Written at the suggestion of several of our customers, MyWay is by far the most ambitious of all our thoroughbred handicapping programs. It includes features from several of our most popular programs, and introduces some exciting new features as well. We called it "MyWay" because we picture You referring to it as you handicap Your way.

One of the main features of MyWay is its ability to simplify the creation of your own personal odds for a given race, and its ability to help you improve your odds-making. Here's how it works.

First, you create a small file, a "race profile" for each type of race you will be handicapping. This takes some thought, but is simple to do. You simply look over our master list of 56 different handicapping factors, and cut and paste the ones you want to use into a new text file. Then, you simply add weighting factors to each. Here's an example:

Here, we're using the Horse's Earnings Per Start, the Quirin Speed Points it has earned, it's (Sartin) Early Pace Velocity and the Morning Line. In this case, we want to weight each of these handicapping factors (approximately) equally. Now, Earnings per Start can be all over the lot, so rather than use the earnings themselves, we're using each horse's rank in earnings. So, if there are 10 horses in the race, the one with the highest earnings will get a "10", the one with the lowest a "1." To make it easier to adjust the factors so they are approximately equal, we'll use weights (the number after the equals signs) that bring them all to approximately 100. So, using 10 as a likely number of horses in a race, we'll multiply by a factor of 10. In the case of Quirin Speed Points, the range is 0 to 8, so we'll use a weight of 12.5 to convert 8 points to a score of 100. Early Pace is likely to be in the range of 50 ft/sec to 60 ft/sec, so we'll use a weight of 2. The Morning Line can be all over the lot as well, so we'll use the rank, just as we did with earnings.

We'll create a similar file for each type of race. So, for example, for turf races we may include closing velocity, for maidens, workout furlongs per day, etc. But don't worry, if you are not interested in creating your own odds line, the program comes with a few sample files that you can use.

When you start the program, the opening screen offers you three different options, as shown here.

The default is Handicapping, which is the one you are apt to use the most. When you select this option, you are asked to pick a race card file (BRIS, TSN, or ProCaps, single file format). Once the card is selected, you choose a race to handicap from the following screen.

Once you select a race, you are asked to select a race profile, from the following screen.

As you can see, the default is "general.prf" which comes with the program. So, if you're not interested in using the initial odds calculation capabilities, which we'll explain next, you can simply click "Open" to accept the default.

Once you select a race profile, the program opens your BRIS/TSN PP file and computes a set of odds based on the criteria in the profile, and each horse's last race and displays the following screen.

The names and program numbers of each horse, along with the program's calculated odds and the morning line, are shown in the upper left panel. General information about the first horse, its trainer and jockey are given in the upper right panel. And, the past performance lines and workouts are shown in the bottom panel. You can change the data to another horse simply by double clicking on the horse's name in the upper left panel.

The odds shown for each horse are meant only to be a starting point. The next step is to examing the race notes by clicking the RaceNotes button. This give you a report just like the one from our Handicapper's Highlight Notes Program. This is a concise summary, showing horses with winning streaks, high speed ratings, hot jockeys and trainers, head-to-head competition in the past, etc. It looks like this.

Next, you should examine some potential special situations or betting "Angles" by clicking the Angles button. This will highlight horses that are at their lowest claiming price or first claiming race, have just had their first stretch lead in the past three races, have had two consecutive drops in odds, etc. This report looks like this.

Next, if you're a Sartin Velocity practitioner, click the Sartin button for a report similar to that given by our Sartin Pro Calculator. This screen contains an additional feature, it highlights the fastest velocity achieved in each of the Sartin parameters in bold, as shown here.

Next, particularly if this is a maiden race or one for two year olds or lightly raced three year olds, you might want to check the quality of the workouts. MyWay includes the same data given by our "Rating Workouts" program. This data includes a numerical rating for each workout, based on our analysis of 330,000 workouts. The report looks like this.

You might also check each horse's BRIS pedigree ratings (if you are using BRIS or ProCaps files) by clicking the PED RATING button. This displays the pedigree ratings as shown below.

Finally, you should click the WSp/LS button for a report which combines the Weighted Speed Points from our "Weighted Speed Calculator" program and Long Shot Points from our "Long Shot Finder" program. This report looks like this.

Okay. Armed with all of this information, it's now time to refine the odds initially calculated by the program. So, for example, suppose that something in the handicapping notes, angles, etc., convinces us that the 4 horse should really be more like 4/1 than the 5/1 the program showed us. We'll simply change it! To do that, we double click on the 4 horse to select it, type 4/1 into the "Odds" box and click the Odds button. The program inserts 4/1 next to the 4 horse and recalculates the odds for all the other horses, as shown below.

Remember that MyWay calculates the initial odds based on each horse's last race. However, you may feel that a horse has a legitimate excuse, or some other reason for ignoring that race. To change the race used for the calculation, simply double click the race you want to use, then the Recalculate button. An example is shown below.

Here, we've changed the race used for the 1 horse from one in which it finished 20 lengths behind, to one in which it won the race. As you can see, the calculated odds on the horse dropped from 7/1 to 5/1.

