A sets maniac

You see what I did there?

In yesterday's post I said something that at best was very ambiguous, and at worst, complete nonsense. To paraphrase, I said that all of the horses I'm laying are underpriced. On my way to expressing my thoughts on where I might be going with my systems, I wish to clarify on two matters.

Firstly, when I say "horses", what I mean is an "entry"; a particular horse entered in a particular race, eg Red Rum in today's 2:30 at Plumpton might fit the requirements for my system, but Red Rum in tomorrow's 3:50 at Kempton could possibly not. So when I refer to a "horse", please replace it with "entry".

Secondly, when I say that they are all underpriced, what I mean is that they all belong to a set of horses with a common characteristic. I believe I've identified that laying every horse in that set (I'll call it set A) produces a profit. However, that is not to say that each individual horse in set A is underpriced.

A couple of nights ago, I identified another set (B), with different characteristics to A, which also appear to be worth laying. This has got me thinking. I've still to check, but I expect there will be horses that are included in both A and B, as well as horses that are included in neither A nor B. I could create a number of sets of horses, and categorise each set as underpriced, overpriced or correctly priced, based on past results.

A set of horses could be, for example:
Templegate's tips
Winners last time out
Horses beaten by less than half a length last time out
Winners at course and distance
Horses that have previously worn some sort of face furniture
The daily newspaper nap selections
Horses stepping up in distance for the first time
etc.

If a horse fits into only underpriced category sets, then would that suggest that the horse is actually underpriced? Probably not, but I would expect those horses that fit several underpriced categories to be very profitable to lay. Likewise, those horses in several overpriced sets should be very profitable to back. In addition, it may be worth considering increasing or decreasing stakes depending on the number and categories of sets a horses appears in.

Juat a thought.