Dick Schmidt
07-04-2002, 05:30 AM
This is a review of a new computer program I recently completed. I got permission to post it here in hopes that some of you may find it interesting. Before you ask, I have no financial connection to the program other than buying a copy. I have never met the programmer, Gary Pizzigati, but he sure does very nice work. Fast, too. I've known Jack Burkholder for some time and he is best described as a consummate professional.
Dick Schmidt
At The Races
Computer program by Gary Pizzigati and Jack Burkholder
Review by Dick Schmidt
This is one of the finest pieces of software available for the modern, computerized Internet handicapper. Such a shame most of them will never consider buying it. Not that it’s expensive, hard to use or not needed; it is none of those things. It’s what it doesn’t do: pick horses. This is a betting program, and thus falls into that vast morass of dead programs and ideas called money management. Too bad, because this is the program most of us need far more than another “horse picking” program. On the off chance that there are some professional level players out there reading this, this program is what you have been looking for.
What At the Races does is access the internet through your regular internet connection (modem, cable, DSL, whatever), gather minute by minute toteboard information, point out betting opportunities, do “Dr. Z” calculations on the place and show pools, show you all the exacta payouts, including overlays and underlays, allow you to dutch your win and exacta bets, show you when you make more money wheeling a horse in the exacta than with a straight win bet and in general give you the information you need to make a bet. Since you provide your own handicapping information, it will work with any program, system or method available, including homemade ones. If you have a computer and a connection to the Internet, At the Races will work for you.
Because the documentation that comes with the program is a bit skimpy, I spent an hour on the phone with Jack Burkholder, the program’s designer, going over the fine points. Jack has been a professional player for over 20 years and he designed this program to do exactly what he wanted from a betting program. His professionalism and experience are obvious in the way the program operates. As time goes on, more “bells and whistles” will be added to the program, but right now it is a fully functioning, professional level tool. Anyway, here is a brief overview of how the program operates, as I understand it. Both of the principles behind this program are very willing to answer your questions by e-mail and are open to suggestions for improvements, so if I leave out anything, you can always get more information from the source.
When you first open the program, you first need to click on the Internet Options button and tell the program how you are accessing the Internet. I use a high-speed cable modem and found that I could ignore the questions about proxy names and ports, I assume because my connection is always on. Anyway, I just told it I was using a proxy for connection and away we went. It appears that if you are connected to the Internet when you start the program, it will find your connection.
Next choice is to decide which Internet toteboard to use. You can choose between “R”, the Racing Channel and “S” the BRIS Supertote. If one doesn’t carry the track you want, chances are the other will. This flexibility is typical of the program. Given the amount of bickering that goes on between the various racing entities, you never know who will be carrying what next week. At the Races lets you find the track you want. Should things change and other toteboard options come along, I’m sure the program will be updated to accommodate them.
Once you choose a toteboard option, you will be shown a list of available tracks. Lots of tracks. Dog tracks. Harness tracks. Australian tracks. Tracks you never heard of. It’s wonderful the amount of information available on the Internet. It’s also wonderful to be able to utilize it. You can view the track toteboards in two ways, either one at a time or scrolling through a list of selected tracks. If you want to see the tote action at just one track, select it and tell the program to show it to you continuously. The tote will be updated every minute. Scratches are posted as they occur. You can also tell it to show you one track without updates. You can edit the track list to just those tracks you are interested in and have it cycle through once or continuously. Amazingly flexible.
Let’s assume you want to watch the tote for the next race at Belmont. It is 20 minutes to post, and you want to follow the tote action. You select Belmont as the track you want and tell the program to update continuously. Now the fun begins. The first screen you will encounter shows the win prices (the actually return for a $2 bet), the maximum and minimum place and show prices with Dr. Z bets highlighted in blue (the actually advantage is shown under Place and Show ROI/$1) and the W/P/S pools, both total and for each horse. There are also two columns labeled Pitz Exacta and Pitz Double. These show you when it is better to bet a horse in a dutched exacta or double wheel instead of win. In other words, say you like the four horse. If he is paying $6.80 to win, it may be more profitable to bet him on top of all the other horses in the exacta pool. This is a complex bet, as you must bet a different amount on each combination, but the program will figure it out for you in a blink. Many times you can turn a low paying favorite into a much more profitable situation in the exacta pool. Lots of useful stuff, but there is even better stuff just ahead.
