Of course, when you win the bet, so will essentially everyone else, so there’s no value in doing that, especially since the tote deducts a lot of the pot as its earnings. The 2 primary concerns I’d ask myself when placing a Placepot bet would be: It is not worth trying to find longshots to be placed in say maidens or claimers, because these races do tend to be won by the market leaders. Even if you do manage to successfully pick a bigger priced horse to place, the benefit of selecting it is likely to be diluted if the other 2 places are filled by market leaders. This makes trying to be clever in that type of race potentially unprofitable. So my initial thoughts are that it’s OK to select some favourites or 2nd favourites, as long as you can find at least one race where other placepot bettors are likely to get knocked out. The correct thought process is not to think what horses will be placed in the 6 races, but rather, in what races will the market leaders not be placed, thus knocking out a large number of other placepot punters slips Remember other punters are your opponents, not the Tote. The way to go is to think about what are your competitors’ weaknesses and exploit them. This approach is different to using your own strengths and correctly selecting horses you think will place. You could correctly select six 50/1 shots to place, but get a small pay-out because the favourites were also placed in every race It’s an act between choosing selections you think will be placed but not choosing too many horses that other gamblers think will place. The actual value can be found not in a successful bet, but in the successful bet when very few other gamblers also win the bet! It’s a bit like the football pools – you must not pick the selections that the general public choose, but simultaneously you need to choose the successful horses. And what’s the best way of staking? Is it really sensible to choose 3 selections in each race, resulting in 729 bets? I don’t think so – you are spreading your perm too wide. I’d rather take my possibilities in 4 races by choosing only one horses, and use 2 of the bigger competitive handicap races including the last race of the 6 to choose 3 selections in each of these. That’s only 9 bets in your perm.}