Hermes,

I have tried a couple of times to work out a system for place betting but have trouble getting a decent return. If I use the selections from my win bet system (which gives a profit of over 10%) and do place bets the return is only 2-3%. As you say the strike rate can be great but the divs just don't seem to be good enough.

If you are betting with TAB then a big problem is that you are severly limited on the bet size you can place without affecting the dividend. Also the dividends are extremely volatile (much more so than win) - it is not unusual to see a $2.00 place div at jump time drop to 1.40 when the race has been run - very hard to look for value with this kind of variation.

Personally I think place betting is great for the casual punter (high strike rate, etc) but it would be very hard to make enough out of it to live on if you want to become a professional punter.