Horse Racing Software, Bet Selector

System Selector for Past and Upcoming System Testing

System Selector is the horse racing system software part of Bet Selector. Originally introduced in November 1994, System Selector helps you apply horse racing systems. You are probably familiar with form based systems for selecting winners. Usually a system has one or two main rules that do most of the work and/or create the theme for the system. For example my Last Start Winner system works on horses that won their last start and my Same Distance Longshot system requires horses to be racing over the same distance as their last start and to have won their second last start - both these systems can be found in our free eBook of 189 systems, downloading instructions for which will be sent to you by return email if you send an email to demo@capitalinfo.com.au with your first name in the subject line.

You can apply systems manually if you have the time to go through a form guide like the Sportsman or Winning Post and check all the rules. Try it and you'll realise it is time consuming - especially when you have to calculate days to past runs like in the abovementioned systems. And it gets even more complicated if you have rules requiring you to calculate things like distance rises and drops and average prizemoney rankings. This is where the System Selector part of Bet Selector helps as you can enter and save rules for one or more systems and then after just a couple mouse clicks System Selector tells you which horses meet the rules!

Selecting "System Selector" from the pull down RUN menu calls up the System Selector module within the program. System Selector was initially designed to help users pick system selections for upcoming races but now also lets users back test systems over past meetings they have downloaded. Once you have added or imported systems you can then select one or more for testing. The following options will get you started with this:

Once you have created and selected some systems to work with, System Selector lets you carry out one of the following operations via buttons on the left and right of the window:

The large list box in the middle of the window displays system selections by default but can be changed to view other info according to the following buttons immediately above the list box. Note the currently active view is denoted by bold button text.

Note there is a "Open/Print" button towards the bottom of the window that allows you to open the above reports in a separate window (namely in Word, WordPad, Notepad etc depending on your computers file/program associations). This feature can be used for printing reports.

Creating Systems

To create a new system you simply (a) use the last "Add 'Blank' System" option to add a system with 'blank' rules and then (b) use the "Edit System" option to give the system a name and define its rules. Note the resultant edit window differs depending on whether you have "Expert Mode" ticked or not (best to leave it un-ticked if you are just starting out with the program).

System names can includes special characters like dashes, underscores or numbers but not those that can be used in Windows to define file paths like full stops or slashes. System names can also include special codes to determine which ratings are tested as follows:

AVB1 - Main Class Ratings
AVB2 - Better Class Ratings
AVB3 - Plus Class Ratings
PP1 - Main Time Ratings
PP2 - Better Time Ratings
PP3 - Plus Time Ratings
WGT1 - Main Weight Ratings
WGT2 - Better Weight Ratings
WGT3 - Plus Weight Ratings

Note the last three (weight ratings) are only available in Bet Selector Pro 3. 

Testing Systems

To test a system you simply use the "Test System" option to do the test. Note you can pick system selections for any period (past present or future) by simply using the start and end date selection lists. These and other controls available on the Test System dialogue are as follows:

IMPORTANT: If you are running tests over past meetings and want profit and losses to be reported then you must source TAB results daily via the Race Day Live part of the program and/or via the master TAB result files that are updated on our web site around the 2nd or 3rd of each month. These so-called "master result files" can be obtained via the “Download/Reindex TAB Results” option off Bet Selector’s main pull-down FILE menu (the FILE menu you get to when you first start up the program and before you select any other menu options).

Detailed help is available on accessing TAB results via the Help button in the abovementioned part of the program. Note that you also need downloaded past form files for system test to work over past dates.

Downloading Free Systems

If you run System Selector, you will notice a "Download Free Systems" button at the top center of the screen. This brings up a dialogue with additional buttons to download over 180 free systems. Using these buttons results in the free systems being downloaded to your Price folder in specially named and structured DBF files which can be imported using the Import Systems button mentioned earlier.

The following instructions show you step by step how to download free systems into Bet Selector:

  1. Select "System Selector" off the pull down RUN menu.
  2. Click the "Download Free Systems" button at the middle top of the window and then click the "Neale's Systems" button on the resultant pop-up dialogue (make sure you are connected to the internet when you do this). This will download the systems in a DBF file to your Price folder (C:\Price). Then close the pop-up dialogue (you can go back to it later to download other systems you may not have).
  3. Click the "Import Systems" button on the far right hand side of the window. A "File Open" dialogue will pop up showing a list of DBF files in your Price folder (note you may have to scroll down past a number of folders to get to the files). Select the file named EXPORT_NEALES_FREE_SYSTEMS.DBF and click the "Open" button.
  4. The new systems will now appear under NEALES FREE SYSTEMS via the drop down tool at the top left of the window. This list will now include my original 46 free systems plus my 5 new systems.

