Michael,

You did not misunderstand me.

I would happily bet against horses that I estimate have a 20% chance of winning that are going off at 8/5 every single day of my life. Even though they would win 20% of the time, I would consider myself right if that's actually how often they won (as a group). If they won 35% of the time, then I obviously screwed up and was wrong. One individual race does not prove whether or not you were right about the appropriate odds.

There is no "right" answer when it comes to picking winners. There are only probabilities.

As much as we would like to think our speed figures are perfect and our insights correct, they aren't. Horses are not machines. Sometimes they feel better or worse than they have recently. Sometimes they get lucky or unlucky trips. All that leads to the most likely horse not winning all the time. The way you judge is how horses do relative to your expectations over the long term, not from a single result.

Now if a group of TG's supposed underlays were coming in at rate consistent with their true odds instead of his own odds line, then he I would say he's been wrong a lot of the time.

Me personally, I often bet 10-1 shots that finish 9th and after the race I'm still certain I was correct to make the bet because the value was there. The horse just didn't cooperate for some known or unknown reason. :-)