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. This latest version includes all the features of version 3; the fantastic Summary page and interfaces to our Trainer/Jockey Statistics program as well as the hot list developed with our Fit N Ready Horses program or any simple text file of fit and ready horses you create, as well as the ability to unzip your past performance files for you, eliminating this extra step. We called it "MyWay" because we picture You referring to it as you handicap Your way.

In addition, Version 4 includes the ability to watch an animated preview of how the race may be run, based on the PP lines you have selected for each horse. And, if you are using the BRIS MultiCaps files, it can display the BRIS Class and Race ratings as well. In Version 4.1 we've also added a great spot play to our WorkOuts function. This angle picked Birdstone to upset Smarty Jones in the 2004 Belmont, paying $74.00, and Giacomo in the 2005 Kentucky Derby, who paid $102.60. However, we feel it’s just as good for high end Allowance and Claiming races, and have seen it pick some 'whoppers' even in maiden claimers. For example, we tracked this play over five tracks, Aqueduct, Gulfstream, Laurel, Mountaineer, and Santa Anita on Saturday 3/14/2009. It won 10 out of 26 bets, including an incredible 6 for 9 at Santa Anita with a maiden claimer paying a whopping $140.00! Even if you throw that race out as a fluke, it still produced 9 of 25 winners, for 36 percent, and an ROI of nearly 27 percent.

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). If you pick a file that is still zipped, MyWay will unzip it for you and, if you like, delete the zipped file. 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 examine 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. And, any horse that meets our super workout spot play (like St Trinians in this example) is highlighted as well. The report looks like this.

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

Next, 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.

If you are a user of our Trainer/Jockey Combo Statistics program, you can also call up your TnJ files and list the performance of each Trainer + Jockey team involved in today's race. (And if you're not, see the special offer at the bottom of this description!) Just click the TnJ button and a report like the following appears:

And if you use our Fit N Ready Horses program to spotlight horses that performed exceptionally well recently, you can see if any of them are in today's race. (And if you're not, see the special offer at the bottom of this description!)Even if you don't use our Fit N Ready Horses program, if you keep a text file with the names of horses you want to look out for, you can search that file for horses in today's race. Just click the FitNReady button, and a report like the following appears.

Note that none of the horses in the 1st at Belmont on 7/14/2006 were in either list, so we've chosen another race to illustrate the usefulness of this feature. As you can see, MyWay found 2 horses listed by our Fit N Ready Horses program that are in the 1st at Aqueduct on 1/13/2007. It also checked a file named AmTurf.txt in which we copy the horses listed each month in American Turf Monthly magazine. However, it didn't find any hits in that file. Interestingly, one of the horses from our Fit N Ready list, Broad Acres, won this race and paid a handsome $67.50!

And, if you are BRIS MultiCaps file user, the CLASS button will be visible on your Odds Line screen. If you click that button, you'll see a report giving the BRIS Class and Race ratings for each PP line of each horse. It looks like the following.

Finally, once you have picked the PP line for each horse that you feel best represents how it may run today, you can first click the SARTIN button to refresh the velocity calculations, then click the RaceView button to view an animated preview of how the race shapes up, based on the calculated velocities from the PP lines. Of course, this is not intented to show you the winner (although it frequently does) but it does give you insight into potential speed duels, fast closing horses who may just come up short, etc. The program animates each horse and moves them with respect to each other, resulting in a finish that looks like this.

Okay. Armed with all of this information, it's now time to refine the odds initially calculated by the program. 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 5 horse just to illustrate the process.

And, suppose that something in the handicapping notes, angles, etc., convinces us that the 9 horse should really be more like 4/1 than the 8/1 the program showed us. We'll simply change it! To do that, we double click on the 9 horse to select it, type 4/1 into the "Odds" box and click the Odds button. The program inserts 4/1 next to the 9 horse and recalculates the odds for all the other horses, as shown below.

Once you are finished creating an odds line that makes sense to you, click the Summary button to get a short (usually one page) summary of how the race shapes up, sorted in the order of the odds you have established. The summary looks like this:

There are three main sections to the report. The top section shows the general characteristics (earnings per start, days away, etc.) of each horse in the race, showing its rank compared to the others in most of these categories. It even includes a modified version of Dick Mitchell's "Class Consistency" number (CCR). The second section collects the important trainer stats for all the trainers in one place. Finally, the third section shows data based on the PP lines you selected for each horse, including the Sartin Velocity numbers, again along with rank.

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 ($29.95), the Sartin Method Pro Calculator ($42.95), Spot Plays ($39.95), Rating Workouts ($44.95), the Long Shot Finder ($45.95) as well as some of the functionality of the Weighted Speed Calculator ($41.95) and the Race Wager Analysis Sytem ($79.95). 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 $249.95

And, if you order the Trainer / Jockey Statistics program (a $54.95 value) and the Fit N Ready Horses program ( a $56.95 value) at the same time, we'll give them to you at the special price of ONLY $60.00 additional!