Creating a Simulcast Tipsheet
This feature is among the most useful but seldom used features of QuickDog. Especially if you wager online and want to handicap several tracks during the afternoon.
The purpose of this feature is to provide one printout or text file that includes all the races you wish to handicap and place them in approximate order based on when they are run during the day or night.
So, what you wind up with is a very long printout or text file that guides you through the afternoon or evening of races from across the country. As you look through the list the races should be in approximate order based on what time they are scheduled to run. Unfortunately these estimated times can only be based on 2 things, the typical start time of a race program for afternoon and evening races, and a guess as to how long it typically takes a track to run the next race. A typical track might take 15-20 minutes in between races, so QuickDog will guess that Race 3 for example will take place 30 minutes after Race 1 begins. This assumes that Race 2 would take place 15 minutes after Race 1, so Race 3 will be 30 minutes.
When you create a simulcast tipsheet you can also set QuickDog to simply ignore some races based on how well your handicapping method has done in the past when selecting winning wagers for those races. This is done by specifying a minimum accuracy percentage for those races.
It turns out that to use the Simulcast Tipsheet to its fullest capabilities you must first become familiar with features including Backtest and Supertune or Superhandicap so that QuickDog knows how well your methods have worked in the past. So, don't simply click on this feature without having become familiar with most other aspects of QuickDog. This is a very easy feature to use, but it does assume you've setup QuickDog with a lot of information prior to using it.
To give the user a better feel for what is happening, QuickDog includes a Track Profile Folder called TP_Q-EX-BOX4 which includes track profiles for every race track broken down with Distance and Grade. That is for every track, for each distance at that track, and for each grade which runs that distance there is a unique track profile contained in this folder. Further, each of these track profiles were supertuned for the following wager which is a box 4 exacta or quinella - 1234/1234 - with Win % being the TARGET VALUE to maximize.
We'll use this Track Profile Folder in the following tutorial as we explain the use of the Simulcast Tipsheet feature.
To begin the user should simply select "Simulcast Tipsheet" from the dropdown menu. The popup shown in Figure 1 will appear.
Figure 1 - Simulcast Tipsheet Menu 1
The first item to set is very important - Step 1 asks that you choose a TRACK PROFILE FOLDER or if you do not use Track Profile folders you can leave this item blank. Note: If you have previously selected a Track Profile Folder then that folder name appears in this box.
For the purposes of this tutorial click on the box shown, whether empty or not, then on the popup list that appears, find and click on TP_Q-EX-BOX4.
Figure 2 - Choosing your Track Profile Folder to use to create a Simulcast Tipsheet
You will have just one choice possibly, but if you see an entire list as shown above, simply click on the selection TP_Q-EX-BOX4. You will then again be prompted as was the case in Figure 1, however you should now see that the TP_Q-EX-BOX4 track profile folder has been selected. This means that to handicap all the races QuickDog will use the setup data contained within the Track Profiles which are themselves contained in this track profile folder. These track profiles contain settings which have been Supertuned to produce the best Win % for the box 4 exacta (or quinella) wager. Thus our simulcast tipsheet will be designed for making that type of wager.
Figure 3 - Step 2 the User must Select Tracks to Handicap
Which tracks are you going to play today? You may notice that when you select the Track Profile Folder tracks are also selected. QuickDog stores your last track selections as part of the Track Profile Folder. Check the tracks and select those you wish to play today - YELLOW color of track means selected, while a WHITE track color means not selected. Press the NEXT button. Figure 4 will appear.
Figure 4 - Set up Filtering of your Simulcast Tipsheet Plays
The final step of creating your simulcast tipsheet is to filter the races you wish to play. Most notably you can set the %WINS to a value. In this case, let's not handicap a race where our method has done worse than 45% for Wins. Also, let's not handicap a race where our method used less than 100 races. Let's do today's races, both Evening/Afternoon program, using the BEST METHOD of the 5 QuickDog included methods, and lastly, lets SORT the dogs best to worst in our resulting Simulcast Tipsheet. For more information on how to make these settings you can click on the HELP button.
Figure 5 - Ready to Create the Simulcast Tipsheet
Now we're ready simply to click on the CREATE TIPSHEET button to allow QuickDog to handicap all of our selected races, select the ones we might like to wager on, and place all races in order based on the anticipated post time of that race. That's a lot of things to do, and once you select the CREATE TIPSHEET button do not worry that things seem to be happening quite quickly as screens flash by, and the program appears "unresponsive" as far as Windows is concerned. Do not stop the process!
Note that there is also a button labeled "CREATE SCRIPT ONLY". This button simply creates a script file that you can run when you wish by using the SCRIPTING Menu Bar item.
When QuickDog has finished preparing the tipsheet notepad will display it automatically so that you can look it over and print it if necessary.
Figure 6 - Sample Simulcast Tipsheet note the Time of Race (PT:)
Once printed, the post times listed will be shown for your Time Zone. For example, as shown above the time is for 9:45AM - that's in the Pacific Time Zone, because that's where we created this tipsheet. Also notice that the first race shown was handicapping using the Knife Method, the second used Morgan, as did the third.