In the lower left-hand corner of the screen is a dutching box for win bets. You click on the white box under the horse’s number you want to bet and it will tell you how much to bet on each. It is set by default to bet $100 a race, but you can change that by clicking on the Win Bets white box to the right of the dutch box. If you want to dutch exotics, you can set them as well. Click on the box and then enter any amount you wish, from $20 on up. A neat feature is that you can also hedge a bet. In other words, say you like the favorite and two others. Since you can’t really make money betting favorites, you decide to hedge, betting the favorite to break even and splitting the rest of your money between the other two horses. If the favorite wins, you get your bet back, and you’ve put more money on your longer priced horses. To do this, hit the box a second time, and the label will change from Dutch to Hedge and will turn from green to blue. Hitting the box a third time cancels the bet.
Across the top of the screen, just under the track name, are a series of small buttons. The one labeled WPS Payoffs is checked. Move your cursor and check the next one, Odds. The first two columns show the current odds and the morning line for each horse. The favorite is shown in red, the second favorite in blue and the third in purple. As the odds shift, the colors change with them. The columns labels 1st Exacta and 2nd Exacta show the amounts bet on each horse, expressed as odds. The lower the odds, the more money bet in the exacta pool on that horse in that position, either on top or underneath. In our race at Belmont, the amounts bet each minute are displayed in the column labeled > 12 (greater than 12). The amounts are expressed as odds. Think of each minute of betting as being a separate pool. Starting with 12 minutes to post, each individual minute is displayed and recorded, again expressed as odds representing the money bet just during that minute. Therefore you can see that even though the 4 horse is 8-1 overall, he may have been the even money favorite during the fifth minute before post time when the trainer made his big bet. You can check to see how he did in the previous minutes and follow the action during the next few. Those who use the “Talking Tote” to make their bets have found their ultimate tool.
The next button is Exacta Stats. It shows all the possible exacta combinations first as a payoff, then as a percentage. If the percentage is red, the horse is that percent underplayed, based on the “fair” price of the win odds. Blue and the horse is that percent overlayed. Before you get excited and decide to bet just the overlays and get rich, most of the time Jack has found that it doesn’t work that way. In exactas at least, the big underlays are usually the ones to bet. If you don’t believe it, try it on paper for a while.
After that, we find the Exacta Bets screen, my personal favorite. Here you not only see the familiar exacta payoff matrix, but the tools needed to dutch and hedge exactas. Since the win dutch box accompanies us no matter which screen we are using, I find that here I have all the information I need to play a race. Directly under the exacta matrix are automatic plays labeled Low 2, Low 2 Box and so on. If you hit the Low 3 button, it will display the bets for dutching the three lowest paying exactas. Low 3 box shows the dutch for the 6 combinations of the lowest three odds horses. Play with these and you’ll soon see how they work. To erase what you’ve done, click the CLEAR box in the upper left hand corner.
Continued in part II
Dick Schmidt
At The Races
Computer program by Gary Pizzigati and Jack Burkholder
Review by Dick Schmidt
This is one of the finest pieces of software available for the modern, computerized Internet handicapper. Such a shame most of them will never consider buying it. Not that it’s expensive, hard to use or not needed; it is none of those things. It’s what it doesn’t do: pick horses. This is a betting program, and thus falls into that vast morass of dead programs and ideas called money management. Too bad, because this is the program most of us need far more than another “horse picking” program. On the off chance that there are some professional level players out there reading this, this program is what you have been looking for.
What At the Races does is access the internet through your regular internet connection (modem, cable, DSL, whatever), gather minute by minute toteboard information, point out betting opportunities, do “Dr. Z” calculations on the place and show pools, show you all the exacta payouts, including overlays and underlays, allow you to dutch your win and exacta bets, show you when you make more money wheeling a horse in the exacta than with a straight win bet and in general give you the information you need to make a bet. Since you provide your own handicapping information, it will work with any program, system or method available, including homemade ones. If you have a computer and a connection to the Internet, At the Races will work for you.
Because the documentation that comes with the program is a bit skimpy, I spent an hour on the phone with Jack Burkholder, the program’s designer, going over the fine points. Jack has been a professional player for over 20 years and he designed this program to do exactly what he wanted from a betting program. His professionalism and experience are obvious in the way the program operates. As time goes on, more “bells and whistles” will be added to the program, but right now it is a fully functioning, professional level tool. Anyway, here is a brief overview of how the program operates, as I understand it. Both of the principles behind this program are very willing to answer your questions by e-mail and are open to suggestions for improvements, so if I leave out anything, you can always get more information from the source.
When you first open the program, you first need to click on the Internet Options button and tell the program how you are accessing the Internet. I use a high-speed cable modem and found that I could ignore the questions about proxy names and ports, I assume because my connection is always on. Anyway, I just told it I was using a proxy for connection and away we went. It appears that if you are connected to the Internet when you start the program, it will find your connection.
