[Dorianmode]

Mel,
Mr. Froggy's advice cannot be over-emphasized. I actually do as he says, but I keep my races in an Excel spreadsheet, as they can be sorted, and re-sorted any way I like, (by track, distance, ages, bla, bla, bla). But to be able to analyse what you are doing is very important, and will point you in the right direction.

The first thing I noticed is that you have WAY too many horses in your readout to make sense of it. The first thing you should do, in my humble opinion, if to figure out how to select your contenders, so that almost ALL the time, the winner is in your top 5 contenders. Then eliminate the rest, and go from there. There is a lot of good stuff about contender selection in the Follow Ups. I actually prefer to use 4, and then eliminate 1, so I am actually only looking at 3 horses for my final selection. This is exactly where Froggy's advice will point you in the right direction. And frankly there is a very simple way to do this right under your nose, but I will let your study reveal that to you. It's actually on that page you printed out above.

Next I think you should try what Ted was saying about hiding the favorite. They loose 2/3 of the time. If that is so, then THAT provides a lot of races to find value in other horses. In the race above, if you were to "dutch' the 2-1 combo, it would have provided about a 50% return on your wager, (which may or may not be acceptable to you, depending on your win percentage), it would be fine for me, AND there is NO particular reason to favor the favorite over the other two horses in this particular race, since it, (the favorite), did not "fit" my criteria for a winning horse, with a REAL advantage, in a route race. In fact, with the readout that you get with only three horses left, (8-2-1), I would have preferred the 2 and the 1, in this case, but record keeping will tell you what wins here, in these kinds of races, and it will simply "fall" out of your records. With the final three horses in the program, look at the races you used for entering the horses, and the pace lines for each. The first thing you see, is that the 1 stays in. So it comes down to, do you use the 2 or the 8 ? I picked the 2 because it fit my profile here. There are other things to consider in this situation, (ie does the favorite actually have an advantage, and will it likely win?). Here I think not. If I thought it WAS going to win, then there is another process I would use to "validate" the advantage it had, and either pass the race, (there are SO many other good races on any given day, there is no reason to mess with uncertainty, and more than winning, I HATE loosing), or if it's advantage WAS validated, I would do a one-horse bet. I know that's "heresy", but there are patterns of data, where you CAN validate the favorites "advantage" over the field, and make a positive ROI. Good luck. You CAN beat this game. Now if only the Vikings could figure out how to do their's. Oh well.

Oh, I forgot to say, I would get two other things if I were starting out here. 1. A book on statistics. I hated that subject until I saw it can make you lots of $$. 2. Go find one of the many good books on horse racing statistics, (such as CX Wong's "Precision, Statistical and Mathematical Methods in Horse Racing"). There are many other good web sites on racing stats, and books on Game Theory, with good stat info, also UNLV has great seminars on the math of gaming. I think you can do them on the web, but, it's fun to actually go too, if you have time.