As a regular listener to Sport 927 I've heard Steve Moran's grab that 'Value. You can't eat it but you must have it in order to survive.'

Also read a forum comment recently that you're best to ignore price as you have to believe your own judgement is better in the long run.

What are the thoughts and approaches used...

Have a selection, attach a price stipulation and only back it when the price matches your assessment.

Or back your selection come what may.

in my opinion the only way you can make a profit over the long term by backing every selection you have made and ignoring the price is if the "overs" more than compensate for the "unders." Bacause you can guarantee that by backing every one of your selections you will get plenty of unders as markets are priced at more than 100%.

selection 'unders'..i include in exotics..selection 'overs'..back for a win.. (& place if 20/1 or over) ..

The price is important. This is how I work. Once I make my pick - 99% of the time the night before - I then try and figure where and when I can get the best price.

Who says the openers are accurate? Its just opinion until the race is over.

If its 8/1 fixed on the tote fixed price the night before, and I think it should be 3 or 4/1 and I'm sure it has a great chance then I get on it. Quite often (not always) I do good this way.

Sometimes if I think a horse is money in the bank, and it is $2.20 the night before and I'm willing to back it at short odds, I might wait until the last moment. Sometimes it goes into $1.80 (odds on, look on). But sometimes it blows out to $2.80, when punters all of a sudden notice C. Williams on another horse in the race.

I go to different online bookies to get the best price.

I have never put money on a horse just because of the odds. I got to think its the one.

When it comes to price, whether we think 'it is the one' or not, price is very important. What we have to overcome is our average strike rate and average price to turn our SR into profit, otherwise 'feel good' winners can be a big drag if they are too short in price, regardless if they win or lose!

What we should be doing is working out our SR over the last 12mths. [average SR] if we have been keeping a record of our bets, which we should be doing of course.

If our strike win rate is 1 in 4 [your not a bad punter if your score is this] we should remember that 3 out of our 4 picks averaged out will fail regardless of how we 'feel' about a bet. Because a bet is a short price, it does not guarantee a better chance of a win [ approx. 70% of favorites lose] and says nothing about overs or unders. So any bet below 3/1 is a bad bet if our SR is 1 in 4, win or lose. Any bet above this is a good bet, win or lose when we take SR into account.

There is such a thing as a losing bet being a good bet if the price is right and is above our SR win price formula because we win 1 in 4 bets [example, but work out your own SR and the maths that suit].
Below the price that fits the SR is a spiral into loss and punter misery. It's basic maths after all. Isn't it?

And the beauty of maths is that you can make numbers say almost anything. I think you're on the right track but I'd like to point out something - by eliminating selections based on a price after you've calculated strike rate is bad news. These two facets need to be looked at simultaneously.

Using your example:
25% Strike rate. Therefore you say you need 4.0 (3/1) on each bet for it to work. However if you elimante all those under that price you could be eliminating a fair share of winners, thus lowering the effective strike rate to be more like 15-20%, and thus making this now a bad system...

So if you have a method/system/whatever and you start thinking about applying upper or lower limits on prices then you need to re-calculate the strikerate for those criteria...otherwise the wrong maths could get you into a lot of trouble!

SR is SR regadless of how you would like to swing it.

All depends on the make up of the prices in your Strike Rate. Av Div is one thing but % of winners between certain price bands ($2-$3, $3.10-$4, those over $10 etc), might tell the story in terms of profitability. For me S/R and Av. Div is important and most importantly % of winners less than $10.

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Stix
.......Giddy Up..... !!

My thoughts are that things can be a little over analysed and complicated by punters.

Keep detailed records.

Is it possibly as simple as SR [in % terms] x Ave Ret = [Over 100 good] [Under 100 bad].

Punters introduce a price component when it's Under 100. That is the selection method isn't profitable. But that becomes rather dangerous, because as mentioned, you invariably pass up winners. Now backing less losers than more winners is always my aim [to a point] but how do I really know which horses to pass up? Do I do it on mathematics or some other means, which is heading down the system punters route of being forced to introduce more rules to try and eeek out a profit.

When all this is saying is you're selection method is no good...

I tend to think punters would be well advised to look at selections that are further out in the market [can you argue that introducing a pricing component is the same thing? maybe?].

I feel that plenty of market favourites and jockey/trainer favourites are under the odds. Some of the less fancied runners can also vary more widely in markets providing value [in theory].

Plenty of ways to skin a cat and I'm sure others will have different experiences but that's my [rambling] thoughts :-)

Edit: posted before seeing your last post Stix but agree with some of your throughts about Ave div and SR

Here's one way to convert its win chance to price.

Lets say we use its career win SR & convert this to price & only bet this horse if we get this price or more.

Maybe target just the 2 best chances for each race & bet either one or both if we get our price or none if we don't get our price on either of them.

Example
18% SR
1 divided by 18% = $5.55

15%
1 / 15% = $6.67

21%
1 / 21% = $4.76

25%
1 / 25% = $4.00

30%
1 / 30% = $3.33

The idea here is to try & think in general terms when it comes to value.
We know we will never be 100% correct & with some value injected, it helps us to get closer to our goal.


Cheers.

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Cheers.