Decided to hunker down and complete a 20-race cycle, and the results were not pretty:
I used a best of last three comparable strategy, trying to avoid off track lines and projection/extraction whenever possible. Since some tracks are very tote sensitive at or near post time, the "off" odds were sometimes below my 5/2 minimum, which is beyond my control when trying to beat the bell (which in simulcast land on a computer, can sometimes be 30-60 seconds behind).
I tried avoiding very short fields whenever possible, but I found it tough to abide by that guideline. Also, the last two days have been water-logged, and while I probably should have avoided cycle play, I wanted to complete the cycle, thus, I took what Mother Nature gave me.
My initial observations: The "wagercapping" principle of hiding the top tier low odds horse (less than $7) did net 3 of "wins" from Tier 2, but nothing monumental, as my mutuels from high to low were 6-1, 7/2, and 2-1. When I did hide short odds top tier runners in races that I bet, they did not come back to win at high percentage. However, I had trouble connecting with the right horses, as I netted no "wins" in Tiers 1, 3, 4, and 5.
In retrospect, I probably should have passed more races this cycle, as the low odds runners that I hid and that got beat, did not open the race up to many price horses.
I am encouraged by the fact that the winner was within the top 5 tiers in 13 of 16 races bet, but frustrated that I had trouble connecting. The "losses" (horses outside my top 5 tiers) were minimal, so my contenders in general were good.
I'll digest this for a short while, review some FU's and really get better acquainted with Doc's 1998 tapes. In future, I will limit my cycles to "normal" tracks, and perhaps only to 1-2 tracks. Playing 9 different tracks within the cycle was overkill, and didn't really afford me a chance to find any particular bias or supporting corollary. Then again, playing off tracks the past two days didn't help either.