Horse racing handicapping software
Horse racing betting systems have been around for decades. They used to come in the form of easy to use formulas in which to plug Racing Form data. There were even instruments that looked like slide rules, and the horse player put a few data elements and the device indicated which horse would win.
When the computer age began, the manual systems started to be replaced by horse racing software. The early types of these simply replace what the horse player did with a pen, pencil, or slide-rule look alike with data entry screens. The would-be bettor entered data into the horse racing handicapping software and just as before, a winner was selected. Many horse players like to use instinct and their confidence in their own analytic skill, but still wanted a sanity check from a software program, generally set up to evaluate certain segments of data.
Anyone that is familiar with the Daily Racing Form knows that there are many data elements involved and many ways to evaluate them. Software requiring the user’s data input relied on throwing out lots of elements and focusing on several as being the “key” elements for each race.
That is why horse racing handicapping software has evolved from the tedious keying in of data by the user and providing a probable winning horse, to an automated input system that evaluates probabilities.
Horse races are like most statistically measurable activities. The performance of one particular horse is not something one can pinpoint before the race, even after handicapping the horse’s profile. When you put 8, 10, 12 horses in a race, each one with a fair range of “expected performance” and you have a decision to make on the basis of many calculations, and the mathematical aspects are only one part of the game - Horse racing handicapping software.
Modern horse racing software utilizes complex software programs which the user can download to his or her computer. The rest of the process is to download data files for the races at whichever track is of interest to the user. The data files are run through the software program to produce expected results. Wisely, most horse racing software companies do not recommend betting on a particular horse.
That is the other part of the growth in sophistication of this software. The fact is that the name of the game for a horse player is not to pick A winner per se. It is to get a true reading of the probability of each horse’s chances to win the race in question. Every horse has some chance of winning. The process of wagering shows the betting public’s opinion of which horses are more likely, and less likely, to win.
The bettor can take this prediction of “what the odds should be” to the track or play onscreen, looking for bargains on the betting board, that is horses whose odds offer a bigger payback than what the software indicates it should be.
One provider is Bloodstock Research (BRIS), which provides a number of different software tools for free download. They make their money when people buy the data files to run through the programs.
There are other providers of horse racing software, but the buyer should check into whether the data input is automated, or if the handicapper has to spend time inputting data. The latter type is time consuming, and as noted above, tends to leave out some data that might be meaningful.