[Ted Craven]

David, further to your original question and example race cited above, while learning the ideas of the Sartin Methodology using RDSS, may I strongly suggest you begin with using the suggested pacline selections given by the Paceline Selection Strategy tool (the Best of Last 3 Perceptor default option).

This will almost ALWAYS have you using one of the last 3 lines (excepting unratable lines in the last 3) and will emphacize recent performance rather than what the horse may have once done and then guess at whether it can perform that way again today.

But more important - it will save you from GUESSING whether the win you got in the current race was the result of your 'zigging and zagging' (e.g. choosing lines from different stages of a horse's history, or picking one over the other for one reason in one race but a different reason in the next race) - or if the win was a result of a consistently applicable strategy.

It's fine to wonder if you could have done something obvious to get such a nice winner as you showed above, and whether going back for a previous best effort was a 'secret' you needed to discover (i.e. something you might be in the process of discovering about how RDSS works). But please know that you stand to lose 40- 50% or so of your wagers, depending on your wagering strategy (i.e. 2 horses, minimum net odds, which pools) - so when you lose by applying a consistent strategy which, over 20 to 40 race sets gets you valid contenders who win the other 50 - 60% of the time - this is the natural order of the universe!

You just need to know and appreciate the larger context of applying your tools repeatedly to potentially promising scenarios (like this one above) - and deciding when you have to be in the game (or perhaps, when to 'ante-up') to see if your methods fire in the current race. You will also develop the feel as to when to stay out of races, perhaps because they are too chaotic for your tastes, or the likely winners too well known and poorly priced.

And you will also get that type of decision (to stay out) wrong sometimes too. Taking risk (betting) in the face of uncertainty (probabilistic, not definitive analysis info) is the heart of this game (perhaps also the game of life) and each of our personalities and past experiences determine our affinity for how much risk we're comfortable with relative to how much reward we want yet how much uncertainty we fear.

It can certainly be debated whether, at the odds, the #6 stood to to improve after its layoff and not bad 1st call effort last out, compared to how poorly the heavy favourite #1 fared in its last 2 performances and how equivocal the recent router #7 (though previous proven sprinter) has performed recently (both of whom combined owned more than half the Win betting pool). That is precisely the crux of one's own personal risk/reward/uncertainty/temperament calculation!

In summary, may I recommend you stick with the basics of paceline selection and recency, though not slavish adherence to the last line (I know of many experienced RDSS users who almost never modify the auto-selected pacelines) until you gather records about how your decisions have fared with the basics. Doing this will help you stay around past the basics period, to enjoy greater understanding and mastery of the tools - as opposed to getting frustrated and discouraged and abandoning the work you have already done before the good stuff gets rolling (not suggesting you are thinking of doing that!),

Good luck, good (growing) skill!

Ted