Keeneland January Sale Preview

Keeneland January Sale Preview

Welcome to DRF Bets TicketMaker

Daily Racing Form |

DRF Bets TicketMaker is a handicapping tool that helps you make smarter multi-race wagers using betting strategies developed by Steven Crist.
Now, you can place multi-leg wagers directly from TicketMaker in seconds with one click, a feature that is available exclusively to DRF Bets members. Sign up for DRF Bets.

NOTE: Bet Now buttons will not appear if the tote is not open

DRF Bets TicketMaker User's Guide Quick Links

The following is a series of step-by-step instructions to help you use this handicapping tool.
The purpose of TicketMaker is not to help you select horses. Rather, TicketMaker was designed to help you construct better multi-race tickets based on your selections. For example, a standard 4x4x4x4 Pick 4 ticket would require 256 combinations, all weighted equally. With a $1 base bet, this would cost $256.
But by using TicketMaker and the algorithms created by Steven Crist, you can get smarter and more creative combinations, stretching your dollar by weighting it towards horses you feel strongest about.
Using TicketMaker
When accessing DRF TicketMaker in DRF Formulator, choose a track and date from the main Formulator homepage, select “TicketMaker” from the navigation menu in Formulator. Select the track and date for your wager, and click “Create New Ticket.”
Outside of DRF Formulator, you can access DRF TicketMaker under DRF Bets in the navigation bar, or click .
NOTE – From this page you will also have the opportunity to open previously created and saved TicketMaker tickets. To do this, select "Open Saved Ticket" and choose the previous ticket you'd like to view.

Step 1: Wager Details

Fill out the following fields to begin constructing your ticket:

Type of Wager

Pick 3
Pick 4
Pick 5
Pick 6
Win (see below)

Starting With Race

Select the race number which begins your wager.

Base Bet

Set the base bet for your wager. You can set this amount to any denomination.
This will represent the wager amount of each individual bet in your tickets, and can be altered later to weight selected ticket combinations (see "Emphasize" below).

Budget

Enter the total amount you want to spend on this wager. TicketMaker will use this amount when constructing your tickets.
*Note: By default, your wager will be set to a Pick 3, starting with whichever race you are currently handicapping in Formulator. The base bet will be $0 and the budget will be $0. You can change this each time you construct a ticket in TicketMaker, or you can go to “My Profile” in the Formulator Navigation bar and set your TicketMaker defaults from the TicketMaker tab.

Step 2: Categorize Horses

Begin by designating all horses in each race as an A, B, C or X Selection. Here are Steven Crist's brief descriptions of how he views these categories:
A – Primary contender(s) and top selections, or slightly less likely winners who you think will be extreme overlays.
B – Reasonable contender(s) who will keep you alive with other A's and B's but not with C horses.
C – Marginal or unlikely winners you can't entirely eliminate but whose winning would force you to get home A's in all other races.
X – Horses who you are completely eliminating.
ALL – Select all entries in this race
To categorize a horse, simply drag and drop the horse’s number in the category of your choice. To "Drag and Drop" a horse, use your mouse to click on the horse's number from the X category. While holding down your left-click button, drag your mouse to the appropriate category and release the left-click button. This will insert the horse into the category you have chosen for him. To move all entries in a race into one category, drag the “All” button into the category of your choice.
By moving horses into these categories, you’re telling TicketMaker which horses you want to use in your wagers (by leaving a horse in the “X” category, he will remain off all of your tickets).
Once horses have been moved throughout the categories, TicketMaker will construct tickets that cover the following bet types:
All A Entries – You are covered for any combination of your A horses.
A’s with One B – You are covered as long as all of your A horses win, with the exception of one race, in which one of your B horses must win. It does not matter which leg is won by your B horse. TicketMaker will construct tickets that will cover you as long as your A's and one B win every race.
A’s with Two B’s – You are covered as long as all of your A horses win, with the exception of two races, in which two of your B horses must win. It does not matter which legs are won by your B horses. TicketMaker will construct tickets that will cover you as long as your A's and two B’s win every race.
A’s with One C – You are covered as long as all of your A horses win, with the exception of one race, in which one of your C horses must win. It does not matter which leg is won by your C horse. TicketMaker will construct tickets that will cover you as long as your A's and one C win every race.
You’ll notice that as soon as you begin adding horses to categories in the final leg, TicketMaker will begin constructing tickets. When you finish constructing your tickets, check to see if the “Total” (located in the bottom right of the TicketMaker window) is close to your budget.

