If there is one answer to the question "how do I win at the races" is certainly is that you have to find "Value".

EI is right that assessing value is more of an instinctive thing after you have been at the game for a number of years...previously I used to rely on an automated pricing methodology to tell me the price a horse should be and I trusted it without question. That was a mistake in many respect. These days I just know when a horse is good or bad value, based on my knowledge of the horse, race and competitors.

Running a rating process with a pricing formula and then backing a horse because your prices says $4 and the market says $4.50 is not "getting value". On average, the starting market is the most accurate predictor of chances...no one punter can assess winning chances across all races better than the market....1/1 SP horses win more than 5/4 horses who win more than 5/2 horses and so on.

The fact that markets are set to well over 100% means however that 1/1 chances don't win the 50% of the times they should, they win about 43-44% of the time and the same can be said for other prices. One thing however that our SP markets have a long shot bias, what I mean by that is that the longer the price, the greater the gap between the implied win rate from the odds and the actual win rate.

Anyway, back to the topic of value. Value is not about crunching the numbers and betting the overlays because your pricing methodology has a horse a bit shorter than the market. You will lose that way.

You need to understand the context of a race and identify where the opportunities for value are and why. You need to pick the races where you are confident the market has assessed the chances wrong.

I am always on the lookout for circumstances which could open for me a window of value opportunity.

Some of my favourites are:

* Horses I see or here hyped in the media on the day before or morning of a race, especially if trained by leading trainers. If I haven't already I immediately look at that race to see if there are reasons I can be confident that horse has a poor chance of winning. The hype ensures it will start shorter than its true chance and if I can pot it and find one or more runners to win then I may have a value situation.

Ugachaka trained by Lee Freedman was always one of my favourites...constantly hyped as one of the best fillies in Australia yet she was really nothing more than an inconsistent wet tracker. I loved when she was entered for a race because I knew I could take her on nearly all the time.

* Horses that finish close to another runner but when they compete next time there is a huge difference in price between them. The Oaks was a classic example where I gave Bulla Borghese as a top rated selection to Pace Advantage subscribers. She had been finishing basically equal with the likes of Lashed, Macedon Lady etc. in lead up races yet was starting double the price.

There are many other examples and I strongly encourage anyone serious about developing their "value finding" skills to spend time and develop a list of the types of value opportunities that can crop up (like those I mentioned)

When you are aware of the possible circumstances that can lead to value they are much easier to find.

Does anyone else have situations they that trigger in their mind when the opportunity to find value may be present?