Odds Viewer Pro

Disclaimer

Odds Viewer Pro is a 'work in progress' and as such may have a few quirks. It's possible at this early stage of development that bets placed through Odds Viewer Pro may not go through, or incorrect Odds data may appear. In practice I've not had this happen and I've never had incorrect bets placed so I'm confident it works fine. But there is the possibility of error there so please be aware that you use this software at your own risk. I suggest small bets at first to gain confidence with the program.

Known Problems

• The server is only available with the latest race data after 10:30am in the morning. The TAB has recently provided the data earlier so I may move this back sometime. Currently though 10:30am is the best time. Before that and you'll get the previous days history data or the server won't be up (because I choose that time to do maintenance).
• Pressing 'Logon' before 'Get Meetings' causes an error. You need to 'Get Meetings' before doing anything else.
• The 'Next Race' button sometimes brings up a race that has closed. The TAB is occasionally a bit slow at marking races as 'closed' and not updating with final odds. If they don't do this, Odds Viewer Pro thinks the race is still open and selects it. I'm working on a work around for this problem.
• When a bet is placed you always get a confirmation saying the bet was successfully placed. I haven't yet implemented checking with the TAB to see if it was successfull. This is planned for the next version. To check if the bet was placed go to the member services part of the TAB web site and look for 'Account Activity'.

Brief Instructions

I'll be expanding on these instructions one day to include tutorials, hints, and tips. Any advice on this area appreciated. I'm not a writer. Below is a brief outline of how to use the program.

Installation

1. Install the Functional Developer Run Time Library available at http://www.double.co.nz/racing/fdrund3.exe. It's about 4.5MB in size. You'll need to reboot after installing. Note that this is a one time install.
2. Unzip the Odds Viewer Pro file into any directory.
3. Run the program odds-viewer-pro.exe in that directory.

Main Screen

Press 'Get Meetings' to get a list of meetings. Double click a meeting to select a particular race. Choosing a race displays the race screen for that selected race.

The 'Next race' button brings up a window up with the next race to go.

The 'Logon' button allows you to enter your NZ TAB account details (the ones you use to access the TAB web site for betting). This will activate the betting abilities of Odds Viewer Pro. If you don't enter this data you won't see any of the betting menus when you right click at various places. You can choose this option at any time. You must re-enter the data whenever you run Odds Viewer Pro.

Race Screen

The race screen is displayed when you've selected and meeting and race number from the main window.

The screen contains a number of 'tabs':

1. 'Odds' displays the tab number, win dividend, place dividend, % of win pool and % of place pool of the dollars bet on that runner.
2. 'Chart' shows a chart of the % win pool movements as the new odds arrive.
3. 'Movers' shows a list of the runners that had their % win pool change at each odds update.
4. 'Place Analysis' does a Dr Z style analysis of the race. It shows the runner number, place dividend, the win probability of that runner (which is the % of the win pool taken as probability of winning), the probability of that runner placing (1st, 2nd or 3rd or 1st or 2nd if less than 8 runners - uses a formula to calculate chance of placing based on chance of winning), and the return on investment you'd get betting on this horse for a place based on its chance of placing and current place dividend. ROI of >= 1.0 is a positive return. Generally you want more than 1.0 to cater for dividends dropping before race close, etc. Theoretically always betting on horses with an ROI greater than 1.0 should be profitable.
5. 'Dutch Book' for doing simple dutch book calculations. This tab does not update as new odds information arrives (if you've turned on auto update). Instead you need to press the 'update dividends' button. This is because you can manually change the dividends to do the book and you don't want to lose all this at an odds change. Enter your desired profit (dollars only, no decimal point). Right click on a runner and choose 'Include in dutch book' and you'll see the amounts in the 'bet' column being how much you'd need to bet on that runner. You can adjust the dividend by right clicking and choosing 'set dividend'. You can automatically send the bet to the TAB if you've logged on using 'submit dutch win bet'. Careful with this - there's no confirmation and it goes straight through placing the bet for you. It's designed to be fast so you can leave it up to the last 30 seconds or so.

On most runner tables you can right click and choose to submit and win or place bet to the TAB as well - also designed to be fast and enable you to leave things to the last minute.

Dutch book details

Some more detailed information on the Dutch Book Tab.

If you go to this tab you'll see a list of all the runners, whether they are included in the dutch book, their current win dividend and the amount you need to bet on that runner to reach your desired profit. There is an entry field for the desired profit too. This number to enter for desired profit *must* be a round number (ie. no decimal point). As you key in the number you should see the 'bet amount' column in the table update if you have included in any runners in your dutch book.

To include a runner in the book (by default they're all excluded), right click on the runner and choose 'Include in dutch book'. The 'Dutch?' column should change to 'Yes' for that runner and an amount will appear in the 'Bet amount' column. Right click on the same runner and choose 'Exclude from dutch book' to remove it again.

As you add and remove runners you'll see the bet amounts update. To actually place the bet press the 'Submit Dutch win bet' button. Careful here. Pressing this will straight away place the bet. When it is placed and little message box will appear telling you that it was placed. This could take 30 seconds or so. Make sure you have logged on from the first Odds Viewer Pro window before placing the bet or it won't work.

The bet is placed using TAB Multibet, rather than as seperate bets so it should be fairly quick, no matter how many runners you use.

Contact Details

Any questions, comments or suggestion can come to me, Chris Double (chris.double@double.co.nz).