Gday All..
I find myself well and truly in Neil's corner here... As most know I rate nearly very race that the NSW TAB punts on.. and I bet my selections.. I find that if the "public" (for want of a better word) win on any given day I tend to lose. what that means if there are a lot of favs winning I am more likely to lose. My ratings throw up a lot of favourtites as well as the odd roughie as top selection, but if you are using ratings correctly, you don't just bet the top selection, If you do you will usually fail in the long run with ratings.(over time my top rater breaks even or turns a small profit at flat stakes, but I won't back the top one all the time) You need to look for the horses that present at value prices, and I am afraid looking blankly at a TAB screen in the pub, does NOT tell you where the real value is, unless you are armed with a set of reasonable ratings. Even a quick glance at the DFS sheet will give you a bit of an idea of what the market order is likely to be.

Now I don't believe for one minute that any thinking punter would walk in to a club/pub/TAb/oncourse TAB/bookmaker etc..and say "horse 1 is the fav...; I will get on even tho i know ************ all about it".. to my way of thinking that way lays the soup kitchen .. you will certainly go broke doing that.

People who provide ratings are people who take the time to atually do the form, and put thier expertise out there either freely or for a charge, for punters benefit.. Sometimes they are correct more often than not they are not.. thats the way racing is.. there is nothing in racing that is a given..except back favs exclusively and you will lose.. The idea is to help people to win. If people think that is not the case and say the public are the best judge (in my opinion they are an ok judge 30% of time) and will only blindly back what the public elects as fav.. more power to them.. I will take their hard earned when I rate something at $4 and it wins at10 or 15 bucks. remember when you are betting at the TAB,the money that ends up in your pocket is not the TAB's but the other punter's money.. the takeout is NOT your greatest enemy, the bloke standing next to you is the one that you are playing against.. so why would you want back what he is more than likely on? Unless you know that that horse deserves the tag of fav.. And you won't know that just by looking at a monitor...

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Good luck and good punting

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