Zlotti,

Obviously the answer to your question is not very long.
Here is a question.
Over time, a long long time, the horse with the best winning strike rate wins 20% of the time, just for arguments sake.
Does that mean that unless you are taking greater than $5.00 about these runners you are not getting value.
Or is it the case that every race is an individual event, therefore you need to price each horse with the best winning strike rate in each race.
Thus coming up with a different price and then you shop for the value each individual time.

Your ponderings are very interesting, thanks for the input.

Morning Zlotti. I was in a thread ("pricing" I think) where the feeling was that the bookies mostly follow the TAB odds and jiggle it a bit from there. I wasn't sure if that was correct but a number of former bookies clerks or the like reckoned it was so, the conclusion being that "the market" makes it's own odds and not the bookies (ie it was consensus not maths). This was in reply to me asking for a concrete example of how the individual bookie DECIDES on the opening odds. Can anyone confirm or refute this please?
I'm aware of the "over-round" advantage but am also suspicious that the bookies are trying to psyche us out AS WELL. They know that most punters are frightened of big odds and (especially) big drifters so I wouldn't be surprised to find them deliberately LENGTHENING odds to scare us off from time to time. There are cases where the odds HAVE to be wrong but there is no plunge (ie the punters don't flog the bookies for their mistake). First time I noticed this was when Vintage Crop won the '93 Melbourne Cup.
It had a 60% win record (9 from 15) all between 2800m and 3600m, all at top level, and 100% at the 2 miles. The trainer came 20,000Ks for the race and brought his own jockey to boot. VC opened at about 12s and drifted. My mate in Sydney put $500 on it and I "splashed out" with $200, grinning as it got to 20s on the TAB and won EXACTLY as it should. That year it was much more a "certainty" than Makybe Diva last time and yet no Kerry Packer stepped up with his millions to destroy the bookies. Why not?? It wasn't maths that stopped the big punters but LACK OF CONFIDENCE (doubly "justified" by those odds) I reckon. What do you think?? Bye for now, and good punting.

Sorry in advance if I'm butting in on someone else's question here.

Assessing the odds on one parameter, best strike rate in this case, is of course pointless. As you say, each race is an individual event. If the horse won a lot of easy races and is hopelessly outclassed in its current race of course the price will be over $5.00. The price doesn't make it worth betting on. Next race might have a horse which won the same number of races in top class and is now racing against lesser horses. We'll take the $2.00 on this one and (hopefully) come out in front.

Zlotti's simple question may not be that simple, some of the information can be taken two ways. It implies the punter has done the form to the best of his ability to get his 25% strike rate and it's most unlikely that all his selections would pay less than $3.00 so perhaps he is using the less than $3 as an extra filter. Maybe with this extra filter he can come out in front.
(If you're selecting based on price < $3 only and that gives 25% winners I apologise for adding a level of interest that wasn't there).

KV

Zlotti

When I saw that cut and paste from the Richard Reid article I blacked out for a few minutes....

Benny, Benny, Benny.....mate, you're either a real glutton for punishment, as thick as hospital crockery or taking the p1ss....which one is it?