Fast Fred

[Fast4522]

My wife is considering Fast Fred as a stocking stuffer for me this year.
The website that sells the program looks great but I still have questions only because its software.
I have multiple computers on my home network, so I would want to install it on more than one desktop and a laptop which all share the same network laser printer. Can this be done or does the program have a dongle security key? Also it must be a windows based program before it can be considered.
Any help and comments would be appreciated.
Steve

[socantra]

Fast Fred is a windows program, no dongle.

Dick...

[socantra]

Sorry! I was feeling a bit rushed and taciturn yesterday. I'll try to elaborate a bit on Fast Fred Pro.

I bought a copy several years ago. I believe it was version 2 point something. Paul Clements has been very prompt in responding to questions and puts out a new update every so often. Minor updates are available free on the website and when he does a major update he charges registered users something like ten or twenty bucks for a new CD. As near as I can remember, he notifies me when a new major update comes out.

I've always thought Fast Fred has a lot of potential. Its another number cruncher. It takes some Brohammer/Sartin, some William Scott (How Will Your Horse Run Today), some Danny Holmes (Ten Steps to Winning) and a few other folks thrown in.

It does an equalization and track to track adjustment from some unspecified "National Pars", which seems to work fairly well. I haven't been able to track down exactly whose pars they are and they are not easily user accessible. As I said, they seem to work fairly well and he does update fairly often, so I don't know if he is updating his pars or not.

The program produces a power number and an odds line based on that number. There's a lot of user control on the weighting of the various factors that go into making up the power number and at one time I got the odds line working pretty well. Then he did a major update and I was back to square one. Take the advice of a lazy dummy. If you tweak the odds line, write down your weightings somewhere.

The automatic paceline selection options are based on an average pace figure from Danny Holmes rather than Sartin/Brohammer, and other calculations are taken from that paceline. I've argued with Paul several times that the Holmes figure gives too much emphasis to Pace of the Race and in the new version he gives you a manual paceline selection option. The program selects and, if you want, you have the option of confirming or changing its selection. I feel that is a major improvemrnt.

The new version has some import/export capabilities for spreadsheet calculations and will use TSN exotic results files for some sort of modeling setup. There are also some Excel templates. I really haven't taken the time to look at these yet. The program will use data files from Trackmaster, BRIS, TSN, Formulator and ITS/Postime Daily.

Its not the program I use all the time. I'm personally much more comfortable with the Sartin programs. Out of the box its no more than average. If you want to put in a lot of work learning and tweaking, I think it could be turned into a very, very good program, pzrticularly with the new import/export features. There's a lot of user control and If someone doesn't come out with a good windows Sartin style program before long, it could become my program of choice, or at least my front end for further Excel development.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you've got any more questions.

Dick...

[Fast4522]

Dick,
Thank you for a superb overview of the program. It sounds like a good fit here at pace & Cap because if a few of us buy the program we can tweak it and share notes. It is sad Validator did not have a user control file for tweaks, at least this programer is taking the voice of the customer into consideration. Could you send some sample output files to me to look over (no hurry), I am big on Excel, also does it generate PDF files also?
Steve
My E-Mail is: fast4522@yahoo.com

[socantra]

Steve,

I sent you some output by email. The program doesn't output pdf, but does do a text output and there are several free or cheap pdf generators that redirect printer output. I don't know how many of them will work with a networked printer setup though.

The export/import features look very nice, but are not very well documented. If you know Excel well, they should provide a nice programming interface. Unfortunately, I'm not very deep on Excel. Hope to find the time to get better at it someday...

For anyone interested, there is a pdf of the manual on the web site that gives a pretty good idea of the features of the program.

Dick...

[Fast4522]

Dick,
Thank you for those program output files you sent me. It is so nice to have good people here like yourself at Pace and Cap who are so helpfull and a friend to all. My wife is getting me the program because the data you posted here and what you sent me made me want the program. I think the Sartin in the program has merit and the reports are usefull enough to compliment Validator or even Speculator for that matter. Now I am posting some screenshots of yesterdays ninth race at Hawthorne.

This one is Fast Fred Pro with Trackmaster as the data provider.

[Fast4522]

This screenshot is with Bris as the data provider. There are differences in alot of Sartin readings due to track equalization, data provider varients, and speed figures.

[Fast4522]

And this screenshot is the main screen of my program K19 same race.

[Binder]

Here is what I come up with with old slow Doc Sythesis SMT

just top 5 TE/PLS

Best of the last 3 Pace lines
First my contenders lines

[Binder]

Here is SMT no problem