ubetido, in answer to your original question.

I was in a similar position to chrome, even the Penthouse club and the trots!! I didn't have the big wins as chrome did, and drifted to the grey hounds. I followed the horses and all the formguides I could lay my hands on were scrutiised within an inch of their life. I gathered data on prices (a horse running well at 25's and in this race it's 6's), and all other sorts of filters one could imagine. All that these filters did was give me a loss of 10% to 15% regularly, but I k ew I was getting closer each time. Never happened.

The lightbulb moment came when I reaslised that each horse is unique and each race is different. You cannot arbitrarily apply the same rules to all horses and expect them all to respond in the same manner. To say horse must have started withing 14 days logically picks out those that have run at a metro track two weeks ago, but doesn't take inot account horses that like a little freshen up. You need to see if the days break suits your horse by looking back. The old 7 day back up isn't particularly suited to mares. Now I'm not a weights man at all, how can you argue a kilo here and a kilo there on a 600kg horse. Give away the meaningless stuff like barriers, weight, track etc and look at the big picture and that's the fitness of the horse. If you're backing a horse that's near enough to peak fitness, then just hope the trainer has selected the right race, and you're in business ..... luck in running is under rated.

Always look through the trainers eyes for the horse that might improve.

Don't follow the crowd.

As chrome prince has said repeatedly .... why wouldn't you look around for the best odds??