We’ve released a new version of WagerMate; it has a lot of upgrades under-the-hood, but the most visible changes include:
You can download and try WagerMate by clicking here.
But, to do anything interesting, you’ll have to register with TrackMaster so that you can download data files.
Just in time for the Kentucky Derby, Version 4.1 of WagerMate has been released.
The new version has an improved Jockey Variant and an updated Daily Track Variant.
How can you lose?
In WagerMate, you can set all of your filters, and then save them in a “strategy” file (with “wmst” as the extension).
I developed a new strategy today — in about 10 minutes. First, I’ll show you the screen shots with my filters set. The first page of filters looks like this:
The second page of filters are set like this:
Note that I’ve set the new Track Quality filters to eliminate some tracks. The last page of filters:
Here, I decided to skip any races that had more than 2 unpredictable horses. Most of those are first time starters, or horses new to a surface.
You can see that I named this strategy “V4A.wmst”. OK, you can probably think of a better name. On the upside, it shows a small profit:
You can download the V4A.wmst file and see if it works for you.
In addition to the new filters I mentioned yesterday, WagerMate 4.0 has a lot of improvements in how it evaluates horses, and runs its simulations.
Here are the back testing results on my 2009-2017 data, with the default filters:
If you did no handicapping of your own, and simply bet on the 46,528 races that WagerMate told you to, you’d have won 25.34% of those races and lost 6.01% of your money.
Compare that to your competition — if they bet blindly, they’d lose 15% or 20% (the track’s takeout) — so you have a huge head start.
I hope you can use WagerMate’s filters AND your own expertise to get results that are even better than the WagerMate default selections.
Best of luck!
Version 4.0 of WagerMate has been released. The most visible feature is that there are now 21 handicapping filters instead of just 7.
The first page should look fairly familiar:
If you click “Next”, you’ll see the second page of filters:
Click “Next” again to see the third page of filters:
I’ll post soon about some other new features.
Good Luck!
Version 3.5 of WagerMate has been released. It has one major new feature: it uses a new track-to-track variant.
That one improvement gets us more than a 1% point increase in both the Win Rate and the ROI. Here are the back testing results on my 2009-2013 data, with the default filter:
This indicates that if you blindly followed WagerMate’s picks you’d lose 7%. If you only followed the picks for turf races, you’d win 1%.
By now, you should know that’s not how I really think you should use the WagerMate results — I want you to combine the WagerMate results with your own handicapping work. If you use the WagerMate results, instead of starting with an ROI of -20% (due to the takeout), you’re starting at -7%, and that’s a big difference.
Good luck!
The latest version of WagerMate, build 338, has a couple of minor improvements in it:
I’m working on improving the track-to-track variant. It may take a couple of months to do all of the calculations, and insert the new work into WagerMate.
The latest version of WagerMate has a new feature…
You can now use the default WagerMate speed figure, or use the TrackMaster speed figure instead. You can even use the average of the two figures.
Here are the results when I use each of the three settings on my 2009-2013 data to look at Win bets (in this example, I’m not using any WMST file to filter out bad bets, so the ROIs aren’t very good). 
The “Average” setting has some nice attributes:
If we use the new “Average” setting and the default filters on my 2009-2013 data for back testing…
…WagerMate’s picks get an overall ROI of -8%. It’s interesting to note that the Turf Sprint bets would have paid a 3% profit over this span..
So, we don’t get guaranteed profits, but I think it’s nice to have an advantage in our handicapping — without applying a bit of our wisdom or experience, we’re way ahead of the game.
The latest version of WagerMate, build 322, has a couple of minor improvements in it:
That leads to a slightly improved ROI…
Build 322 ROIs
I use the “Rqrd Odds” field of the WagerMate reports to make conditional bets with my ADWs. In essence, the Required Odds determine the lowest odds I’m willing to take.
Here’s how WagerMate calculates that number.
