OZmium Sports Betting and Horse Racing Forums - View Single Post - Ratings2Win

A Note to Self: BACK this horse next time it runs.

No prizes for guessing that today's piece is about leaving notes for yourself as a reminder of something that the horse did or something that you should do next time it runs. Those things are called Comments and Black book and believe it or not it's a 2 part post.

The Black Book

One of the issues I had when I was starting out was that the program that I was using didn't have a black book, and looking around I couldn't find one that did what I wanted to do. So I did what most people do and used one of the many free online reminders that send you your black book via email and SMS; which turned out to be useless because I would forever forget about them. This was because they came NOT at the time I needed them but mostly a day before or other inconvenient time and as everyone knows unless you have everything in front of you, things get left behind in the organised confusion that most Saturday mornings turn out to be; and they of course go on to win. The other issue is keeping the blasted thing up to date; the logging in, typing and spelling, deleting and so on. A hassle all around!

So I turned all that around in our R2W Axis. Firstly the Axis Black Book has the capability to black book more; Horses, Jockeys, Trainers, Jockeys & Horses combos and Trainer & Jockey combos. Anyone that is just a little racing savvy will see the obvious benefits in having the ability to black book all those possible entities. Horses are obvious. I use jockeys and trainers to not only know when my short list of good ones are racing but also to let me know when they seam to travel for no apparent reason outside their jurisdiction for a one off race. Same goes for time when a certain Jock rides a certain horse or when a certain Trainer engages a certain jockey, these are situations that transmit a clear message "This horse is running on its merits today" or "this is just a training run".

Most Black Books go by the wayside because of the efforts required to maintain them. I mean what is the point of booking horses when you end up with a truck load of them; after a while you stop looking at the list! Axis has the capability of setting an expiry date (or not) so that the program will delete the bookers for you. Automatically. Some you might want to keep indefinitely, like a fave horse or a jockey but most you want to keep for a short while and then let go. Keeping the book current and relevant is most important; expire or indefinite, the duration is up to you and you can always prune the list the old fashion way anyway.

So when do you actually get reminded? Right at the time that you need it! When you load a day, a list of all your black bookers running that day pops up including your comment if you have one. Also as you look/study each race in the Race Day Portal if you have a booker then it's marked for you. You will not miss a thing!

To enter a black book 'entity' you can do it from the Race Day Portal without typing anything other then your comment with a click of a button so spelling is not an issue!

Easy as, a thinking punters black book!