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Old 12-29-2008, 05:52 PM   #2
Ted Craven
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 8,853
New or Changed in Version 0.98.5

1. RDSS ToteBrowser (Live Toteboard Connection).

RDSS can now connect to Brisnet's SuperTote toteboard stream to display Win, Place and Show pool amounts and Win Odds. No Exacta payouts (and thus odds) yet but that plus Daily Double, Pick3 and 4 will pays, and synthetic Trifecta projections are in the works. The tote stream also allows us to know Minutes to Post (MTP) for every loaded track, Late Scratches for the current race and Mutuel Results the second the race is Official. We also have an interesting readout named Tote Xray, which is an exploratory work in progress formula (top secret) intended to shine some light on ratios between the WPS pools and revealiong supposedly 'smarter money' (if such a thing exists, which some people swear does not...). Possibly useful on Foreign or First Time Starter horses or those with long layoffs - but never an excuse for not exercising normal race analysis. If anything, consider it a corollary to your other readouts - especially when a horse is a longshot.
Note: in this version, the RDSS ToteBrowser is available to BOTH the PP only and the PP+Charts data plans. In future versions, the ToteBrowser will require a subscription to the PP+Charts data plan (e.g. at such time as I get the Result Charts integrated with the software, models, bookkeeping, etc).

Also, you need a Brisnet account, which is free. You can sign up here.
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Connecting to the RDSS ToteBrowser. Find the new Supertote button on the RDSS Desktop (lower left of the screen). Once per day, login to SuperTote using this button, click on the 'Start SuperTote' icon, supply your Brisnet User Name and Password, then close the RDSS SuperTote Login window. You don't need to (actually cannot) work with SuperTote via this RDSS window - you just need to login once per day. RDSS interacts directly with SuperTote servers and displays the toteboard in its own customized, built-in ToteBoard browser. It's the same data and you can compare RDSS tote browser data to Supertote displayed through your normal browser at any time. If the numbers are off a bit, just refresh both RDSS' browser data and Supertote through your normal browser and they will be in synch again. RDSS refreshes the totestream data every 60 seconds until 3 MTP, then every 30 seconds after that.

With the tote connection established, when you open a card of races the Card Summary screen indicates which race is the current race with a small horse icon next to that race. The MTP for the current race is also shown in the Open Cards list in the Sidebar at the left for all open cards, and the list re-sorts itself with each tote update so that the nearest races are on top - never miss the 2 MTP cutoff again! (I'm still working on the sultry voice announcing '2 minutes to post...'). With a Card Summary scren displayed for a given track, you can tell if a successful connection exists by the text appearing in the lower left of the Summary screen: "Toteboard connected". If you get a different message, it could mean: SuperTote is not yet active for that track or any tracks (e.g. too early in the morning), you did not establish the RDSS -> SuperTote connection, you are not connected to the Internet, etc. You can always test if you should be getting anything from SuperTote by loading SuperTote in your normal browser and seeing if the data you're looking for is available there (http://www.brisnet.com/cgi-bin/totedb/tracks.cgi)

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When you open a given race, tote information displays in 3 places for the current race:

- the new Toteboard Tab on the main Entries screen, at the bottom to the right of the Tandems Tab
- in each horse's Past Performance header section - Current Win Odds
- in the BL/BL screen in a new Win Odds/Live column at the far right (depending on your screen width and font Zoom setting, you may have to scroll horizontally to see it...)

On the Toteboard Tab - the RDSS ToteBrowser display - you see the same list of horses as on the main Entries screen. If the tote stream indicates any scratches, those betting interests are marked as scratched. Note: if part of a Betting Entry is scratched but the other part is not (e.g. #1A is scratched but #1 is not), neither will show as scratched on the ToteBrowser because the betting interest is still alive on the toteboard. I will fix this in future releases with the further addition of a more complete Scratch routine (i.e. for all races on the card, not just the current tote race). Currently, please check your normal source for scratches and manually scratch any such part-entries.

On
the RDSS ToteBrowser display, the Morning Line Odds, Win Odds, Tote Xray and Win Pool columns are colour coded and ranked showing the top 3. The Tote Xray column displays rankings a bit differently. This readout shows a 'magic number' indicating ratios between the WPS pools and win odds, with 0.0 being top ranked and the rest showing the % deviation from best (like the Perceptor readouts). The 0.0% or #1 rank is oftentimes also the favourite and so is not shown in RED as usual, as this is less interesting than the 2nd, 3rd and 4th ranked, which are in turn coloured RED, GREEN, YELLOW. However, when the top ranked horse (or top several ranks) is also offered at decent odds around 2 MTP or later - AND there is some confirmation from your other handicapping analysis (unless a First Timer Starter, Foreign or long layoff horse), consider paying much close attention. I have also found that it pays to know exactly which horses are in the top 3 Current Odds, even if those odds are longer, as the Top 3 odds horses win a very high percentage of all races. Aside from the foregoing comments on the Tote Xray readout - well, it is a work in progress, needs more statistical study, but is possibly an interesting tool to be used as a compliment to your other tools. It really only becomes meaningful closer to post time when there is a normal amount of money in the pools for the particular track, and of course odds can change very close to post time (though ratios change less). It is a proprietary readout, so I don't want to go into any further detail about its derivation - but use your eyes...

Note: if no numbers display in the WPS pools columns, or in the Win Odds column (and consequently if no Tote Xray numbers appear), this may be due to no pool data availability via SuperTote. If you want to, please compare SuperTote in your normal browser to the RDSS ToteBrowser numbers to see why data may not be appearing.

On each horse's PP header, the Current Odds are shown colour coded for the top 3 ranked. On the BL/BL screen, the top 3 odds are also colour coded and the Minutes to Post count-down displays in the Win Odds/Live column header.

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When the race result is Official, on the ToteBrowser screen, a bell will 'ding', the Official Results button will light up in RED and the Mutuel results will display automatically. If you have joined a card of races part way through, you can get the previous race results by going to that race, switch to the ToteBrowser tab and click on the Official Results button (no need to load the PPs to accomplish this). Please note: when you close a card of races, or exit RDSS (or are thrown out due to a crash...), you lose any totestream info as this is only retained (for the moment) in computer memory, though you can still check the previous race results again as described above.

Finally, as I mentioned above, the infrastructure of the ToteBrowser connection will give us, in future
(i.e. after I further rework the memory internals of RDSS...) the means to study Exacta and other exotic payouts, calculate effective odds for multiple horse bets and exotic combinations and numerous other useful tools. With a Chart data plan, real-time results will update wager decision models, track profiles, factor models, your basic bookkeeping. The mind reels...

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