I tipped the winner of the Melb Cup, modestly $20 ew. I did this after watching the preview on Ch 7 earlier in the day where they showed the last starts for all horses, with a little analysis. Almandin looked a strong run over 2500m.
After the fact I went online to see what the experts picked: there are spreadsheets and punting moots and analyses and 6+ horses thrown up every time, hardly anyone putting Almandin up front.
My reasoning was sound, but in reality I just got lucky from 20 mins of research.
I just can't get into punting on horses - you can't get inside their heads like people, they are totally inconsistent and there is too much information, too many combinations of horses, injuries, jockeys, courses, trainers etc. to try and follow.
The people who really know what they are doing make small margins over many thousands of bets, and generally don't tell anyone how they do it.
I'm sticking to punting on NRL myself - always a two-horse race and even favourites are $1.85\. You show me a horse race with two horses, where one of them pays $1.85.