Quick complain of the day, Internet was down here last night so couldn't update my records for the 2nd main race day for my ratings of the week - not happy.

Back to Shaun's post, basically agree with everything you'd said, I don't even bother looking at races that are essentially Class 3 or below and don't touch anything thats 2YO or 3YO restricted. Also don't generally look at races if all runners haven't had 4 or more starts and don't touch maiden's either.

People would be surprised what they find hidden in this forum and elsewhere in terms of what works and/or doesn't work. Then if you take the time to find one of Shaun's spreadsheet's and adapt it (if you want) you'd again be surprised what you can do. I basically grabbed one of Shaun's sheets and used the code to bring in not only the info he was already using but ratings/info from other sites as well. My sheet looks nothing like Shaun's now but I wouldn't have been able to do it without his original sheet.

Anyhow next point is totally agree with the strike rate comments as well. If your solely basing your judgement of ratings or a system or selection process on the strike rate it achieves then your well off the mark, and thats coming from a guy who isn't even consistently profitable yet.

You can't tell me you'd be happy going to a casino and winning 50% of your hands but losing money instead of winning 40% of your hands and winning money, so why is horse racing any different? Seems pretty logical to me, you bet to win money, you don't bet to simply win lots of bets.

I'd suggest that some of the best betting is if you can pick anything at odds of $5+ with a decent strike rate and use betfair simply because you get more value on longer odds horses on there and it can really make a difference to your bottom line.

I think some people would be surprised how profitable you can make basic free ratings from the most public of sites only betting on the quality races and using some simple filters. It's not difficult to do, its just a matter of keeping records and actually putting in the effort to do it.