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Originally Posted by blackthroatedwind
I may be over extending what he is trying to say, or maybe he is saying it badly, but in theory there are horses one actually should bet as their second or even third choice at 8-1 over horses that may be their top choice at 3-2. Certainly one should ALWAYS pay attention to the tote board, and be looking at exacta probables, and at least attempting to find what they perceive as their best value. Look, most people's understanding of what the actual chances of each horse winning is poor, and the tote board is overall the likeliest best indicator of this, but any horse player should have a reasonable idea of what odds he or she is willing to take on any horse and thus play accordingly. If one does not like the odds on their selection there is an alternative other than taking a flyer on another horse....you can always sit that race out.
The odds board is a horseplayer's friend....not his or her enemy.
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This is about the only thing I do right at the track.
I find myself being pretty good at finding the price horse that gets the win or place by first capping out my top 3 or 4 horses and then looking to see how everyone else is betting them. It's actually structuring my bets for exactas and tris that I get burned. Too many times I look down on my notes to find that I had the horses, but didn't have them bet correctly (which is also in part from not wanting to invest a lot of money into my bet). This pretty much had me sticking to the W-P or WPS bet of the horse I liked best with the best odds...which is probably a pretty wimpy and unimaginitive way to do it.
I'm very compeitive and I think this carries onto my betting (which may be pretty stupid actually), it means more to me to beat the low odd favorite and occassionally miss one (or in those really sucky days, many) than to load up on the favorite.