If the total is above your budget:

Besides returning to Step 1 and increasing your budget, you have several options if your total exceeds your budget.
One option would be to re-categorize horses. For example, moving just one horse from an "A" to a "B" can significantly reduce the cost of your ticket. Granted, you will not have that particular horse in as many combinations, but this is one way to reduce your total ticket cost.
Another option would be to de-select certain “Bet Types.” For example, removing all the tickets that cover you if "A’s with two B’s" win would reduce your total number of tickets.
You can de-select this bet type by un-checking the appropriate “Bet Type” box.

If the total is below your budget:

TicketMaker will automatically try to increase your “$ per bet” if your ticket total is less than your budget. To put even more emphasis on certain tickets, use the “emphasize” function.
For example, if your “All A Entries” ticket costs $16 with a base bet of $1, and you want to bet these tickets for $2 each, select the “Emphasize – x2” button to make these $2 bets (for a total of $32). Note - Hitting the emphasize button could potentially cause the TicketMaker total to exceed your budget.

Placing your bets:

Once you are satisfied with your tickets and the total cost of the wager, click “Bet Now” to place your wagers through DRF Bets. After a few seconds of processing, you will get a confirmation screen showing your successful bets. Any errors that occur will also be shown here.

Printing your tickets:

If you don't want to place your wagers through DRF Bets, you can click “Print” to view an easy-to-read PDF with all of your ticket combinations (see a sample). The “Verbal Description” even tells you exactly what to say to a mutuel clerk in order to make your bets.

Tracking Performance:

The final page of the TicketMaker screen is the “Tracking Performance” section. Here, you can enter the winning horse numbers in each leg of your wager and TicketMaker will give you an update on the number of live tickets you have remaining.
• If you've never used TicketMaker before, read this first.
• After constructing Pick 3, Pick 4, Pick 5 or Pick 6 in TicketMaker, you will see a green "Bet Now" button appear in the bottom right corner of the TicketMaker window. Click this button and login to your DRF Bets account, then confirm your wagers to place your tickets through DRF Bets. TicketMaker will submit your tickets and will show you a confirmation page, where you will see all of your successful tickets. Any unsuccessful wagers will appear with an error message. You can also view these wagers in the "My Wagers" area of DRF Bets.
• TicketMaker will allow you to construct tickets without verifying the wagering menu. For example, if you try to construct a Pick 4 for Belmont beginning with race 2, and Belmont does not offer this bet, TicketMaker will allow you to construct the ticket. But when you click "Bet Now," the bets will not be processed and you will see an error message. Please consult the wagering menu before constructing tickets.
• TicketMaker will default to a "Pick 3." If you click TicketMaker from the final two races of any racecard in Formulator, TicketMaker will default to "Win" (since there cannot possibly be Pick 3 wagering beginning with the final two races of a card).
• If one of your horses is scratched, tickets containing that horse will not be submitted and you will see an error message informing you of this failed ticket.
The TicketMaker Win Tool is designed to help you find the best betting value when placing a "win" bet by weighing your handicapping opinions against the live odds of the horses. Here's how it works:
Step 1: Select "Win" from the drop down menu, and select the race.
Step 2: Using your mouse, drag the horses you're interested in into the "Selections" box. You can drag as many horses as you like.
Step 3: Rate each of your horses using the dropdown menus that appear next to their names. You can select a pre-determined rating, or give each horse your own percentage chance of winning. The total for your horses' chances must not exceed 100%. The percentage chances of winning for the pre-determined options are:
Feels like a sure thing - 70% chance of winning
Looks like the one - 50%
One of the top contenders - 30%
A longshot who can do it - 10%
Let me set my win percentage - 1-100%
Step 4: Press "GO" and TickerMaker will calculate the best Win wager based on your handicapping and each horse's morning line or current odds.
Before placing a wager, note that you can change the default Win amount to whatever you would like. TicketMaker will instantly recalculate the payout.
Once you are satisfied with your wager, click "Bet Now" and TicketMaker will place your wager through your DRF Bets account.
If you are using TicketMaker with less than 30 minutes to post, Live Odds will be used rather than Morning Line Odds. To refresh the Live Odds and make sure they are up to date, click "Update Live Odds."
If you have any additional questions, please email FormulatorHelp@drf.com

Ten things we know to be true

We first wrote these “10 things” when Google was just a few years old. From time to time we revisit this list to see if it still holds true. We hope it does—and you can hold us to that.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

   Since the beginning, we’ve focused on providing the best user experience possible. Whether we’re designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage, we take great care to ensure that they will ultimately serve you, rather than our own internal goal or bottom line. Our homepage interface is clear and simple, and pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone, and advertising is not only clearly marked as such, it offers relevant content and is not distracting. And when we build new tools and applications, we believe they should work so well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently.
   

