Funny you should say that PP.

I ran some tests on exotics a while ago comparing the three Tabs, maxidiv and second best div and was quite dissapointed with the results. I was just testing the races I would have bet on with my system (had it been running in past years) but it amounted to quite a few thousand bets so it should be pretty typical.

Maxidiv returned at least 10% better than the best return from the best tab in all cases, usually more. Second best div actually returned slightly less than the second best tab in almost all cases. In case that's hard to understand I'll give one example.

Quinella, 3441 bets,
NSW Tab 126.82% Return
Tabcorp 130.62% Return
Unitab 129.81% return
Best div 146.10% Return
2nd best div 129.27% Return. (i.e. slightly lower than Unitab which was the second best tab return).

I think you have to think not only is it second best tab but it's second worst tab as well.

To qualify this - Place betting and probably to a lesser extent win betting may (or may not) be different to this as odds will be MUCH shorter. Also I've been watching IAS divvies for a while before plunging into exotic betting and I find that they usually pay above that middle tab, sometimes by quite a bit. Again this is exotics I'm talking about (because that's what I've been interested in IAS for).

Hope this is of some help.
KV