PK3 Software

[sonny]

In Dick Mitchell's booklet "How To Play The Pick 3" he mentions a software program called the "Bettor Handicapper" that will generate optimum PK3 bets based upon the odds you assign to the contenders (usually 2-4 per race). Does anyone know anything about this program or better yet an Excel application that can do this. The math is easy enough to do, I'm having trouble coding it in Excel.

Thanks in advance.

Sonny

[hurrikane]

What's the math sonny. If you know that piece the rest is easy....

[sonny]

The math is simply calculating the joint probabilities of all your contenders, and dividing by the sum of the join porbabilities to tell you how much to bet on that particular combination.

What's harder for me is to get Excel to automatically "fill" out the tickets without me having to type in all the combinations (not the probabilites of the combinations). In some instances you have 2x3x3 tickets (18 combos) in others 5x2x 2 (so combos), etc. I haven't figured out an elegant way to code this yet.

SONNY

[kitts]

The Bettor Handicaper was a pocket calculator-it did the math to which you refer.

[sonny]

Thanks.

I got the impression from Dick Mitchell's book that it was software that generated a list of bets. I could type in all the combinations and my odds estimates and let excel do the calculations but I've found that even the 3-5 minutes it would take to type in all the numbers are critical when you're only dealing with 20 minutes between races. My biggest weakness in playing multiple win exotics is that it simply takes me too long to structure the bet, Right now I just classify the contenders A contender/B contender and bet more on combinations with the most A horses. That's certainly better than just playing 2x3x2 for the same dollar amount, but if you're going to use and odds line it's less optimum than using the compound probability method. It's something that sounds easier in theory to automate (using Excel) than it really is in practice and I'm pretty good at Excel.

SONNY

[kitts]

Oops. I sold so many Bettor Handicapper pocket calculators that I forgot that he did subsequently come out with the software version. Guess I should wait until the caffeine kicks in before generating my snappy answers.

[midnight]

Sonny: the only program I'm proficient in is QBasic (which I can compile to a DOS EXE file), but it sounds like it would only take an hour or two to program this. You'd have to type in the program numbers, your odds, and the total amount you want to bet, and it would structure the bets for you. I don't know a thing about Excel. Maybe hurrikane could help.

[hurrikane]

yeah, it can be done faily easy with vba in excel.
I"m really swampped right now though. Maybe in a couple of weeks I could look at it....

[sonny]

Hurrikane:

Thanks for the tip. I'm just getting started with VBA. Right now I can automate might tasks using the macro recorder and then edit the code using the VBA editor. I'm sitting here with an 1100 page Excel reference text and I'm going to try to figure out how to do it. Any insights you can give me are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sonny.

[hurrikane]

sonny,
do a search for excel vba code samples.
something like that. You will find sites with little code snippets for most anything you want to do.
Much quicker than a book if you have any experience at all. Sounds like you do.

[rrbauer]

Send me an email if you would like to see a PDF copy of the 3-BAGGER PC Software Reference Manual.

rrbauer@go.com

[atlasaxis]

Oops. I sold so many Bettor Handicapper pocket calculators that I forgot that he did subsequently come out with the software version. Guess I should wait until the caffeine kicks in before generating my snappy answers.

Kitts,

Do you have any copies of the software version for sale? I've also contacted CPC and am waiting to hear from them. Thanks very much!

[facorsig]

I had programmed something similar based on Mitchell's work. The odds in second and third legs are fixed, so this should not take long to update bets for the first leg.

There was a macro for Excel sold by Steve Martin for P4 and P6 called, Pick 4 (or Pick 6) PRO. Obviously, putting a 100% odds horse into the fourth leg converts this approach to a P3 approach.

These are viable approaches...

Fred