In step 2 above you will also notice buttons for PGFreeBeez free systems and Drongo's free systems. The procedure for downloading and importing these systems is the same as above except that the respective file names are EXPORT_DRONGOS_FREE_SYSTEMS.DBF and EXPORT_PGFREEBEEZ_FREE_SYSTEMS.DBF

Note that downloading and importing these free systems will in no way affect your existing systems as long as you have not previously imported them (if you have imported the same systems before then they will be duplicated upon subsequent import unless you delete the original ones first).

Importing Third Party Systems

You may have system rules in DBF files sent to you by another Bet Selector user. To get these systems into Bet Selector you need to take a note of the file name and save it to your Price folder (C:\Price). Then click the Import Systems button on the far right of the System Selector window and a "File Open" dialogue will pop up showing a list of DBF files in your Price folder (note you may have to scroll down past a number of folders to get to the files). Just select the appropriate file and click the "Open" button to import the desired systems.

Main System Selector Rules

System Selector works by allowing you to set maximum and minimum bounds to a variety of parameters. Parameters are initially set to select as many horses as possible but by simply restricting the upper and lower bounds, a smaller sample of horses is selected. Various Yes/No criteria are also available. A list with descriptions of the main System Selector criteria follows:

Weight above lowest weight: Note there are no separate data entry boxes for this but tests can be done using the existing weight carried range boxes. If the program sees numbers less than 40 it assumes you wish to apply a "weight over lowest weight" range rather than a "weight carried" range. So for example setting "weight carried" minimum to 1 and maximum to 3 would select all horses weighted between 1 and 3 kilograms over the lowest weight. Note you can mix the numbers and could have a minimum of 1 and maximum of 55 which would select horses at least 1 kilogram over the lowest weight but not weighted more than 55 kilograms.

Exclusive System Selector Rules

System Selector can be used to test newspaper markets, official handicapper ratings and the week of the year in which a horse was actually born. A list of the rules for this data is as follows:

Note the above data can only be tested back to 1/12/2011 when it was first introduced in our form downloads. Note also early market prices are not available for non-TAB meetings or New Zealand or Hong Kong meetings.

Special Ratings Test Rules

Originally System Selector was only designed to test against the programs main ratings using the abovementioned Predicted Posn/margin and Odds rules. With the addition of Better Ratings and Plus ratings you can now test for these ratings by adding special codes into your system name. Details on how to do this and other special ratings test are listed below:

User Defined Filter String Rules

Note use of these filters is no longer recommended as much better functionality for this type of testing is now available in Expert Mode.

Filter strings allow you to test for multiple/individual horses, classes, jockeys, trainers and breeding sire/dams. They are saved and linked into your system by selecting them from the drop down lists in the right column of the rules screen. The filter drop downs have the names MyClass, MyHorse, MyTrainer, MyJockey and MyBreed alongside them to indicate what they are for. To the right of the drop downs are small push buttons with the letter "e" (for edit) that take you to a filter entry/edit dialogue where you can enter and edit your filters for each category.

The filter strings (can be up to 255 characters) are basically names or parts of names separated by commas and the filter checking process simply checks each filter in the filter string against each horses relevant details. For example a filter to pick three horses would look like this:

Apache Cat,Weekend Hussler,Takeover Target

A filter to pick trainers would look like this:

Waterhouse,Cummings,Hayes

A filter to pick classes 1-6 would look like this:

Class 1,Class 2,Class 3,Class 4,Class 5,Class 6

If you want to exclude instead of include items from your filter lists then just put an exclamation mark (!) at the beginning of the filter string. So to ignore Maidens use the following filter string:

!Maiden

And to ignore Classes 1-6 use the following filter string:

!Class 1,Class 2,Class 3,Class 4,Class 5,Class 6

Once you click the "e" button to modify or create filters, you can add as many as you like as they don't have to be linked to the system you have loaded at the time. Indeed when you exit the filter entry/edit dialogue and go back to the system, the previous filter choice if any is not changed and you have to change it yourself if you have just added a new filter you wish to use. Note also that once the filter entry/edit dialogue pops up you are not meant to be able to go back to the rule screen until you close it so please remember to close the filter entry/edit dialogue when you are done.

Note when testing the class of the race with the filter string Group I it will also pick up Group II and Group III. To get around this you can force an exact comparison by putting an equal sign at the front of the filter string, for example =Group I will only pick Group one races.