Horse Racing Software, Bet Selector

Price Predictor for Ratings and Form Analysis

Price Predictor is the original horse racing ratings part of Bet Selector first released in 1987. It combines all the various pieces of form for upcoming races to predict the outcome of the race. This is where Bet Selector and in particular its recently revised Price Predictor horse racing ratings come into play.

The Price Predictor module (available via the pull down Run menu) displays horses past form in both a database-style format (via the LOAD DATA TABLES button) and a web-style format (via the View Extra Form button). These formats make it is easy to compare horse statistics and past form lines but that's not all as also included are horse racing ratings for horses past performances so you can numerically compare horses against one another even if they have never raced together before!

The Price Predictor part of Bet Selector not only predicts the finishing order of horses in a race but also calculates what it thinks is a "fair" price for each runner. Some punters are happy to simply bet the top prediction regardless but the professional approach is to only back a horse if the price available for it is equal to or better than what the program says is a "fair" price (referred to as an overlay). Backing a horse only when you can get a horse's "fair" price or better can also be applied to multiple horses in the same race (if so it is usually best to limit horses under consideration to the top 5 or 6 rated and/or to those rated at $10 or less).

Also important is selecting the right races and less experienced punters are advised to start with lower risk races. These are best identified by confining yourself to Saturday Sydney and Melbourne races with above average quality horses. The quality or class of the horses in a race is collectively expressed by the avBASE figure listed alongside the race name within the program (50 and above is good, 60 plus is absolute top - eg Melb Cup. Cox Plate etc). Races with large numbers of first uppers and races for 2 year old horses are best excluded.

Note: These support pages concentrate on how to use the features in the program rather than how to bet. To learn more about the punting side of things you can check out our Punting Articles. On the system side of things you can get professionally designed systems for Bet Selector from Grandstand Publishing.

Main Price Predictor Window

Once one or more meetings have been imported into the program, Price Predictor lists all meetings available for use in a scrollable list box on the left. A large text box on the right contains basic field information for the selected meeting with more functionality and information obtainable via a number of buttons to the lower left and to the right as follows:

The following buttons across the top of the window change what is displayed in the large list box (note bold button text is used to denote which view is active):

Finally at the bottom of the window are buttons for saving fields to text files, viewing form in text format and for printing reports from the large list box.

Horse Window

The Horse Window via the LOAD DATA TABLES button displays every horse in the race listed down the screen and details for each horse listed across the screen (extra details are available on the right hand side by clicking TABs for additional panes of information). Data presented for each horse is as follows:

Details of horse's past runs can be found at the bottom of the Horse Window but for even more information you can click the "View Past Form/Edit Ratings" button on the left of the horse window. Details on the Form/Edit dialogue that pops up can be found below.

Form Window

The Form Window displays detailed horse information in the top half of the screen, a sub-section of items you can edit in the middle of the screen and past form information in the bottom half of the screen. Items that you can edit (eg to modify a horse's predicted status) are as follows (note that after changing anything you should click the "Update" pushbutton to force prediction recalculations):

If you wish to quickly alter a horses rated prediction there are +1 and -1 buttons near the top right of the window that add and subtract one from the selected horses base rating and instantly recalculate the rated prices and rated positions. Note also the Prev Race and Next Race button in the top right of the window for easy race navigation.

At the bottom of the top half of the Form Window you will find the program's bonuses and penalties for each horse. These are as follows:

In regards to the above bonus and penalties, each has a default weighting of one but these weightings can be adjusted in Bet Selector Ultimate via the Setup option off the pull down FILE menu where you can change any individual weighting to zero or some other number. For example if you don't like Bet Selector's new class bonus/penalties you could zero them out by changing the weighting to zero. But you could also change the weighting to 0.5 to get half the bonus/penalty or to 1.5 to get 50% more! Same for all the other bonuses and penalties!

In the bottom half of the Form Window, each past run available is listed down the screen and details for each past run are listed across the screen. Note if you have access to a large number of past starts (eg more than 16), you may have to scroll down to see them. Items included for past starts are as follows:

Note the following buttons on the form window:

Note: Below the past runs at the very bottom of the form window are F1 for the finishing position of winner (or 2nd to winner), Other1 for the horse name of winner (or 2nd to winner) and Wgt1 for the Weight of winner (or 2nd to winner) - and similarly for second and third.