Next choice is to decide which Internet toteboard to use. You can choose between “R”, the Racing Channel and “S” the BRIS Supertote. If one doesn’t carry the track you want, chances are the other will. This flexibility is typical of the program. Given the amount of bickering that goes on between the various racing entities, you never know who will be carrying what next week. At the Races lets you find the track you want. Should things change and other toteboard options come along, I’m sure the program will be updated to accommodate them.
Once you choose a toteboard option, you will be shown a list of available tracks. Lots of tracks. Dog tracks. Harness tracks. Australian tracks. Tracks you never heard of. It’s wonderful the amount of information available on the Internet. It’s also wonderful to be able to utilize it. You can view the track toteboards in two ways, either one at a time or scrolling through a list of selected tracks. If you want to see the tote action at just one track, select it and tell the program to show it to you continuously. The tote will be updated every minute. Scratches are posted as they occur. You can also tell it to show you one track without updates. You can edit the track list to just those tracks you are interested in and have it cycle through once or continuously. Amazingly flexible.
Let’s assume you want to watch the tote for the next race at Belmont. It is 20 minutes to post, and you want to follow the tote action. You select Belmont as the track you want and tell the program to update continuously. Now the fun begins. The first screen you will encounter shows the win prices (the actually return for a $2 bet), the maximum and minimum place and show prices with Dr. Z bets highlighted in blue (the actually advantage is shown under Place and Show ROI/$1) and the W/P/S pools, both total and for each horse. There are also two columns labeled Pitz Exacta and Pitz Double. These show you when it is better to bet a horse in a dutched exacta or double wheel instead of win. In other words, say you like the four horse. If he is paying $6.80 to win, it may be more profitable to bet him on top of all the other horses in the exacta pool. This is a complex bet, as you must bet a different amount on each combination, but the program will figure it out for you in a blink. Many times you can turn a low paying favorite into a much more profitable situation in the exacta pool. Lots of useful stuff, but there is even better stuff just ahead.
In the lower left-hand corner of the screen is a dutching box for win bets. You click on the white box under the horse’s number you want to bet and it will tell you how much to bet on each. It is set by default to bet $100 a race, but you can change that by clicking on the Win Bets white box to the right of the dutch box. If you want to dutch exotics, you can set them as well. Click on the box and then enter any amount you wish, from $20 on up. A neat feature is that you can also hedge a bet. In other words, say you like the favorite and two others. Since you can’t really make money betting favorites, you decide to hedge, betting the favorite to break even and splitting the rest of your money between the other two horses. If the favorite wins, you get your bet back, and you’ve put more money on your longer priced horses. To do this, hit the box a second time, and the label will change from Dutch to Hedge and will turn from green to blue. Hitting the box a third time cancels the bet.
Across the top of the screen, just under the track name, are a series of small buttons. The one labeled WPS Payoffs is checked. Move your cursor and check the next one, Odds. The first two columns show the current odds and the morning line for each horse. The favorite is shown in red, the second favorite in blue and the third in purple. As the odds shift, the colors change with them. The columns labels 1st Exacta and 2nd Exacta show the amounts bet on each horse, expressed as odds. The lower the odds, the more money bet in the exacta pool on that horse in that position, either on top or underneath. In our race at Belmont, the amounts bet each minute are displayed in the column labeled > 12 (greater than 12). The amounts are expressed as odds. Think of each minute of betting as being a separate pool. Starting with 12 minutes to post, each individual minute is displayed and recorded, again expressed as odds representing the money bet just during that minute. Therefore you can see that even though the 4 horse is 8-1 overall, he may have been the even money favorite during the fifth minute before post time when the trainer made his big bet. You can check to see how he did in the previous minutes and follow the action during the next few. Those who use the “Talking Tote” to make their bets have found their ultimate tool.
The next button is Exacta Stats. It shows all the possible exacta combinations first as a payoff, then as a percentage. If the percentage is red, the horse is that percent underplayed, based on the “fair” price of the win odds. Blue and the horse is that percent overlayed. Before you get excited and decide to bet just the overlays and get rich, most of the time Jack has found that it doesn’t work that way. In exactas at least, the big underlays are usually the ones to bet. If you don’t believe it, try it on paper for a while.
After that, we find the Exacta Bets screen, my personal favorite. Here you not only see the familiar exacta payoff matrix, but the tools needed to dutch and hedge exactas. Since the win dutch box accompanies us no matter which screen we are using, I find that here I have all the information I need to play a race. Directly under the exacta matrix are automatic plays labeled Low 2, Low 2 Box and so on. If you hit the Low 3 button, it will display the bets for dutching the three lowest paying exactas. Low 3 box shows the dutch for the 6 combinations of the lowest three odds horses. Play with these and you’ll soon see how they work. To erase what you’ve done, click the CLEAR box in the upper left hand corner.
Continued in part II