Crash,

I see your point but we're looking at it from different perspectives.
The point is that if you know the average outcomes and can find an edge, you can then get overlays given what the bookies offer.
That doesn't mean you win on the race, but it means you can win on a series of bets.

As to 30% of favourites - so what?
That means that 70% lose and there is a great deal to play with in regards to filters etc.

The whole concept of value is that the bookie has made his market according to that race and not overall value by betting on certain selections.

Example:

If his book is say 110%, that means he has a 10% edge and if sticks to it and correctly fluctuates his markets according to bets laid, he'll win that much on every race.
What he hasn't factored in, and it doesn't matter to him because is margin is always there, is the strike rate of certain horses given certain conditions overall.

This means I should hypothetically lose 10% POT no matter what I bet on - BUT....through purely statistical filtering can get a 10% POT using TAB prices.

Yes, you would get your 10% [eventually, given unlimited time and money to do so].

Consider this Chrome:

Using poker machines as an analogy regarding your below example.

Quote
Example:

If his book is say 110%, that means he has a 10% edge and if sticks to it and correctly fluctuates his markets according to bets laid, he'll win that much on every race.
What he hasn't factored in, and it doesn't matter to him because is margin is always there, is the strike rate of certain horses given certain conditions overall.

This means I should hypothetically lose 10% POT no matter what I bet on - BUT....through purely statistical filtering can get a 10% POT using TAB prices.

End quote.

Stats wise you are of course correct but along that logic line you could put a $100 into a poker machine and expect to get 85% [whatever the figure is in different states] at least, back !!!

Reality and the nature of the beast just does not operate in the simplistic [hypothetical] way you have described.

And onto another point you have mentioned in your posts here, regarding finding 'value' [ nothing more than future prediction based on our personal or computerized reading of variables ]. That skill doesn't operate simplistically either and among other skills, is the defining one that separates the long term consistent winners from the rest of us. No easy task such as 'just bet on the value' and you'll end up in front' simplistic philosophy.

Spotting 'value' is a statement that one can predict value better than the tote [ mass punter opinion which is uncannily very close most of the time ], or an individual Bookie enough times to be consistently in front of both players. Neither is an easy task and our 'value' predicting is often more often wrong than the public and the Bookie.

In other words, our perceived 'overlays' are often in fact, underlays.

We end up back at 'subjective' valuing of variables whether we input into puters, do old fashioned form, or place ourselves into the hands of systems.

Unknown variable just cannot be given precise values and regardless of our best efforts, are often enough way off to keep us behind in the game.

Either from unfair odds, uncoperative averages [not being average when YOU want them to be] or just unexplainable race result outcomes, we are indeed accepting cards from a very 'stacked' deck.

Cheers.


[ This Message was edited by: crash on 2004-03-24 10:45 ]

Very sound strategy for R&D.

I was using a Neural Network programme that split data sets into 3 groups. Train, Test to develop the maths and Evaluate to confirm results.