Hi Paul and others,

I'm about to read through the whole thread as i've got some spare time but wanted to reply to the last couple of posts first.

Essentially Paul what your saying (and correct me if i'm wrong) is that you do bet overlay's however you don't take a strict mathmatical stance on what constitutes an overlay or underlay. What I mean here is that you use whatever tools you have available whether it be subjective course knowledge, objective knowledge about the horse through facts and figures or mathmatically derived ratings (i.e. speed) and use them all to determine selections you may like in a particular race. You then decide if your getting value on these selections (overlay) and bet accordingly.

On a personal note approaching it this way makes a great deal of sense to me because its something you can relate to basically anything in life. If you go grocery shopping you unconciously decide if the steak your looking at buying is worth the price that Woolworths are offering, if its not you pass or if its 'cheap' or you deem it to have value you purchase it. The same goes when your comparing what new TV to buy, you weigh up all the options the TV has, DVD, HDMI, Wifi, place a value on all those options in your head and decide if the price the store offers provides 'value' to you or an overlay.

I work in the financial planning industry and the same method is used by many to determine whether to buy or sell shares. Weigh up the debt, industry, earnings, management etc etc, decide on what you beleive its worth and if thats more then the current price you buy.

All of these examples I believe are no different to picking a horse to back (or lay) and become profitable. Now i'm not saying i'm a professional and profitable punter however I definitely think the value or overlay approach is the way to go unless someone can show me differently (obviously mechanical works as well). Now the extremely difficult part of this process isn't deciding if something is an overlay or not, its arriving at the pricing point of the horse or field your looking to bet on.

Paul has (in my view) correctly stated the best way to go about this, and its to find the profitable or at least break even components of a horse or even a race type that the vast majority can either not access readily or typically ignore. Elements like barrier, 100 point tatts raters, last start winners or placegetters, radiotab's tips, particular jockeys, days since spell and weight are all examples of elements that are typically available right there for absolutely anyone to access or see on a screen when placing a quick bet 30 seconds before the jump and help determine a punters decision.

It's for this reason that I believe, without any solid evidence to post besides clearly stating its just my view from various stats i've used at since purchasing a database, that some or all of those elements i've posted as examples above can be either ignored or weighted lower in the punters decision process. The trick is to find and probably more importantly understand why particular elements of a track or horse don't just produce winners (i.e. strike rate) but produce PROFITABLE winners with CONSISTENCY. This is the path i've embarked on and only woken up to in the last probably 2-3 months since purchasing the database and while it still hasn't made me a profitable professional punter, i certainly feel i'm well on my way to being profitable.

Ask yourself this, if you had the following three stats infront of you what factor would you weight higher in your ratings or decision process (note the figures are just for example purposes and not actual stats). Also note the consistency figure relates to how many times the profit covers the largest odds winner.

1) Last Start Winners - 32% Strike Rate, 5% LOT, -2.06 Consistency
2) 7 Days since last start - 16% Strike Rate, 15% POT, 10.17 Consistency
3) Barrier 12 at that track - 26% Strike Rate, 54% POT, 1.63 Consistency

Some would pick Last Start Winners because of the high strike rate, lots would pick the barrier 12 at the track stat because of the combination of very high POT and reasonable strike rate, however it's the consistency of the profit with a reasonable track rate of point 2 that i've now started looking for. This is the point I believe Paul is getting at, find those factors that are rarely looked at by the wider market, are profitable, and consistently carry that profit without one or two large winners making up the majority of that profitable angle.

I've already written enough especially considering i'm far from professional and not even profitable yet, but the above touches on the process i've started going through and I definitely think i'm walking the right path now. I'm interested in others thoughts and note everything i've written is just my opinion and doesn't mean i'm right, but i certainly feel like its close.