The Race Wager Analysis System (RWAS) was developed to help the thoroughbred racing fan in three ways. First, it offers a number of statisticcal tools to help you anticipate losing streaks and determine when the angle you're working has delivered enough results to put some trust in. Second, it lets you figure the true odds of entries or probably returns on multiple horse bets. Finally, and even more importantly, things change. Meets move to another track, weather changes, new horses join the party, track conditions change. What worked last month may not do well this month (even though it may perform well again next month!) Most serious players know more than one approach to handicapping a race. The trick is to know which approach is working now!. The RWAS database system was designed to show this to you.

First, let's look at the statistical tools. The likelyhood of a losing streak depends on the win percentage you are achieving. With RWAS, you simply tell it your win percentage, and it develops a display of the probability of losing streaks of various lengths, as shown here: Next, suppose you're working an angle that seems to be doing okay. Let's say you're winning 38% of your bets with an average payoff of over $9.
	Sounds great, but over how many races do these number have to stand up before they become solid enough to bet on. Well, it depends on what minimum return you think is acceptable, and how confident you want to be before risking your money. This screen shows the results when you are willing to accept a 10% return. As you can see, you need at least 42 races to have a confidence level of 95%. And, this tool would show you that if you want a minimum 20% return, you need 57 races to reach the same confidence level.
Let's return to losing streaks again. Knowing the probability of a losing streak is one thing, having a feel for what will happen over a large number of races is something else. That's where MonteCarlo Simulation comes in. Given your win percentage and average mutual payoff, the program will run a large number of races (you pick how many) and use your win percentage to determine which races win and which races lose. Meanwhile, it will track the length of each losing streak, as well as how often streaks of that length occur, and keep track of your bankroll during the process. It will then give you a report like the one shown here, telling you the maximum, minimum and final value of your bankroll as well as how often each losing streak occurred. As you can see, in this case (1,000 races) the longest losing streak was 18 races, but it only occurred once during the 1000 bets. On the other hand, losing streaks of 5 races occurred 13 times, and 10 race streaks occurred 5 times. Can you handle this?
	Now let's take a look at multiple horse betting. Suppose you like two different horses in a race. Both are going off at 4/1, and your personal odds for these horses are 3/1 and 4/1. Ordinarily, you might ignore the 4/1 shot because it's not an overlay. However, RWAS let's you look at the possibility of betting on both, as shown here.

You can see the overlay potential of "Onesy." Since you make it 3/1 and it's going off at 4/1, you have a 25% chance of winning, and if your odds are correct, a 25% return on your investment. The other horse promises no return because your odds and the track odds are the same. However, it does have a 20% chance of winning. So, betting on both horses cuts your ROI down to 12.5%, but increases your chances of winning to 45%. Whether the increased changes of winning are worth the drop in return depend on the actual numbers and your own preferences, but at least you will know what opportunities there are.

The odds on entries work pretty much the same way, except you don't have a choice on whether to bet both or not. However, the track odds on each horse is alwasy the same. Yet we know that both horses rarely have the same chance of winning. Suppose your odds on two horses of an entry are 3/1 and 5/1. RWAS will let you quickly determine that the odds of one of them winning is about 7/5. So, even if the track odds on the entry are 2/1, the bet could still be an overlay! Never ignore the second horse of an entry. It's odds of winning may be small, but never fall to zero. So the real odds on an entry are always better than your personal odds on the best horse.

Now let's take a look at why keeping accurate records can make all the difference in the world. The graphic below shows two screens generated by the RWAS to analyze a month of racing at Aqueduct.

The screen on the left shows the results of 46 bets during this period. The handicapping method being used produced 37% winners and produced a 17.5% Return On Investment. Not bad, but hardly enough to cover expenses. But RWAS allows you to "drill down" into the data. The screen on the right shows that eliminating bets on maiden and stakes races would have jumped the win percentage up to a handsome 41.4% and the ROI up to over 40% as well! And, if you "fined tuned" your betting a bit more, you'd find that restricting betting to only sprint races would have jumped the returns up to 46.7%!

Just think about it. Suppose you have been tracking just the amounts you bet and the payoffs. You know that you wagered $1100 and wound up with $1300. Not bad, a $200 profit, or an ROI of 18%. But let's face it, there must have been a large number of losing bets in that $1100. Suppose that $400 of that $1100 was bet on Allowance races, without a single win. If you knew that you just don't do well on Allowance races and skipped them, you would have made a $200 profit on just $700 wagered, and ROI of over 28%. And if you had simply bet more on each race, to reach the same $1100 total, you would have made a profit of $314 instead of $200!

The problem with keeping detailed records of your wagers is that unless you are using a program like MyWay or this Race Wager Analysis System, it takes a great deal of time. Even if you use a spreadsheet instead of pencil and paper, you need to enter the date, track, race number, horse, odds, type of race, amount wagered, type of bet, etc. And, when the day is done, you have to go back, find each bet and enter the final odds and payoff, if any. Even at this point you have the data you need, but you still have to analyze it in some way that approaches the screen above.

The RWAS3 program eliminates virtually all of the writing or typing. It replaces almost all typing with simple mouse clicks, making wager entry a piece of cake. Just load a PP file (BRIS or TSN single file format, ProCaps or MultiCaps) and click on the race you want. From the screen here, click on the horse you want.

This screen isn't intended to handicap the race for you, but gives you enough information on each horse to make sure it's the horse you want. Then click on the type of wager and the type of race, from the following screens.

    

As you can see, you can place, Win, Place, Show, WPS, Exacta, Exacta Box, Quinella and Trifecta Wagers. For Exactas, Quinellas and Trifectas, the program asks you to click on the 2nd horse, and for trifectas, the 3rd horse. The type of race takes just a single click. The program comes with 10 race types, shown above, but you can add, remove, or change any of them to your liking. You don't even have to enter the amount of the wager if it is your standard bet. You set that up and the program defaults to it unless you enter a different amount.

You can also enter your personal odds for the winning horse. This is the only item you have to type in (unless you are not making a bet that's not your standard amount). You don't HAVE to do this, but it does give you the ability to see how accurate your odds were when you analyze your results. If you prefer not to, you simply leave it blank.

All the needed race data (date, track, race number, etc.) are automatically entered into your wager database. And, if you prefer, you can keep separate wager databases for different tracks, exotic vs stright bets, etc.

Updating your wagers with results is a piece of cake. You simply load the appropriate Exotic Results file from TSN or BRIS. The program looks up all wagers you made from the matching PP card, finds the results in the Exotic Results file, and automatically enters the data, including final odds and payoff if any, into your wager file. It skips any wagers that were scratched, so the analysis part of the program will ignore them.

And when it's time to analyze your results, you simply make selections from the screen shown here. You can set distances to look only at routes or sprints, or even to a specific distance like 6.5 furlongs. You can also select ranges of your personal (est'd), final (Track), or Morning Line odds, the range of dates, and size of purses. You can analyze just turf races, or just dirt or all-weather track races, and can look at only races for mares and fillies. And, of course, you can limit analysis to single or groups of race types (e.g., just claiming races, or just stakes). As shown earlier, where we showed that we were losing on maiden and stakes races, this ability to analyze results on any basis that makes sense to you is essential to success.

Well, there it is. You really have no excuse for not keeping detailed wager records, and analyzing your results to improve your betting strategies. If you're not using MyWay, you need this program, which is available at a fraction of the cost of our flagship product. It's your for