Mmmmmh?

I agree with you CP about all the things that could go wrong for either favourite, none of which can really be factored in. Your reference to the bookies assessing the price though, has me curious. If there were two football teams that had already had a few games including a game against each other this season, I reckon you could price the teams fairly accurately. A different story for the horses though given it might be horses that have never raced against each other before, others stepping down in class, others coming up, others returning from a spell.....a myriad of complex algorithms.

The jury's out, but I just reckon that an odds-on team has probably better data to support it's price in some circumstances? If you say that they have the same historical strike rate relative to price though, then the bookies are good at what they do then, hey?