Thanks punters for the input.

This place business really is an interesting exercise. Yesterday was my second go at it. The day before I had about 15 bets and broke even. If I had left the 'Newmarket' alone and the race before and after it [loss bets]. I would have made money. I was using a straight system approach. Something I made up that does produce a high SR but mostly too many bets [yesterday was an exception].

PLACE THE RULE-FITTING FAVORITE SYSTEM

Any day except Sunday or night and public holiday meetings.
Ignore below class C2 races. Cups, Hurdles, 2yr olds and Stakes races.
Distances 1100m to 2050m only and in Good conditions only.

1, select the PP favorite.
2. must not be first or second up unless it has a very good record for 1st and 2nd up.
3. must not be carrying more than 57kg. after allowances. 57 1/2 kg. for Sat. Metro.
4.must be in barrier 9 or less except on big tracks.
5 must have raced within the last 21 days.
6 if the PP favorite fits the above it's a Place bet.
7 if the favorite doesn't fit the rules move on to the second favorite etc.
8 if more than 1 horse is on the 2nd fav. line, the lower TAB No. is 2nd. etc.
9 Ignore the race if one of the first 4 PP favorites doesn't fit the rules.
10.Do not back females against males [unless her name starts with Macka:-)]

On Wednesday this produced too many bets. I back-fitted it over about 100 races from races with the PP odds I'd copied and pasted from the WAtab site [trying to build a PP databank but it's a bit of a drudge putting in all the results at the end of the day]. A very high SR of about 85% was achieved.
SA last Sat. was 8 out of 8. Melb. lost [on every Stakes race]. NSW [lost on the stakes except 1] and Qld both won.

I think the go is a bit of race reading and not too many bets. A few
big bets is always better than small bets and lots of them [win or place]. The system needs another rule to reduce bets [last start 16 days?] or race reading anyway.

Trying for $2+ odds gets into rocky ground. A place of $2.50 is often from a runner paying up to $15 for the win ! The $2 to $6 SP [they pay up to $3.50 the place] to win seems to be the best ground to find place bets with value I think [longer odds are too heavily backed for the place and $15 SP is often paying only $2.50/$3 P], but I'm not sitting in front of a monitor all day so I go on the PP odds only. AIS pays better than 2 Tabs [only]. Trap there is that often the 3rd TAB price is often better!!