Woof43 the thing is this - when handicapping, if betting to prices, you are essentially pitting your percentages against the rest of the public. You are obviously a very mathematical person, and need a straight, defined practice. You no doubt enjoy rules greatly in your punting. Like you said in another post, paraphrased - "If the tipsters have tipped 1,2,3 or those in any order, and they are the favourites, then you have struck gold!" Mysterious things like horses and their inconsistencies would no doubt annoy you greatly, which is why you punt on the psychology of punters rather than the abilities and likelihoods of horses. Doing the form the way I was describing is not some confusing, contradictory thing, it is a matter of using your BRAIN, and the experience gathered of doing the form over and over, to basically set a market. The market set is the important thing, and it is the expression of how you've done the form, which is compiled by somtimes estimating, but through experience trying to make those estimations as accurate as possible, and by avoiding (yes, avoiding) races where TOO MANY estimations are needed to make a good set of percentages.

You talk about refining a mechanical process so that it does the form and prices to an "acceptable" level of standard deviation, so that - for example - your $3.50 chances win 28% of races. That's one dimensional though, because how many of those 28% that won started at shorter, and how many losers at longer? You could have your $3.50 chances happily winning 28% of races and think to yourself "All I have to do is get $4.00 or more about these things, and I must win!" This is, of course, false.

The thing is this: As you well know, the market is the sum total opinion of the punters. It is pretty right. Punters psychology can be used to profit, knowing their patterns and how they bet (I do that for fun sometimes on quaddies - if there's a leg with a shorty, leave it out, the value is ENORMOUS, bigger than what it should be given their mathematical chances). HOWEVER, the market is most certainly NOT 100% right. They make mistakes. Certainly, they make patterned type of mistakes, ie the same kinds of mistakes over and over, (like overbetting last start winners), and knowing these things helps, but in the end doing the form in this manner, ie handicapping using your opinion, comes down to you being smarter than the sum total of the opinions out there. And that is not too hard. (Well, now I can say it's not too hard. It's taken a sh**load of work, research, training, trial, error and experience to get to the point where it's not too hard). THEN, your profit is limited only by HOW MUCH smarter, more astute than them you can be.

Believe it brother, it is true.

Duritz.