Dear Darkydog2002....

Thanks for your comments....

The way things work is that when a race club lists its nominations for a race (see www.racingnsw.com.au) the professionals and bookmaker services are hard at work on their computers doing the form and ratings.

They come up witha set of ratings & prices that are "Private" to them and the bookmakers ... The bookies then reframe these prices adding in a "Popularity factor" . That is what they predict punters will want to bet on because the horse, jockey, trainer are "Flavour of the Month" (or week) they then add a 35+% overlay which is the bookies profit..

The bookies then start beting at these prices and follow market trends, supply and demand down to the race start time, which are fluctuations.

Professioals either do all this themselves (with staff) or subscribe to a professional service, like TRB for example.

By the time it hits the newspapers (printed around 11pm the previous night), trends have already begun taking place and so I think you should take the paper prises witha grain of salt.

See if you can answer this.... "What percentage of money is invested on a runner simply because it is the Favourite?" Adding money to a low price runner just makes it lower and fuels the fire.

Kind Regards

OzPunter