Thought I'd open a discussion on ratings from members.

A common ratings benchmark is to get the highest strike rate from whatever method is used. This becomes the top rated horse and then there is a big distance between strike rate and accuracy, the further one goes down the field.

Surely from my point of view, if one comes up with a rated price and unders is offered, then one should be able to make a profit laying said horses.
Vice versa, if overs are obtained one should be able to make a profit backing.

Often with a rated price, the shorter the odds, the more you make, the longer the price the more you lose - this is the conundrum.

I don't subscribe to the view of distribution, frequency or strike rate as an indicator, it is the value offered by overs or unders of that rated price that reflects the accuracy.

What stands out is the All The Good horse.
Surely 40/1, 50/1 etc was complete overs and the favoured horses should have been a point better odds, yeah all fine in hindsight, but even a class 2 horse who had proven itself over the distance and had been imported by a top UK trainer to contend a Group 1 had to be further clues.

Hindsight too easy after the fact.

My question is, has anyone found accurate ratings anywhere, or been able to make them from scratch, and by accurate I mean, horses starting over the price provide profit, horses starting under the price provide good lay profit?

This is the true indicator of accuracy.

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slightly off track I know but conversly as we all know just taking the lower SP's overall regardless of whether the individual is good value or not (according to who?) the closer to break even and even into profit at odds on, which smashes a lot of theories.

That is true and the reverse of what should occur if the ratings are accurate.
I've not been able to find ratings that defy this....yet.

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Almost anyone can Form a Market.
The usefulness can only be determined over a period of time and events.
Accuracy is not the best judge of success.
The Profit is the only useful judge of whether or not the Prices are any good.
If you get Winning Overs only one race in ten and muck up the other 9 times, it may not matter.
If that one Winner pays more Overs than the other 9 muckups, there could still be room for Profit.

hey Moeee, that's what I have been saying for years, good onya!!! exactly right!

So often we hear -

x% of top raters win
x% of the top two
x% of the top three
etc

Whilst that's a good guide to overall performance, it is not a guide to accuracy.

A good example are the unitab ratings. The ratings pretty much breakdown as expected distribution of winners.

However, if one were to bet overlays and lay underlays, one would be severely out of pocket. The market peforms better.

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While I haven't tested laying the horses starting under the price for a profit, the simple answer is Yes. I have ratings which provide a profit for every top rater straight out, and a better profit for every top rater that is an overlay.

They do exist.

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I think that is really the benchmark. If the ratings provide a profit on overlays, and that profit is in direct proportion to the amount of overlay (20% overlay equals 20% profit rated to 100% market), then you can pretty much brand them value over a decent number of races as a sample.

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Its excellent that you have delved into your past figures and are trying to make sense of them.
But this is where you are falling down.
Its your paradigm that is mistaken, not your Ratings.
It has been shown many times that if you backed every single horse that runs, you will lose around 15 % of your investment.
This is not some remarkable figure.
It is not just how it is.
It is the exact same figure that is the deduction that those who run the pools deduct.

Usually if you back those that are under , say $10, the actual loss will be closer to 10%, and if over the $10, then your losses will be closer to 20%.
The reason for that is because those under $10 are actually starting at a price that is pretty much their actual Chance of winning.
Those over $10 , actually have a much less chance of winning than their Markey Price would indicate.

This percentage loss will occur whether you only back the topweights, or if you only back Barrier 1, or if you only back the Favourite.
OR IF YOU ONLY BACK THE TOP RATER.

UNLESS.

The TOP Rater is the top Rater because it really is.
After the race, the Winner should have been the top Rater, because it won.
If it wasn't, then the Race wasn't analysed correctly, and the method used to Rate the horses needs improvement.

I'm sure that the only way to analyse a race 'correctly' to decide the genuine top rater in a race, is after it has been run. If it was so easy, we would all have recognised and backed the winner of the C/Cup which was the correct top rater and at massive overlay odds.

Personally I've never seen any publicly available ratings that produce a long term profit and correctly recognising 'overlays' is a subjective guess, not a science that only requires correct computing.