Brian,

Adelaide bookmakers, as has been well documented on the Propun site, (see various Punt To Win articles) are the biggest ripoff merchants in the country. It would be unfair to base any study of price fluctuations on Adelaide bookmakers.

The official price system crashed nationwide yesterday but a quick look at the Melbourne (where the bookies offer much fairer odds) top flucs v TAB was as follows:

Race 1:
Acee Decee-TF:$4.60, SP:$4.20 TAB:$3.90

Race 2:
Old Man-TF:$5.50 SP:$5.50 TAB:$6.20

Race 3:
Cocktail Evening-TF:$8 SP:$8 TAB:$9.60

Race 4:
Gradual-TF:$4 SP:$4 TAB:$3.70

Race 5:
Brave Chief-TF:$7.50 SP:$7 TAB:$5.30

Race 6:
Philotimo-TF:$13 SP:$13 TAB:$17.20
Chairman's Choice-TF:$5 SP:$4.80 TAB$3.60

Race 7:
La Serenade-TF:$8 SP:$6.50 TAB:$7.80

Race 8:
Redclay-TF:$7 SP:$7 TAB:$6.50

$100 on each selection would have yielded the following:

TF: Out $800 In $5360
SP: Out $800 In $5110
TAB:Out $800 In $5340

Pretty close but TF seems to be the way to go with shorter priced runners and the difference in price with Brave Chief and Chairman's Choice was huge.

Top Flucs are based on the official price fluctuations and even though bookies now operated under the decimal system, TF's are still based around the old odds system. This means that you can never have a top fluc of $4.40 because there was no price to match that under the old odds scale. $4.40 is therefore rounded down to $4.20 (closest to 13/4 in the old odds). It's also why you'll often get better odds freely available at the track.

Even the bookies get the advantage of rounding down.

Cheers