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

   We do search. With one of the world’s largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we’ve been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of people. Our dedication to improving search helps us apply what we’ve learned to new products, like Gmail and Google Maps. Our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help people access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.
   

3. Fast is better than slow.

   We know your time is valuable, so when you’re seeking an answer on the web you want it right away–and we aim to please. We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our website as quickly as possible. By shaving excess bits and bytes from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, we’ve broken our own speed records many times over, so that the average response time on a search result is a fraction of a second. We keep speed in mind with each new product we release, whether it’s a mobile application or Google Chrome, a browser designed to be fast enough for the modern web. And we continue to work on making it all go even faster.
   

4. Democracy on the web works.

   Google search works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting links on websites to help determine which other sites offer content of value. We assess the importance of every web page using more than 200 signals and a variety of techniques, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, which analyzes which sites have been “voted” to be the best sources of information by other pages across the web. As the web gets bigger, this approach actually improves, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. In the same vein, we are active in open source software development, where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.
   

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.

   The world is increasingly mobile: people want access to information wherever they are, whenever they need it. We’re pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions for mobile services that help people all over the globe to do any number of tasks on their phone, from checking email and calendar events to watching videos, not to mention the several different ways to access Google search on a phone. In addition, we’re hoping to fuel greater innovation for mobile users everywhere with Android, a free, open source mobile platform. Android brings the openness that shaped the Internet to the mobile world. Not only does Android benefit consumers, who have more choice and innovative new mobile experiences, but it opens up revenue opportunities for carriers, manufacturers and developers.
   

6. You can make money without doing evil.

   Google is a business. The revenue we generate is derived from offering search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on our site and on other sites across the web. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers worldwide use AdWords to promote their products; hundreds of thousands of publishers take advantage of our AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to their site content. To ensure that we’re ultimately serving all our users (whether they are advertisers or not), we have a set of guiding principles for our advertising programs and practices:
   
   • We don’t allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they are relevant where they are shown. And we firmly believe that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find–so it’s possible that certain searches won’t lead to any ads at all.
     
   • We believe that advertising can be effective without being flashy. We don’t accept pop–up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested. We’ve found that text ads that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Any advertiser, whether small or large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium.
     
   • Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link,” so it does not compromise the integrity of our search results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results and no one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust our objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.
     

7. There’s always more information out there.

   Once we’d indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases into search, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search news archives, patents, academic journals, billions of images and millions of books. And our researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world’s information to people seeking answers.
   

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

   Our company was founded in California, but our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, and in every language. To that end, we have offices in more than 60 countries, maintain more than 180 Internet domains, and serve more than half of our results to people living outside the United States. We offer Google’s search interface in more than 130 languages, offer people the ability to restrict results to content written in their own language, and aim to provide the rest of our applications and products in as many languages and accessible formats as possible. Using our translation tools, people can discover content written on the other side of the world in languages they don’t speak. With these tools and the help of volunteer translators, we have been able to greatly improve both the variety and quality of services we can offer in even the most far–flung corners of the globe.
   

9. You can be serious without a suit.

   Our founders built Google around the idea that work should be challenging, and the challenge should be fun. We believe that great, creative things are more likely to happen with the right company culture–and that doesn’t just mean lava lamps and rubber balls. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to our overall success. We put great stock in our employees–energetic, passionate people from diverse backgrounds with creative approaches to work, play and life. Our atmosphere may be casual, but as new ideas emerge in a café line, at a team meeting or at the gym, they are traded, tested and put into practice with dizzying speed–and they may be the launch pad for a new project destined for worldwide use.
   

10. Great just isn’t good enough.

    We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set ourselves goals we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon them in unexpected ways. For example, when one of our engineers saw that search worked well for properly spelled words, he wondered about how it handled typos. That led him to create an intuitive and more helpful spell checker.
    Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, finding an answer on the web is our problem, not yours. We try to anticipate needs not yet articulated by our global audience, and meet them with products and services that set new standards. When we launched Gmail, it had more storage space than any email service available. In retrospect offering that seems obvious–but that’s because now we have new standards for email storage. Those are the kinds of changes we seek to make, and we’re always looking for new places where we can make a difference. Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind everything we do.
    

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