G'day Real Deal,

Thanks for your interest. Don't know if you read Youngbuck's query last week re. Ratings to Prices, but my reply to that should answer your question.

I don't start out with a base rate of 100, and my ratings are actually a weight rating, arrived at by converting predicted margins to weights.
In the case of this race, if the top rated horse got 65.9 and the bottom rated horse 49.8 ( diff. = 16.1), then the diff. between Elbrus & Timboon's rating (1.1) equals about 7% of the diff. between top and bottom ratings, and 7% = around $15 when pricing to around 100%.

I don't claim that my ratings are always spot on, but prepost markets, paper polls etc. are not taken into consideration, so quite often my market is much different to published markets and comes up with good overlays, and conversely, show up horses which are quite short, as having little chance. Having said this, then I have to say that yes, I would have to agree that anything over $1.60 would be OK for Sonic Quest (as I write $4.90 on VicTAB), except that I believe in that old adage, odds on, look on!

For practicality, the max. price I allow is 99/1 ($100), but you got me thinking, so I ran the ratings using no upper limit, and the following is the result. I would be more than happy to send you the program for converting ratings to odds if you send me your email address. (No problem with copywrite as I wrote it myself).

13 Sonic quest 65.9 $1.50
12 Lucky Unicorn 61.6 $6.60
10 Elbrus 58.9 $22.30
9 Raid The Royals 58.3 $29.70
3 Recapitalize 58.1 $32.70
14 Timboon 57.8 $37.90
15 Bianomour 56.8 $62.40
4 Forest Spy 56.4 $76.40
5 Benedetti 56 $93.90
2 Smart & Mighty 55.8 $104.10
11 Gold Wells 55.6 $115.50
6 Camp Kalani 54.5 $205.30
1 Field Hunter 53.2 $417.00
8 Blue Collar Jack 51.6 $1,015.80
7 Our Spur 49.8 $2,848.40

No mate, I am not a bookie, just a punter who understands odds and who refuses to take unders, so if you find a bookie silly enough to work to 100%, let me know, the problem would be that he will not be in business very long!

Any programmers out there who may be interested in co-producing a marketable ratings program based on my QBASIC program feel free to contact me.

Hope this answers your question,

Good punting,

Gerry