Review 3 was compiled for the The Betting School by a subscriber to their 
Newsletter. Their website can be viewed on this link.

ProForm Professional 

Product Name: Proform Professional 
Supplier / Author: Simon Walton 
Website: www.proformprofessional.com 
Price: £88 Initial cost for database + 4 weeks 
Category: Computer Form Book and System Builder

Product Overview 
Proform Professional is a horse racing computerised form book and analysis software. 

Summary 
The software is in two sections consisting of the form book and the system builder. The race cards are updated daily giving limitless possibilities of finding winners. 

Detailed Findings 
Having tried most computerised formbooks and system builders I was very interested in the possibility of reviewing Proform Professional. This has been around for a good number of years and has a lot of dedicated users. On January 10th 2008 the software was updated to include a System Builder. For the purposes of this review, I shall break the software down into three parts; the formbook, the system builder and installation and support. 

Installation and Support 
The software is downloaded online via links that are emailed to you when you purchase. The emails contain excellent information on how to obtain and install the software, as well as a dedicated FAQ just in case you have any problems with the installation. Needless to say, the software installed perfectly first time without any problems. On the first start-up the database is formed and Proform Professional automatically downloads any updates. On subsequent reloading, you can download the most recent race cards by clicking a big button in the main screen. 

With a very simple installation my hopes were already high for this piece of software. Most computerised form books have a lot of data which is nearly impossible to start deciphering without a good deal of the help. As most of us have experienced, some help files leave more than a little to be desired. Not so here however! There is detailed information on all aspects of the program, including video help files which can be viewed before purchasing the software from the website. The ability to be able to see these help files before purchasing is frankly superb, as it allows you to get a good idea of the capabilities of the software, and what you can do with it, before parting with your money. 

A concept that seems to be a little too rare these days. While reading through the help-file I found, to my great pleasure, a far more comprehensive coverage than just an explanation of all the ratings. There are explanations containing the information about which factors are included in the ratings, as one would expect, but also included the boundaries for the ratings, and these are also very clearly laid out as well. This is highly unusual, most companies prefer not to tell you how they create their ratings, thus either making them void or requiring huge amounts of trial and error to see what the limits are and how they perform within them. This feature is a very big positive to chalk up for Proform Professional. 

The only small gripe that I have about the help file is that if you have Firefox as your main internet browser, then for some reason you can’t open the help file from within the software. You have to launch it from its installation directory. Having said this, I have been assured by Proform themselves that this will be remedied and creating a shortcut to it is very simple. There is also a forum for registered users of the software. Unfortunately the forum does not seem to be very active at the moment, although it clearly has been in the past. However there is some very useful beginners’ lessons, and methods with which to select winners, that has been posted by a previous user. This is undoubtedly a superb way to start using the software. If you cannot find your answers in the forum you can use the email support. Not only is the support team very quick to respond, they also do so by giving full in depth answers and are extremely patient! 

Especially nice is the encouraging feedback from users for what they want to see in the software, and with the updates happening very frequently, there are new features being added in all the time. Overall I cannot fault the support for this product in any way. It is quick, professional and far better than most of the products out there that I have come across. 

Form Book 
The Form Book is the main part of the program, and suffice to say that it is absolutely crammed full with information. In fact, on opening it there is probably too much information and the first thing I would recommend any user doing is, after reading the help, decide which ratings they actually want to see and customise the display. Yes, that is right -you can customise exactly what you want to show up on your screen! And it doesn’t mean that the items you deselect for your display disappear forever. In fact it takes just a few seconds to bring up a rating that you think may be useful for this particular race, but chose to deselect it for your display. It allows you to look at races with ease, quickly assessing all runners. There is also a graphical display on the main screen showing the horses ratings. Once you have narrowed down your possible selections it is very easy to take a quick glance and see how a horse has been performing, and if it has the ability in today’s competition. 

Another superb feature is the ability to get pace records for tracks displayed which can give you an accurate idea of what kind of pace a horse needs to be able to win a particular race. I have not seen this in any other software, and alongside Proform Professional’s excellent pace ratings it is another huge advantage. Everything within this software can be customised. This means that you are able to look at all the horses’ form or just the selected horses, and you can look at form just for specific conditions, or for tracks, or even for races. You can choose to only look at form from the last 90 days, or 60 days, or 30 days etc.. You can pull up race-data from any race in the database that spans the last nine years. 

Another excellent feature is the collateral pages. Rather than having to look at how horses have run against each other, you can very quickly bring all of that information up for either all runners in a race, or just the horses which you choose. As with most computerised form books, you have the ability to write notes on both the races and specific horses. These notes are able to be pulled up at the click of a button in the future if you so require. 

Overall, the main screen contains an absolute wealth of information. As long as you don’t try and jump straight in, which could mean being overwhelmed by too much data but rather start slowly, and make decisions as to what would be useful for your particular style of handicapping. I do believe that you will very quickly improve your strike rate using the information provided by this programme, as well as speeding up your handicapping. 

For the more dedicated handicapper there is a wealth of other features that are incorporated into the Form Book. These include the ability to watch specific horses, create shortlists, export your selections or race cards as well as a comprehensive analysis of the draw statistics for each track, at each distance, on every type of going. This is a feature that most software does not take into account. 

The pattern matcher is yet another excellent feature which matches the data on a specific horse to the current race. This is yet another way to see at a glance how a horse may perform under specific conditions. A bet manager also allows you to keep track of all of your bets. As you open each new part of the program a shortcut appears on the taskbar, much like the windows start bar, making the access between the various parts of the software quick and efficient. For those of you that have multiple monitors, the windows can also all be detached from the main software, allowing you to spread out different parts of the software to be viewed simultaneously, if you so wish. 

