If you've got an online account with access to replays, you're going to find that many times it gives you an edge over other players just using the form. I'll give you an example that I run into over and over.
Let's say you're looking at a maiden race, where the second and third place finishers are returning from the same previous race. In the previous race let's say that they were only separated by a half length and that they seem like the only logical contenders for todays race. You might think it will be hard to separate these and find a horse to key or use on top. But I find that often if you study the previous race closely several times from both angles, you can usually determine which horse is more suitable for todays race. It could be that the horse that finished second made a gradual steady close from the rear while not participating in the pace at all with no real excuses and the jockey was pumping him with his hands for a long time and was hard ridden in the stretch. While at the same time the horse that finished a half length back in third broke like a shot from the gate, dueled with another horse through the early fractions while racing wide on the turn, put away the horse that he was dueling with and then proceeded to run to the wire with good energy only to give way in the final yards to the winner and the second place horse that had the easy trip.
Then you look at todays race and you see that the the race is a half furlong longer and there is no other horse with early speed. Usually the public choice will be the closer because he finished in front of the other one last time and with the extra distance he should keep opening up, right? What ends up happening is you bet the speed horse that finished third because you know that last time he had to work much harder in the speed duel but did it on his own without the jockey asking him for everything and today when he gets the early uncontested lead he will cruise and the extra half furlong will mean diddly squat.
This is just one example but other times using the same race scenario you will look back at the previous race and find that the speed horse that finished third got out on an uncontested lead then looked tired and wobbly in the stretch and the closer that finished second came sharply from the back of the pack with good acceleration and was not all out.
Just two illustrations but the point is that the number of things you will pick up by looking at previous races is extraordinary just looking back at the horses to see how they were running in key parts of the race.
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