I agree with your statement EI that any variable which is an unknown must be considered a risk and assessed in light of the horses other form factors and of course its price before deciding whether to support with your hard earned.

Certainly if a horse is an unknown at the distance and is at poor odds given that and other factors you would be mad to support him (or her).

However every man and his dog identifies and supports those that are proven at the distance, weight, class etc. etc. It's hard to find value horses amongst those that have the full list of positives in their form. When a horse has so many positives everyone knows it and supports it accordingly. The result is poor betting value.

I firmly believe that to win we have to go beyond the search for the so called "sure thing" or horse that has ticks against every form factor and be prepared to conduct calculated risk assessment on perceived negative form factors, the odds the horse is in the market, and whether its worth taking the gamble that if the perceived factor isn't negative, you have a massive overlay winner.

It's not until you can start taking calculated risks on horses that have the odd negative form factor that you really start getting amongst the big value chances. Note this doesn't necessarily mean the horse is a long shot.

In essence I believe the best road to success is to wait for the right opportunity and pick your spots to take a calculated risk by adopting a view different to the public.

One way I do this relates to the points I made about distance. If the market seems to have its mind made up a horse can't run the distance, its price will often get out beyond what it would otherwise be. If there is no evidence to say the horse can't run the distance, and the price is good enough, i'm willing to take the chance. I usually confine this to good quality horses.

Of course you're not right all the time. Sometimes the horse can't run the distance, but on other times it does and I clean up.

The key point is that we need to differentiate between cases where there is hard evidence to support a judgement about a horse and those occassions where it is simply a guess or even an educated "guess". Whenever judgements are made on the basis of some form of guessing, and then those judgements are reflected in the betting market, I view that as an opportunity to adopt a contrarian view and win big when i'm right.