Introduction to WinPicks
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WinPicks Reference Manual Section 1. Introduction to WinPicks
MicroBrothers Software has been writing and publishing sports handicapping software for more than three decades. WinPicks began in the early 1990s as a Windows desktop program, sold by the season - first on disc, later by download - and covering pro and college football and basketball. Its owners downloaded the week's stat files, built prediction formulas, tuned them, and hunted trends, and a Reference Manual explained every screen. The last of those manuals was published in 2018. This manual is its direct successor.
WinPicks 2.0 is the same program brought to the browser. The screens are the original screens - the same dialogs, the same menus, the same reports - because thirty years of customers know exactly where everything is, and because the engines behind those screens still work. What has changed is everything around them: the program now runs on our servers, and the database, the schedules, the scores, the lines and the per-bookmaker prices are maintained centrally. Nothing is installed, nothing is downloaded, and nothing needs keying in.
The WinPicks family consists of five statistical database and handicapping packages: Pro Football Analyst, College Football Analyst, Pro Basketball Analyst, College Basketball Analyst, and Pro Hockey Analyst, which is new in WinPicks 2.0. All five share a common user interface, so if you know how to use one package, you know how to use them all. This manual is a comprehensive reference for all five. It explains how each feature works, and discusses the differences between the packages where they exist.
The foundation is what it has always been:
- A deep record of past games. The football packages reach back to 1985,
pro basketball to 1990 and college basketball to 2000, with complete boxscores in Pro Football Analyst tracking each team's performance in twenty statistical categories.
- Predictions in a variety of formats. WinPicks picks the straight-up
winner, recommends certain picks against the point spread, and predicts the point total of every game (the over/under).
- Your own prediction formulas. WinPicks does not limit you to built-in
formulas. You create your own, analyze their performance straight-up, against the spread and against the total, and tune them for best results.
- The best trend analysis engine in the business. You can see how any
team has performed straight-up, against the spread, or against the total in any situation you can define - as a favorite or underdog, at home or on the road, after a win or a loss, in head-to-head matchups with any opponent - and combine trends to get as specific as you wish.
What WinPicks 2.0 adds to that foundation - the prices, the new screens, and the honest way of judging a result - is the subject of the previous chapter, What's New in WinPicks 2.0.
WinPicks 2.0 runs in your web browser, on any machine you own. Section 2 explains how to sign in and choose a sport.
← What's New in WinPicks 2.0 Contents Installing and Starting WinPicks →