Innovations of the Decade: #3 Handicapping Software

With the end of the Aughts rapidly approaching, the r2 collective polled industry insiders, horseplayers, and fans for their top five technological innovations in racing during the past decade. As voted by our panel, #3 is Handicapping Software.

Reading a racing form to prepare for a day of racing can take hours. In harness racing where horses race week to week, having your pulse on each horse is a full time job.

But computers have changed everything.

During this decade, software, spreadsheets/databases and myriad other tools have exploded with horseplayers. We have all seen the ads, or heard a friend speak of a new handicapping tool he/she might be using. What took some players hours upon hours, might now take only seconds. This has arguably helped handles. With wall to wall racing (on some Saturday’s we can play over 30 tracks) how can one possibly handicap all of them manually.

“I can play every track if I want to with software,” said professional player James Erickson at a recently concluded conference at the Meadowlands. “It gives me information in a manner that makes it easy for me to have an opinion on the race. I still have to use my brain to decipher the numbers that it gives, but it gives me a quick, precise summary on what I have to look for. When I go to the track without my software I might only play $20 or $30 for fun.”

To contrast handicapping by hand, and with software, take this scenario, where the two players land on the same horse. Let’s assume the players have never played this racetrack. Also, let’s make the winning horse lone speed, dropping in class, the track bias is heavy to speed and the trainer of the horse is shipping him in and has a hit rate of over 50% with dropping shippers.

With a program, the pen and paper handicapper will see the lone speed, after some study. She will then go through all the charts and see the track bias of the past several cards. She will find, either in the form or elsewhere, trainer numbers, but maybe not a subset of them. Regardless, she lands on the lone speed and believes that the trainer is pretty decent in this situation. It takes some time, and skill.

Conversely, with the computer capper, he downloads the file and uploads it to his handicapping software. Immediately he is alerted to lone speed – he does not even see the form, it is there for him. He then checks the track bias “bot” in the software and sees that the track is heavily speed friendly. He then runs over to Formulator, or uses his own software and sees a model on the trainer signaling a green light shipper. He also has a minimum odds or probability line he will take on this horse, that he has used with this model through thousands of races. Poof, in seconds he has come to the same conclusion.

If you read chat boards, or follow racing closely with ADW players, you get to see just how important software is this decade. It is not uncommon to see talk and arguments on software packages and/or the inner workings of them, that a laymen might find difficult to understand. In fact, some packages have what many would describe as a cult status.

In a society that is busier and busier, where we are bombarded with numerous gambling and entertainment options and have many races to choose from on any given day, the speed and accuracy of software is a big part of the handle picture, and certainly one of the top innovations of the decade.