As if that wasn’t enough, there is a data exporter, for those of you who wish to delve in deeper into statistics! From the exporter you can export every single rating for every race that is in the data. Of course you can also choose specific dates or specific pieces of information, whichever you prefer. This information is saved in a CSV format for further scrutiny. 

When I tried out this feature, I exported a selection of the ratings within the software in order to determine how useful they would be in the analysis of finding the finishing position of a horse. To do this, I use a piece of artificial intelligence software. I compared the ratings against two other well known products that are readily available, and found that the Tissue Ratings provided by Proform are far superior to either of the other two that I used. This was closely followed by the excellence of Proforms’ own ratings, not to be confused with the Proform Form Rating (although this was also very good). Both of these proved to be very good indicators of a horse’s potential probability of winning. 

There are many other features in the Form Book which would require another article if I were to give you a comprehensive coverage of all that the programme can accomplish. This is surely has to be one of the most comprehensive computerised Form Books that I have ever come across and I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

System Builder 
When I received Proform Professional for reviewing the form book was only a few days old. The format of the System Builder is within queries, leaving it to be very flexible to the user. For example, in the Runners box I could put >=10 which would look at all races that had ten or more runners. Alternatively, I could put >=8 and <=12 which would look at all races containing between eight and twelve runners inclusive. 

This format is excellent compared to the other popular methods of using menus and checkboxes. The reason for the preference of the query method is that it doesn’t box your thinking, you can query anything! The next superb feature of the System Builder is the speed, taking on average just thirty seconds to produce a report. This means that system building can be relatively quick as you can go through a hundred variations in a very short space of time. 

When creating the report, you can choose how you want it to be displayed. You can choose from a variety of options such as ‘Bottom Line’ which shows the profit over the whole period selected, to displaying results by odds, distance, type, ratings etc.... When the reports are displayed you can then drill down into the results by double clicking on them. For example, if I chose to have my report displayed by Year I could then drill down by double clicking on a year and seeing all the selections that were made in that year. 

There is the ability to change the preferences as to what is viewable when you drill down the results, but everything that is available in the form book can also be viewed in this detailed way . All results are easily sorted by clicking on the relevant title, and all results can also be exported to a CSV in common with everything else in this software. 

Selections for the current race cards will show up on the welcome screen for any saved systems. You can click on the report for a system you are working on to see any selections for the day that the system would have made. There is the ability to create a temporary name for each report, so that you know what you have changed every time you modify your system. I found that I didn’t bother with this and just accepted the standard Report 1, Report 2 etc..... 

There is talk that in a future release it will automatically give a temporary name to the reports based on the settings you have chosen, which would be an excellent enhancement. Very refreshingly, there will be a warning displayed for any system that uses Odds or Favourites in the selection process, the reason being that these are not known until after the race has started. Of course a system can be created within an odds range, but you must remember that it is an SP odds range which you will have to consider yourself when placing the bet. Likewise, you can use favourites, but you will have to judge for yourself which is the favourite when placing the bet, although the software will display all the selections that fit all the other criteria, so you can see if any of them are in fact favourites. 

Although there are a lot of settings already available for you to build your systems, there are also quite a few that are not there yet. This is not surprising considering that it has only been available for just over 2 weeks. Some of the missing features are weight, number of previous runs and placed last time out. This is also the same for the way the reports are displayed. 

For example, currently you can display the ratings by rank, but not by actual rating, and the ability to create a report based on some features such as number of runners is not yet incorporated into the software. I have been assured that these features will be added constantly as they are ready and at no additional charge. Having seen the speed with which the software is updated, I have absolutely no doubt that this will indeed be the case. 

What makes this System Builder so special is that it is designed not only to be able to create systems, but also to be a detailed analysis tool. If I want to know how well P F Nicholls horses do at Taunton over Hurdles, then it would take me less than a minute to find out. The ability to analyse as well as create systems so quickly gives this software an excellent edge. 


Overall 
As a form book this product is hard to match. It is up with the best for ease of use and the provision of information. Its value for money is outstanding. As a system builder and analysis tool, Proform Professional has launched with an exceptional tool which is already providing many ways to find profitable angles. If it progresses in the same way, which I have no doubt at all that it will, then I am sure that this will become one of the market leaders in system building and racing analysis tools. 

On finishing this article I have just heard from Proform that there are two updates imminent. The first will be providing extensive back-up facilities for the software. This means that all your notes, horses to watch, systems etc….. will be backed up and even the ability to export the rules to your systems so you can back them up and print hard copies. 

This will be an excellent facility as anybody who has used computerised form books will know that if there is a problem the first data to go is the customised information such as notes. As far as I am aware Proform will also be the only software that allows you to export the rules to your systems conveniently so hard copies can be made. 

The second update includes all of the following features being added to the system builder: 

Ability to show results of last couple of days for all systems in a grid, nice and easy to see the resent results 

Add in lay p/l figures 

Allow output to be restricted, i.e. to results with 20 runs or more, 15% strike rate or higher/lower 

Maybe add in choice of actual race on declarations type part, also add in dam and sire breakdown and dam sire as declarations type choices 

Ability to delete recent report entries or rename them 

Sorting of results to work in correct orders 

As you can see the next two imminent updates are extensive and from my experience with the software I know that these kind of updates happen regularly meaning that this product will not stand still. I cannot recommend this product highly enough whether you are just getting into horse racing or you are a professional. You will undoubtedly find many angles that you haven’t uncovered before to increase your profit.