And Pogo, I didn't say that barrier draws don't affect chance. I said that they do not do so significantly. By that, I mean not enough that I consider them when making my betting selections. I was originally questioning Peter RS's claim that they made a huge difference for which he now says he has no data. For those interested, there is some good Australian data, covering over 120,000 starters, in an article here: https://www.betfair.com.au/hub/education/racing-strategy/barrier-positions
That concludes:
The strike rate for inside barriers is better than outside barriers. However consider that on average, the benefit of drawing 1 to 3 compared to 12+ is only an extra 2 winners in every 100 races. That’s hardly so significant that it should dominate your thinking about a race.
The most important aspect from a betting perspective though isn’t strike rate, it’s how the market allows for that factor in its price for each horse and whether there is any advantage in the average betting returns. You can see from the above table that the profit on turnover percentage from inside barriers is virtually the same as middle barriers and that outside drawn barriers are much better. In fact, if you had backed every horse in a metro race up to $10 from barrier 12+ since 2011, you would have made a small profit, without doing any other analysis whatsoever.
The truth is that wide drawn horses are on average much better value in the market compared those drawn inside. Each track, race and horse is a case by case basis, but having a default bias against wide drawn horses is detrimental to the goal of making profitable betting decisions.