To echo Dave’s remarks, in an earlier life, I was involved in a manufacturing industry as a sub-contract supplier to large corporations…specifically suppling sheet metal fabrications and machined components. Due to the high level of quality control required by our customers, we were given an on-going challenge for continuous quality improvement…. In other words, project specific improvement goals with measurable results. — Jack Price

I highlighted this because you are right on point with all of this and the rest as well.

Many of the winning players I know connect back to their work world experience, especially those who were in management, making decisions, or, in general, producing something.

The common thread was that they understood what it took to win in the business world and, once they made the connection to horse racing... the fact that is really THE SAME THING, it got easier.

PLEASE, @Jack Price, continue.
Explain some more.

Excellent response.
(Even without the commercial. :) )

When @Biniak and I were speaking the other night, much about how the mindset of the professional players differs from the other players.

It has nothing to do with betting against low odds horses.... It's about a money management strategy that teaches you how to make an optimum bet to accelerate bankroll growth — Jack Price

How one bets is, of course, a big part of the difference, but not the only one.

Watching your amazing AND CONSISTENT performance in the Saratoga Challenge you guys are putting on, would lead me to believe that you have many of the traits of the professionals and real winners I've known.

Simply put, WINNERS SEE THE GAME DIFFERENTLY.

What's so different?
Most players think that they are one good factor or angle from being a long-term winner; just one little tweak somewhere, and suddenly everything will come together.

The successful players I know are:
Process Oriented, with distinct Components
There are distinct pieces to there handicapping process.
For example...

• Contender Selection
• Handicapping (i.e. rank order of the contenders, probabilities, or line)
• Paceline analysis
• Who to bet
• How to bet
• and more

Whenever I find a consistently competitive handicapper, they always have components which become Pieces to the Puzzle. When they stop winning, they concentrate on figuring out which component is failing as opposed to tossing everything out.

Incremental Improvement is generally how winners are born.

Thoughts, guys?
Does this resonate with anyone?
Or not?

That's fine.
I completely understand.

Respectfully, I am looking for screenshots along with the explanations.

That's a given.

I understand what you are saying.

Thank you.

I must be missing something here because I don't see what is gained by calling the function to receive the previous variable.

If you set xKeep to a value, what is the advantage over simply making xKeep a global variable?

Since you can only have one xKeep, it is, in effect, a global variable.

Ah... You could make the function thread-specific.
Small gain there.

Am I on the right track?

Got it.
There is ONE "keep" value or could you have xKEEP,yKEEP,ZKEEP, xFred, TommyBoy and any other number of variables?

Now I understand.

So, if I use a function multiple times, it stores the last time xKeep was changed?

I'm still confused.

Function(X1,X2,X3)
Y= X1 + X2 * X3
Return Y


So, if you pass (say) 3 values (x2,x2,x3), and it returns (Y), how do you fetch Y again without passing the values again?

Ah, now I understand (I think).

What does the call to reget the variable look like?

I don't understand what you mean by "store that number."
To me that means "put it in a global variable."

That appears to be a standard function.
That is, you pass a value (or several values) and return a value (or several values).

Thus, you prevent multiple coding of the same computation, but you still have to call the function again to get the value again.

My point about OOP is that it provides a way of holding values and accessing them without recalculation. Of course, that can be done with static variables inside a function. And there are various ways of pushing, popping or accessing those stored values. The key is to not recalculate every time you need the value and I admit to being bad about doing that. But, I have been good about sharing the code that is the basic framework for many of my calculations. — RanchWest

I'm not sure I understand this, but I think you're saying that you can (effectively) load a value somewhere to recall it without actually storing it in a variable.

Is it like a location?

I don't know if you've done any object-oriented programming, but one thing that is nice is being able to store data in an object and access it. Makes it easier to make a calculation one time and be done with it, just access the calculated value. — RanchWest

I checked out of OOP almost 2 decades back. Just didn't like it.
But admittedly, I use a language whose original form of OOP was a lot like everything being a complicated way to call a function.

The biggest changes for me have been in my approach to organization.
First I wrote more functions, then added more routines.
I created a rule that said all code for anything goes on a single visible page.

As an example, here's the main page of what is called the My Handicapping section.

This is the part where your handicapping is stored so that the model and the AI can help you improve things.

Now, this is the BEFORE picture. No code has been written yet, but the comments (green) make it very clear what I'm about to write.

You and I are completely on the same page.
So much of the code I wrote in HSH is truly painful to look at now. LOL

I, too, wrote assembler. My coding was not only slow but ineffective.

Funny but the group of programmers I hang with, many I've known for almost 3 decades... well, I used to think I was like a 7.5 on the scale of 1-10. Now, as I see how they've grown - especially horizontally while I remained vertical - I've changed that to a 4.5.

@RanchWest

So glad you popped this to the top.

How do you handle comments & documentation in your code?

A big THANK YOU to @RanchWest for your idea about the Median Energy.

I'm implementing via some reports in the Pace Handicapping module.

F1% & EP% for races where the horses ran within 1 length of the winner (or won by any margin).
Same but with Similar Surf & Distance within 1/2 furlong of today.

In addition, these 2 metrics (F1% & EP%) will show for the race in each pace line.
(This one takes some doing but will make it relatively easy to test your theories.

Ranch, I believe that your approach may have tremendous value when combined with the prediction of which call will be the most important in today's race. (Determined by the ES5 approach which considers the number of ES5+ horses and applies the two rules I've mentioned before.

@RanchWest

Here's what I was looking for:

I don't have a valid physics-based formula to use.

For example, my energy calculation is similar to energy produced by a wave.

It is a a physical science formula that is not known (by me).
Note: I am not smart enough to create my own from scratch, so I look for something in the science world that looks close and try to use it - without modification if possible.