extremes.

The following is a formula that quantifies race entropy or competitiveness:

sum ([1/O(i)]^2)/n

where
O(i) = odds of the ith horse
n = number of entries

The larger the value, the more uncompetitive the race.

1. Convert the odds to probabilities (1/o = p)

#***o***p
1***2***1/2=.50
2***3***1/3=.33
3***4***1/4=.25
Total prob = 1.08

2. Normalize the probabilities

1/total prob = 1/1.08 = .926

#***o***p******normalized
1***2***1/2=.50***x.926=.46
2***3***1/3=.33***x.926=.31
3***4***1/4=.25***x.926=.23

Total normalized prob = 1.00

3. Square the normalized probabilities

#***o***p******normalized**norm squared
1***2***1/2=.50***x.926=.46***x.46=.21
2***3***1/3=.33***x.926=.31***x.31=.10
3***4***1/4=.25***x.926=.23***x.23=.05

4. Average the squared normalized probabilities

#***o***p******normalized**norm squared
1***2***1/2=.50***x.926=.46***x.46=.21
2***3***1/3=.33***x.926=.31***x.31=.10
3***4***1/4=.25***x.926=.23***x.23=.05

Average squared normalized prob = (.21+.10+.05)/3=.36/3=.12

The competitiveness index of this race is .12.

My cat's breath smells like cat food