A Useful Exercise
 

Once you have downloaded your data, picked your contenders/pacelines, and surveyed your computer output...then what? Here is a useful exercise to help organize your thoughts and intelligently construct your bets:

First, assign a letter grade to each horse in the race, in descending order of appeal:

As: Main contenders, likely winners or horses that your methodology finds and the public will miss. Usually end up with between 1-3 As in a race. A standout A can be often used as a "single" in horizontal bets.

Bs: Backup contenders, next most likely to win

Optional: Cs: marginal contenders who cannot be tossed

Optional: NTW: horses deemed "not to win" but could finish in the money

Optional: Xs: Eliminations to win

At a minimum, pick out your As and Bs

Next:

Classify the race according to how competitive the field is today. At a minimum, use 2 classifications of the race: predictable OR wide open. If you are having trouble at this stage, classify the race as wide open if the ML favorite is listed at 5/2 or higher, and as predictable is the ML favorite is listed at 2-1 or lower.

Better still, try to use 4 categories: chalky, predictable, wide open, and chaos. Here are the definitions:

Chalky: likely to be won be top 2-3 favorites, and exacta to contain top 2-3 favorites as well

Predictable: public odds will have the race fairly accurate, winner likely to come from top 2-3 favorites, but may need to go deeper in vertical exotics

Wide open: likely to be won by horse OUTSIDE the top 2-3 favorites, but might use top 2-3 favorites to hedge win bets and ALSO underneath in vertical exotics

Chaos: lots of unknowns, FTS, 2TS, 3TS, cripples, layoff horses, foreign horses.

Now combine the 2 steps:

Chalky races: key As on top, look for singles in horizontal bets

Predictable races: key As on top, include Bs underneath in verticals

Wide open: key Bs on top, hedge with As top and bottom

Chaos: key As and Bs top and bottom, perhaps include Cs if betting horizontals

Good luck

Richard

Some very good points Richard, While I admit I don't write this down or follow every one of your steps, I do several of them in my head.


Mitch44