formulator 4
 

who was the team /people who invented this..im watching the players expo..and beyer made it sound very good...

do any of you use it?

Honestly Matt, I think it is the single greatest handicapping tool available but you, or anyone, has to be willing to invest the time. I use it all the time. Sometimes 20-30 minutes on a card and sometimes three times that.

it seems to do alot of the work at a click...all the angles that were kind of secrets are right there....im going to give it a shot..if it works for you ..it has to be good..

The best thing about Formy 4.1 is the ability to look at the charts for a horses last 3 races. In those charts you can look at the the charts of all the races run that day. Plus you can look the competitions lifelong pp's in the last 3 races charts. You can breakdown trainer stats in countless ways.
An example is Wesley Ward with first time starters. As of April 11th 2007,
Wesley Ward won with 20 of his last 61 debuting 2 year olds during the past 3years. Same time period he's 4 for 37 with first time 3 year olds. It's nuggets like this that you will find if you put the time into using it.

As long as you like handicapping horses, I think you'll like Formy 4.1 a lot.

this sounds like using the turfday website also, anyone use that regularly

I use it and love it.

It's a rare race that I would NOT be using it.

--Dunbar

I use it all the time too. IMO F4 trainer stats are quite useful. It allows a combination of parameters, that Turfday wouldn't do whan I used it. For example first time turf for MSW @ <6f.

some of the few helpful features I use:

top toolbar -> filters -> pace -> incrimental splits ( check )

shows internal splits
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top toolbar -> filters -> pace -> this horse ( check )

shows actual horse running time
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top toolbar -> view -> merge

shows workouts as running lines between or before races
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of course having lifetime PPs rather than last 10 is useful as well:

view -> running lines -> lifetime ( on left, check ) standard ( on right check for printing purposes )

how long of a learning curve is it to use it right? also the cost of it.
thanks

the software cost is free.. but you have to purchase a drf plan for the cards.

just like anything else - you pick things up as you "play around" with it.

beyer graphs, charts, analysys

i am fairly certain there are "previous cards - or test cards" available when you d/l the software

I believe the software is rather intuitive and has a minimal learning curve. The F4 cards do cost a little more though......

More detailed then Turfday, but I love using Turfday, I get it for free via Youbet and use it alot for quick handicapping......

Would it good be a good
 

product for someone like me. I can afford 60 dollars a month for 60 cards would it help me out thanks yall

Aaron

You can get 3 cards for the same day for $5. A single card is either $3.50 or $3.75, I don't remember which.

The feature I value most is being able to see the full chart for previous races.

--Dunbar

The trainer angle is incredible. You can modify the trainer to fit today's condition and view PP's of horses the trainer has raced in the past and sort them by finishing positions. You could literally spend an hour for each race with all the info it has. Unless you are willing to spend a lot of time on each race, just use the basic and save your Formulator 4 cards for when you have a lot of time.

so i should purchase the basic and not form 4.1 cards?

Don't waste your money on the basic cards,you may as well just get the pdf's.

I have two subscriptions, 1 for basic and one for Formulator 4. You can get the basic with just the normal PDF purchase. What I was meant to say was to be careful not to use up all your Form 4 subscription unless you have plenty of time to optimize all it's information. It's impossible to handicap between races with the Formulator 4, unless you're real knowledgeable like Andy and Steve.

I forgot they changed the pricing of the pdf's to the basic price. With either subscription the sibling summaries are available and are of value for the smaller tracks which don't have the closer look feature. Colonial is a track where sibling summaries are helpful with the large number of young horses trying the turf for the first time.

I downloaded it and began looking through it and messing around. It seems amazing with all the information made available to me. What are some specific things that those who already use it look at? Particularly with the trainer angles, it seems that there are just so many ways to sort it that I don't know where to start. Also, what kinds of things do you all look at when you look at the charts from the horses previous race?

We can only pray for such wisdom!

Every race has a different makeup so I don't think there's any one thing to look at in particular. Tomorrow's first race at Hollywood has a Doug O'Neill maiden (half bro to Saratoga County) coming back in 5 days and the first thing I noticed was his win percentage of 46% when his starters raced back within 1-7 days. I set the filters to maiden claiming races, racing back in 1-7 days, the last 5 years. He has 7 starters, 4 winners and 3 out of the money. I now look at the pps of these 7 horses leading up to their races under these circumstances and can compare their form to today's horse.

When viewing the charts I look at the race within the race, comparing the horses who ran nearest to the horse in question and compare their recent form to today's rivals. It's virtually endless the number of options available. Check out the formulator help, it's very informative.

Does everybody still use the basic PP's to weed through the actual horses that have a chance and then use the Form 4.1 to go back and look deeper into the horses in question?

It's easier to use Formulator 4 for all the horses. It looks very much like the basic PP's to start with. It's just that you have access to much more info at a key-stroke.

--Dunbar

The Formulator pps are basic pps, and you can print them as such, though you can also add in your own comments ( trips notes ), and you can also use the computer to dig inside the pps.

Wow. My first weekend using them was a huge success, easily my best in a long time. I would reccomend that everybody give them a try. At first I was overwhelmed with too much info, but too much info is far better than not enough info. I spent 4-5 hours on a card but it definitely paid off. I'm not that good of a capper but these definitely bumped me up a notch. I would be suprised if people were to give them a try and not find them beneficial.

tiznowthegreat
 

did it improve you picking winners or

with the exotics or what?

just curious

I pretty much am strictly a P4 player so it helped picking winners.

Formy 4 is very helpful when handicapping races from Saratoga. DRF has the "Saratoga Special" which is the entire meet cards. They usually offer it starting the last weekend of Belmont's meet,