The idea of value I.E. (the price you get is bigger/better than the true chance of winning) is fine in theory but hard to implement with horse racing.

I used to be a believer in the VALUE approach as most books have a chapter devoted to this and some books are written exclusively about VALUE. A case for me of seen it done bought the T shirt etc.

The books usually use examples such as coin tossing 1/1 or dice throwing 5/1 about any side coming up then explain if you can get 11/10 or 11/2 you will win in the long run.

After much deliberation I have come to the conclusion it is a non starter with horse racing as for the value approach to work you really need to know the exact probabilites of an event occurring. No one knows the true probability of a horse winning, not even the bookies. That is why they keep changing the price in line with the market to balance the books.

Compare this to roulette where the odds offered for red/black coming up is 1/1 even money. Whether no one or everybody bets on red, those odds will never change, because the casino knows the exact probabilty of the event occurring 19/18, slightly odds against. They have value on their side and in the long run will come out ahead.

If the bookies knew the true chance of a horse winning they would offer odds under that chance and there would be no point in backing horses as we could never win in the long run. This brings me to another point and that is the champions of the value approach never mention it is the long game and takes time to make a profit. If someone threw a dice and offered 1/1 about '1', 2/1 about '2' etc. Because there is no consideration of actually trying to find out which side will come up, except we know the exact chance is 5/1, we back the '6' at 6/1 because we have value. After 30 throws we could be well down where as someone else picking numbers at random could be in profit, but we know if we continue long enough we will come out on top, hence the long game.

VALUE in horse racing is just your opinion against others, you may be right you may be wrong. It seems to me like actually opening the box and counting how many oranges it contains as opposed to guessing from the size of the box.

I have no doubt someone will come on and argue the other side so I remind you that I used to follow the VALUe approach but have changed my mind and think it more important to find a winning bet (at a price that suits the bettor) knowing that the bookies are nearly as ignorant as we are in knowing the true chance of a horse winning.