Hi everyone,
As some of you may know, I have been developing a computer program that handicaps races and ranks the horses 1,2,3...,etc.. After a year and a half of work, I am at a crossroads [btw, GREAT SONG], a point where I need some constructive critisim or a PEER REVIEW so to speak.
Computer Handicapping
Introduction: This section breifly describes the program.
I download the Formulator pps from DRF. Use the Formulator program to load the pp's into the Millineum.mdb Access database used by Formulator. A Visual Basic 6.0 program then reads the database and ranks the horses for each race and writes the analysis to my output Access database. Once the race has been run, I enter the results and the scratches into my database and re-run the analysis to remove scratched horses.
Methodology: This section roughly describes some of the methods used by BiiGreen.
The BiiGreen program ranks horses based on a weighted average of 4 factors. The program reads the pps and uses custom algorithms to compare the factors for the horses in a race and ranks them 1,2,3,...,etc.. These factors are averaged using weights that are automically developed for each track. The weights being used are automically computed by an optimization/calibration process. This process looks at all possible combinaitons of factors and choses only those that have an apparent impact on the outcome of the race. This produced the 4 factors that are being used. Then these factors are weighted to see which of these is most important to the outcome. The maximizaiton of the win percent and ROI determines the weights.
Analyzing Results:
With the race results in the database, I can query it to show me all the horses that won and were ranked 1st or 2nd by the program. Another query computes the Win %, ROI, Average win payout, # of winners, and total money won. These are the results with 757 races in the database:
Total wins 323
$3,830.90 in winners
ROI 26.5%
Win 42.6%
Avg win $11.86
Click here to see a list of winners picked by BiiGreen
An issue with the ranking and the results is that the program will sometimes rank more than one horse 1st or 2nd. There were an average of 2.4 horses ranked as 1st or 2nd for the 757 races. This reduced the ROI to 5%.
Conclusions:
Given the analysis from BiiGreen, the form, and my brain, I have put together an excellent year so far. Using the analysis and an "if A then B" betting strategy has lead to a positive return on money and exictment. Therefore, it would seem that computer handicapping can be worth the time and/or money invested.
Questions:
Am I dreaming?
Am I missing something?
What other issuses or problems can you see?
Someone said that if this is true it would be a world premier. I find it EEEEXtreeeeeemley hard to believe that I could do something like that. My real thesis was a boon to hydrological modeling in Geographic Informaiton Systems. But that is a new science. Horseracing has been around for a long time. Could I be the first to do this? I really don't think so.
Thanks for your time and comments.
BiiG (aka Mike)
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