Okay. You've seen how the program helps you to generate a personal odds line. It starts you off with a line calculated on the basis of handicapping factors that You have selected, arms you with pages of information on which to base adjustments, and gives you an easy way to make those adjustments. But how does it help you to improve your odds making ability?

Once you are finished making adjustments, and are satisfied with the odds line you have created, you simply click the "Save Odds" button. The program asks you what file to save these odds in, then saves a record for each horse. The record contains the track, date, race number, distance, surface, horse, type of race, your calculated odds and the morning line. As you'll see shortly, the program has the ability to update this file once the results are in. At that point, you can see whether your 3/1 shots are actually winning more or less than the desired 1 in 4 races. More about this later.

Another feature of MyWay is its ability to advise you about bets on multiple horses in the same race. For example, in this race, our calculations tell us that both the 4 and 8 horses look like overlays. Which should we bet? Should we bet both? If you click the "Multi Horse" button and enter the 4 and 8 horses, you get the following results.

This shows that based on the calculated ROI, both the 4 and 8 represent wagers with significant positive expectations. If we bet both horses, our estimated ROI is a bit lower than that for a wager on the 8, but our expected win percentage has doubled!

Another crucially important feature of MyWay is its ability to track your wagers for you. I'm sure you heard over and over about how important it is to keep track of your wagers and check to see what's working for you and what's not. But perhaps it was simply too much work? Well, the work is over.

If you are going to make a real wager on a horse in this race, or even if you just want to track "what if" wagers for a while, you can simply click on the horse you wish to bet on and the "Post Bet" button to record the wager into a database. The program can handle the following bet types.

Simply Click on the type of wager you want and then on Place Bet. The program will then ask you for the amount of the wager.

The program next asks you what file you want to record wagers in. The default is general.res. You can set up different ones for different tracks, etc. Once you select the file, the program asks for additional horses if it's an exotic bet, then reports that the wager has been recorded.

But MyWay doesn't stop there. It doesn't simply make it easy to record wagers. It also makes it easy to update them with results, and analyze those results. You'll recall, way back at the beginning of this description, that MyWay opens up with three choices. The second choice is to Update Results.

When you select this option, the program will open up an exotic results file (25 cents from either BRIS or TSN at the time of this writing) and update your odds and wager files. The program begins by asking for the exotic wager file you want to process.

Next it asks you for the Odds file and wager file you want to process. If you are not saving your odds calculations you can simply click "Cancel" at that inquiry. If you are, the program looks for each horse that finished each race in your odds file and updates each record with the horse's final (actual) odds and finish position. You can open this file with Excel and sort by your odds. Then add a column which places a 1 if the horse's finish position was 1 and 0 if not. Then for each odds range you can add up the number of horse's with those odds and the number of winners, and see how the ratio fits with the odds.

The program also adds the finish position and final (actual) odds of the first horse in each record in your wagers file. Next, if the bet was a winner, it computes the payoff, based on the published payoff and the amount you wagered, and adds that to the record. All of this updating is being done automatically, with no keyboard input from you other than identifying the appropriate files.

That brings us to the last major section of the program, Analyze Wagers.

When you click "Analyze Wager" you are brought to a screen in which you set up a filter to catch ONLY the types of races you want to analyze results for. You can limit the results by the type of race, the range of distances, calculated odds, final odds, Morning Line odds, Purse values, Surface or dates. You would probably start by looking at all races first, then fine tune the filter later. In any case, you are next prompted for the wager (or results) file you want to evaluate.

Next, you can limit the types of bets you want to look at. For example, you may want to separate your analysis of Win, Place, and Show bets from the Exotic bets.Simply click on the types of wager you want. If you want all types, just click the "Select All" button.

The program then displays your wagering results. For each type of race, it shows the number of bets made, the number of wins, the total amount wagered, the profit and the ROI% At the bottom, it shows the # wins, and win percentage along with the average mutual you collected. It also shows the # races you wagered on and the race win percentage. These, of course, will be the same unless you have made more than one wager on the same races.

When you close the report, you are returned to the criteria selection screen. The next step you might want to take is to break the results down to sprints and routes, or Dirt vs Turf. Do this for sprints by changing the maximum distance to 7.9. For routes, change the minimum to 8 and the maximum to 20. To look at only Dirt races, uncheck the TURF box, and vice versa.

Once you are looking at sprints or routes, note if there are certain types of races that have particularly good or bad ROI. Obviously, you can then lay off betting the kinds of races that you haven't been winning, while keep entering "practice" bets in the database to see if you are improving.

As you can see, MyWay includes the features of our other popular programs, the Handicapper's Highlight Notes ($24.95), the Sartin Method Pro Calculator ($24.95), Rating Workouts ($19.95), the Long Shot Finder ($29.95) as well as some of the functionality of the Weighted Speed Calculator ($34.95) and the Race Wager Analysis Sytem ($39.95. In addition, it offers a new dimension in developing and improving personal odds lines, as well as an automatic screening of some 16 different betting "Angles." A bargain at ONLY $179.95