I have been thinking about the post Puntz made about an open source program for helping with form analysis, TAB price display and bet placement. I already have a program that does most of this although it is not in a polished form yet (as it was for my own use I have not put nice forms and reports for all the functions). As it would take quite a bit of work to make it into a program suitable for use by everyone I cannot afford to give it away for free but I also realise that most punters are not willing to pay a lot of money for software so was trying to work out how it could be done at low or no cost to you guys but I still got paid for my work. One idea I had was to approach one of the TABs to see if they would fund the further development so that they could offer the software to their internet betting customers. Obviously if I went down this road the software would be locked in to a single TAB so the question is:

If one of the TAB's was to offer a program for downloading and analysing daily form as well as displaying live odds on the races and allowing you to place bets would you use it?

I imagine the TAB would want to restrict you to betting with them (so the program would only place bets with that TAB) and would require you to have a phone/internet account with them with a certain minimum balance or possibly betting activity in the last 7 or 14 days (ie. an active account) before you could download the days form to the program (ie. you would have to logon to get the form).

Some of the features would be:
* Historical form database to allow you to test system ideas (eg. show me the profit or loss if I back runners that won last start by 1 length or more and are starting at the same distance within 21 days). Due to the large database sizes I imagine the basic program you download would not have a historical database (but it would obviously build up over time) but maybe you could order a CD with 1 or 2 years data for a reasonable cost.
* Ability to download form files each day from the TAB website and search for selections based on your criteria (you could save these criteria so each day you could check for matches with the click of a mouse)
* Live display of TAB prices from the internet feed for any race you select
* Download of results at the end of each day (or during the day for races completed). Results would be stored in database for future reference and testing of ideas
* Ability to place bets for system selections or for manual selections
* Display of TAB account history and balances


What does everyone think? Would you use it if it was available and would you open an account with a different TAB to gain access to the service? Or would you prefer for the software to be able to display prices from all three TABs and in this case would you pay for it (and if so, how much)?

Any comments, suggestions or wish lists welcome!

__________________
"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson

Hi Becareful

I'm prepared to try anything that doesn't
cost an arm & a leg.
If you can profit from a TAB in any way
then you have my respect.

Cheers, Zorba

May you live long, and prosper. (Spock)

Becareful,



As we speak I am working on a racing standalone program for past data without the live connection element.
It's in filemaker format.

I think this is a great idea in conjunction with the TAB's and people would certainly use it guaranteed.

One consideration is the price element - to the TAB.

Be very careful (forgive the pun) in revealing any elements of the program to the TAB as it well could be poached.
Also I can't really see the various TABS spending anything to help their customers. To put it bluntly, customers are always secondary to profits.

Have a look at the online formguides supplied by TABcorp at login.
They seriously lack a lot of information and are sometimes missing entirely.

I had a very interesting conversation with Victoria Shaw regarding this fact.

Basically they wanted my input and invited me to Head Office after this conversation.
I went step by step through the positive and negative aspects of the site and navigation.
They all looked wide eyed and said I had some great ideas.

To date NOTHING has been implemented.

That was a year and a half ago.

Becareful

There are a lot of products out there at this point in time. TABq has their ratings and tipsters as well as latemail etc. NSWTAB has their downloadable DFS information which includes form in a racebook format as well as ratings etc. NSWtAB also sells CDs with very basic information on results etc. I muddled around with this using microsoft access but it only gave a sketchy outline.

There are a couple of sites which offer limited but useful form for free.

There are also some form 'analysing' software available too which are for sale right now. I don't use these so cannot offer any feedback.

Then there are those that are using the price predictor software and selections.

I notice in the forum there is another one which looks quite snazzy and can offer real time odds and give a good dutch book facility.

I know of one service that you download their program and it will give a graphical outline of the form and offer tips as well as be able to stack up appropriate quinella and other exotic bets quickly. (anyone out there know of it's success with customers?)

Perhaps the TAB is not where the product should be placed. As Chrome Prince says they are interested in the bottom line and turnover and whatever you propose has to be a threat to that. I have used the Tasmanian tote internet service and I believe it would benefit from a face lift and extra features not to mention speed of use. You only get prices and no form there. So your platform might have a need in that case. The prices are the same as SuperTAB. The bigger tabs have it sorted out with a type of form feature which you can click on behind the race list and ratings (or computer prices like Tabform) given as a type of analysis.

Perhaps it might be possible to make a deal with a firm that offers form cheaply and the software you propose can use their form and analyse it in a very useful way. That way you might get a commission from the actual sale of the form, rather than directly from the software purchase?

The problem I found with the proposed development of software for the punt, is what I thort would happen,
either, Too many chiefs,not enough indians, or 2 is company 3 is a crowd, whatever, but there you have it.
Thanks to those that did show some interest.

[ This Message was edited by: puntz on 2003-10-31 12:07 ]

Becareful,

I could see U-Bet being able to cope with the extension you are talking about and incorperating it into their software development. It would be easy peasy for them to include those basic features as an add on. Why don't you put it to the Man?

Hi becareful,

IMO, this is a stupid idea because of just one thing. You will make money off of it, like a pyramid ********.

I am a programmer and could easily have this out tomorrow (I have 3 years of data on horses/harness/dogs on my PC right now), you should possibly work towards seeing that the TABs lose instead of the punters being made to pay all the time.

*If the programe works use it, if it doesn't, sell it*

Just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt.

Boodu
whats the alternative if I may ask on behalf of those requiring a tool/program concept?

[quote]
On 2003-08-22 23:44, Boodu wrote:
"..you should possibly work towards seeing that the TABs lose..."

Could you please tell us how that is possible? Are you working on a way to plunge the tote so that the TAB loses on the race? I thought the TABs win every race.

Boodu,

The idea I was suggesting is something I have already done for myself and which I find extremely useful. It is not a "betting system" as such but rather a tool that collects data (I have nearly 5 years of Tabcorp/Unitab data, 3 years of NSW TAB and around a years full 5-start form from Cyberhorse in the system) and then allows me to analyse that data in lots of different ways. Basically I use it to test ideas and can then identify possible bets at the click of the mouse. Each day it can load up the form files (from Cyberhorse) and in a few minutes process them and display or print the selections that match my current criteria - I know that many others spend literally hours doing what I can do in 2 minutes. At the time of the race I can see the prices for my selections on all 3 TABs and it has the capability to prepare the bets for submission to the various TABs (although I don't use this anymore as I place my bets with either IAS or Sportingbet and I haven't had the time to work out how to do this automatically yet).

My original post (back in April) was just meant to see if enough people would be interested in a similar "tool" to make it worth finishing off in a professional way. The software already does all I need but as I have just added features as I went along is certainly not "saleable" as is. I had to decide whether to spend the time to make it into something that I could sell or spend that time doing other consulting jobs and keep the program only for my own use. In the end I decided it was not worth developing further as it would probably cost me at least $10,000 (in terms of what I could earn in the time it would take me to finish it off nicely) and there just doesn't seem the interest for me to get that money back.

As to the suggestion you could easily have a program out tomorrow:
:lol: :lol: :lol:

__________________
"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson