I have to go along with this idea of the SP market being correct.
I saw some figures the other day on an English racing website that showed the 1st SP fav to win the most ,around 33%.
The second SP fav was the second most winning horse, the 3rd SP fav the third most etc...

On top of this, the 2nd SP fav also came second the most, the 3rd SP fav came third the most etc...

and this was over a large volume of races.

Clearly the SP market gets it right, and if you look at it logically of course it should.

You and I risk little when we have a bet.
Bookies risk their livelihoods and have been doing this for eons.

They have to get it right - within the confines of the sport. Obviously they cant pick every winner because every race is influenced by good and bad luck and a host of other effects etc...but they will have studied the market far more expertly than we will have.
Then they must consider one more thing - the likely actions of the public. A bookie will know that horse A will attract more interest than it should from the public so he will adjust his price to compensate but otherwise the numbers prove he gets it right.

This doesnt mean that we cant make money.
He takes bets on every race and has to win - we dont.
We can be selective and bet on only certain races thereby increasing our chances of success.
The bookie also takes bets on races where they are all donkeys and someone has to be the favourite - we dont have to bet on that.

Even betting only on favourites we can win by being selective.

But my conclusion after looking at the stats is that the bookie is the best analyst of form because he must be.

Our job is to use his form to pick the right races to go with.
In some ways this is where the "value" seekers are sort of correct.
The best horse in the field may be A, the public have a love affair with B so the bookie has to adjust B's price making A a better bet.
The other avenue of value seeking is of course to use the bookies form as gospel and then look at the prices on offer at the TAB.
If the TAB users decide to ignore the bookies favourite you might pick up an inflated price on a good runner.

If the argument is that the SP is the most correct form assessor - then I agree.

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and whilst on the issue of value, I suppose the other obvious area of value seeking lies in place bets where there is a huge favourite dominating the market and this tends to leave the other horses/dogs around the $2 mark.
The public seem to forget that regardless of how good the first horse or dog may be, someone has to come second or third and often there arent too many legitimate candidates left for those positions.

Its a wonderful topic...

see ya
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