In your opinion what would be the better option looking at form? ( Regardless of lookiing at any other form factors)

A/ 1-2 or 3 Last start

or

Beaten lengths regardless of placings.

i.e 1000 - 1600 beaten no more than 2 lengths .
1650 - 3200 beaten no more than 3 lengths.

Cheers.
darky

How long is a piece of string? Assuming all other things are equal finishing 5th. beaten say 1.5 lengths is better than finishing 3rd. beaten 4 lengths. Placings are used, particularly for systems as they are simple and easy to see in a form guide.

I devised a system some time ago which is still doing OK. A key rule was that the horse could not be beaten by more than 2 lengths. Sometimes we did allow greater than that if the horse had bad luck in running. However, that depended on the horse. Some horses regularly have bad luck in running because they simply cannot put their act together under racing conditions. They'll run into horses in front of them, the slightest check and that's it for the day etc.

There's also good rule of thumb. Winners keep winning and losers keep losing. By the time a horse has won 3 races in a row it can often become a good bet because of the "due for a loss" syndrome, so it goes around at overs. Again judgement has to be used.

Thanks Neil,
Beaten L is always something I,ve always looked at in regards to placed horses.
A set of stats thatI looked at supposedly run over thousands of races came to the conclusion that horses that ran 5th or worse LS( regarless of beaten L)were more than likely to lose next start.

Food for thought for all of us is the original question and your proffessional answer.
Thank you.
Cheers
darky