1) For each dollar bet at post time odds of X/Y, the payout will be (1 + X/Y) dollars. A bet at 6/1 odds will return about $7 for each $1 bet (1 + 6/1), or $14 for a $2 bet.
2) WagerMate calculates a probability of winning for each horse, the “Win %” field in the reports. If the probability of winning is 19%, then we’d expect our horse to win 19 out of 100 such races.
Imagine a $2 bet on each of those 100 (hypothetical) races — for a total of $200 bet. We expect to win $14 in each of 19 of those races, for a total return of $266.
That’s an ROI of 33% (a profit of $66 divided by an investment of $200).
3) The expected payout, in dollars for each dollar bet, is
Expected Payout per Dollar = (1 + X/Y) * (Win %)
In our example:
Expected Payout per Dollar = (1 + 6/1) * (0.19) = 1.33
4) WagerMate assumes we want an ROI of at least 20%. That’s an Expected Payout per Dollar of 1.20.
So 1.20 = (1 + X/Y) * (Win %)
Rearrange that to get the Required Odds: X/Y = [ 1.20 / (Win %)] – 1
For our example: [1.20 / 0.19] – 1 = 5.32
WagerMate reports that as 5/1.
I uploaded a new version of WagerMate today. The most noticeable enhancements are:
Here’s an example where the Race Conditions are complex, and are now shown in their full glory…
Race Conditions
As for the ROI change: the menu looks like this…
Preference Menu
Up until now, WagerMate has said that a profit of 5% was an ROI of 105%. Most people call that an ROI of 5%, not 105% (although one of my ADWs calls that a “$1 ROI” of “+0.05”).
The default format is now the “5%” format, so we’ve joined the mainstream. I’ll try to use that format from now on in this blog. I’m not going to go back and modify old entries though — I think that would violate the blogger’s code of ethics.
Here’s what my back testing (on about 4 year’s worth of data) looks like in the new format:
Build 321 Back Test Report
Typically, I’ll use WagerMate the night before a race to start my handicapping. At that point, the “also eligible” horses are still included, so if I click “Scratch Horses” on the Handicapping tab…
…I’ll see every horse on the card…
When I do the same thing a little before post time, WagerMate will download the latest scratch data, so that I see near-real-time information about the horses running…
If my pick for the race has been scratched, I can simply re-run the WagerMate simulations — WagerMate will automatically exclude the scratched horses.
You can also use this window to manually “scratch” any horses in the race, if you have a reason to exclude them (e.g. post position). This screen shot shows that I’ve told WagerMate to skip horses #1 and #2 when running the simulations. When I re-run the simulation, they’ll be treated as if they were scratched, and WagerMate will pick other horses to bet on.
Two horses manually scratched
Part of the process of releasing a new version of WagerMate is back testing. This figure shows how the new Build 318 of WagerMate performs, using the default strategy. This is based on about four year’s worth of data.
318 Back Test Report
So, if you blindly followed all of WagerMate’s suggestions, you would have won about 22% of your bets and got back 96% of the money you bet (i.e. a 4% loss).
In one sense, that’s terrible — we’d lose money! But in another sense, this is incredibly encouraging — before we’ve even applied a bit of our handicapping skill, we’ve changed the rules of the game. Everyone else is playing a game with a 20% takeout, but WagerMate users are playing a game with a 4% takeout.
If you can use your own experience and wisdom to sort through WagerMate’s selections, you should be able to improve on these results. If you have enough data to do your own back testing, you should be able to develop a better strategy than the default strategy built into WagerMate.
Of course, Your Mileage May Vary. Making money in back testing is not identical to making money with real bets.
I uploaded a new version of Wagermate today. Most of the enhancements are minor.
Here’s something convenient: when you’re working on the back testing tab to perfect a strategy, you can make it apply to just dirt races or just sprints (for example) by using the new checkboxes.
Back test tab with new checkboxes
I’ve taken to saving my strategy files with names that indicate what surface and distance they pertain to, like “DS long shots.wmst”.