ROBOT Upgrade 2008

[km]

The Robot will have several great new features when it released on July 20, 2008.

= A daily tracking report option. This will give you day by day profit and loss summary and all regular statistics for the previous 8-week period. Weekly results are summarized as well. Very cool and replaces the need for logs and spreadsheets if you want to track various spot plays, factors, bias, etc. on a daily basis.

= Quick report is great for finding out what is happening right now.

= 1st Gelding, Lasix-1 and Lasix-2 added as new filters.

= Spot play report improvements.

= Updated Robot User Guide

= Special 1-hour Seminar at about 5pm on July 23 to go over the Robot' new features and a primer on usage for new and old members. "The Worlds Greatest Spot Play" will be revealed at this workshop.

[BEEGEE]

Ken,
Your too much!!!
Guess you've been reading my mind. I've been trying to set up a method to track spot plays and compute profits and losses using Excel. I'm going tp stop immediatly and wait for the update.
thanks,
beegee

[km]

I think you are going to like this a lot beegee. It is an excellent daily log and trend analysis tool. It goes back 8-weeks at a time and list each day on the calendar individually. And each of the 8 weeks is tallied also. Very quick Robot tool also since it doesn't run data further back than 2-months. Typical output time is 10 seconds.

Early feedback from beta-testers has been positive. Ernie and i talked last night for awhile and he gave me some good advice on it and it will have neat layout as I'm going to add a profit/loss column, which is more revealing than win% and ROI when looking at daily results.

Like you, Ernie wanted to keep logs, but was discouraged with having to enter daily results into a spreadsheet as it is too time consuming and requires everyday input. This tool does 100% of the work for you, so you won't get tired of it and will more motivated to run the Robot for feedback.

[Huguenot]

Ken,

For down the line if its possible I'd love to see a way to evaluate spot plays during certain time periods without having to change my PC's time/date function. In other words, I would like to see today how a certain play did in the summer of 2007 or just in June 2007 without changing my calendar to July 1, 2007.

I agree post positions would be incredibly valuable -- see how various jockeys do by post positions or if F1 does especially well from the rail, etc.

Another feature would be to divide turf plays by RAILS UP and RAILS DOWN -- again if its feasible. Better yet, "firm" turf vs off turf.

which factors are you thinking of deleting besides BF, which i don't mind seeing go.

Im not convinced Just Gelded will lead to enough plays to make it very valuable but i'm open-minded on it. I agree that it could be a good filter providing there's enough plays.

Are you going to poll users on which ones to delete?

Sorry i can't make it to Vegas this year but can't wait for the update....

[km]

bloody el brilliant Andy, sorry you can't make it from England, but fully understand

"New Gelding", "L1" and "L2" replace the last 3 items on the Robot filters. All the other items including "BF" were left intact. I asked many of our most prolific users before making this change.

The variable date range option you requested is too complicated to burden the Robot. That is a definite database type query function. Other requests have been for negative parameters, such as "NOT Fr1=1" . That also is a db specialty.

Think of the Robot as "Data Management for Dummie and Klutz". The information revealed is very sophisticated, but the complexity of using it has been made purposely simple to use right out of the box - no long instruction manual or special training required.

[Roghaltz]

Count me among those who can't wait for the update...(I have a million spreadsheets where I am tracking this play or that play...)

HTR continues to rock!
Roghaltz

bloody el brilliant Andy, sorry you can't make it from England, but fully understand

"New Gelding", "L1" and "L2" replace the last 3 items on the Robot filters. All the other items including "BF" were left intact. I asked many of our most prolific users before making this change.

The variable date range option you requested is too complicated to burden the Robot. That is a definite database type query function. Other requests have been for negative parameters, such as "NOT Fr1=1" . That also is a db specialty.

Think of the Robot as "Data Management for Dummie and Klutz". The information revealed is very sophisticated, but the complexity of using it has been made purposely simple to use right out of the box - no long instruction manual or special training required.

[km]

thanks Roghaltz!

- if you have a lot of spot plays i have also added a nifty "GET LIST" option, this prints out a concise listing of all your plays for the day sorted by post-time and ID by the Spot # only. All the overhead is left off, just the action in an organized format.

One click - grab it and go.

[Huguenot]

Ken,
There's one quirk in the ROBOT that well, I'd love to see changed, if possible.

After I test the parameters of a Spot Play I can't set that spot play unless I go back and reset all the parameters again. In other words when I hit "Spot Play 1" for example, the Robot resets itself. I have to remember to hit "Spot Play 1" BEFORE I test a play or else I have to re-enter all the parameters.

Would it be possible to enable us to save a Spot Play without having to go back, hit "Spot Play 1," and then enter in all the parameters again?

[BillW]

Ken,
There's one quirk in the ROBOT that well, I'd love to see changed, if possible.

After I test the parameters of a Spot Play I can't set that spot play unless I go back and reset all the parameters again. In other words when I hit "Spot Play 1" for example, the Robot resets itself. I have to remember to hit "Spot Play 1" BEFORE I test a play or else I have to re-enter all the parameters.

Would it be possible to enable us to save a Spot Play without having to go back, hit "Spot Play 1," and then enter in all the parameters again?

A "Save As" function. ;)

[km]

Sorry, it's a pain, i knew if from the start. The problem is that the list of spot plays 01-99 has two functions at once: 1) to extract the play on demand, 2) save the play on demand.

One of the two functions has to over ride the other as the default mechanism and it is the latter (1). Most people have overcome this by remembering the three step process

1) select a blank slot from the list (01-99)
2) set up their filters
3) Save the play

This avoids the problem and everyone has gotten used to it grudgingly.

Bill's good idea is something i have considered, but it requires another button and another drop down list. That's the real problem here, out of space to add more functionality, the Robot screen is over crowded and the spot play section is 'stuck in traffic'.

I'll see what i can come up with - thanks

[Paladin]

I use the spot play function a LOT . (thanks to some custom robots Ken made for me)
I finally trained myself to do #1 on Ken's list.
First find a blank spot play slot.
After that, it's a piece of cake !