Wininer listed in Green,   Place listed in Orange

The lines are drawn to show separation or break points in a race.  We have learned the winner is within 2.5 points of the top-ranked horse in New York and 3.0 in California, an overwhelming percentage of the time. We have also documented that better than 60% of the time, the winner comes from the top-3 ranked horses (REMEMBER THESE RANKINGS TEND TO REFLECT CURRENT FORM). It makes perfect sense to understand the basic layout of a race before we go any further in deciding who to bet on and how to fashion a wager, win bet or exotic.  Let's look a these examples......... 

In race # 1 Time Off  has clearly the fastest Current Expected Form and needs to be understood by the handicapper.  If we are going to be able to beat him we will need a big forward move from someone else.  Depending on odds he might be a good key and certainly a horse we would use in exacta, if only to protect.  To my way of thinking a horse such as this represents decent value at 2/1 or greater, because he should be able to run his number at least 1/3 of the time and his number will win about 1/3 of the time, being 2.5 points the fastest Current Expected Form.  Time Off is the only horse in GROUP 1. Time Off  went of at 6.5 to 1. 

In the GROUP 2 we have 5 interesting horses from Ben's Bluesman to Tommy's Tank.  We are likely to find one or two of these horse to be overlaid.  In this group we might locate a horse that is in the 20/1 range that should be more like 10/1.  (Note after we have given 33% to Time Off that leave only 67% to share among our 5 members of the second group and then the  6 remaining horses in Group 3).  Sometimes in this situation I like to take a horse from Group 2, if it is extremely "value rich" and use it for 1st in the win pool and make a strong reverse exacta with the GROUP 1 horse. Then make small exactas with the remaing horses from Group 2 and even $1.00 exactas with the worst horses just for place protection. 

Let's look at the 3rd race, in this race we have many more problems because ALL the horse have some reasonable chance to win.  Everyone that has run is within the 2.5 points of the TOP and we also have a FIRST TIME STARTER , Ivory Castle, noted with the (....).  So this race has NO SEPARATION or BREAK POINT.  This race will require a completely different type of analysis. Now, that we have understood this situation our action can be suitable to the problem.

Possibly, we would want to look for a longer priced horse to win bet, reasoning that the field is tough and the betting public could easily be wrong.  Or mayber we would want to use the ALL Button in a Pick-3,  keying horses in the surrounding races. I am sure you can think of many things to do, and throughout the web-site I will make many suggestions, but the important aspect is to recognize the value of the POWER PAGE in helping  make an important distinction in wagering situations based upon the configuration of the race!  In this race No More Jeff went off and won at 19/1.