Dear Albany!

Good post! I think one thing you will find here is that we are not a monolith. You give 10 of us a set of sheets and we may come up with 20 different views. Another thing I think you will find is that a lot of sheet players also use the contrarian angle you espouse.

Sheet players may feel the obvious winners are being overbet (even though they have a very good chance to win) and that horses with lesser chances are being way overlooked. It is the classic situation where a horse with a 10% chance to win is a great bet at 20-1 but an awful bet at 8-1. Same horse in both cases, same chances of winning, all that changed was how the crowd bet it. There are people who have a low tolerance for betting a horse with a 90% chance of losing no matter what the payoff is if it wins, and they may just pass such races where the logical horses are overbet and the only source of value is a low probability proposition.

In any event, I would be interested to hear what your observations tell you about our weaknesses over here.