What's New in WinPicks 2.0
WinPicks Reference Manual What's New in WinPicks 2.0
If you have used WinPicks before, this chapter is for you. It lists what is new in WinPicks 2.0, one item at a time, with a pointer to the section that covers it fully. Everything else is where you left it: the menus, the dialogs and the reports are the original ones, and the parts of this manual that describe them are unchanged wherever the screens are unchanged.
- It runs in your browser. Nothing to install, no discs, no serial
numbers, no weekly downloads. Point a browser at app.winpicks.net, sign in, and your formulas and settings follow you to any machine. Section 2.
- The database updates itself. Scores arrive within minutes of a game
going final; schedules and postseason brackets appear when the leagues publish them; lines and totals track the market through the day. The screens that used to key data in now show it. Sections 5 and 6.
- Prices, not just lines. Every line carries the actual money odds
beside it, per bookmaker. A Price Basis setting says whose prices you are shown and graded at - the market consensus, the best available number, or one named book - and it applies to every screen, including Analyze and the Tuner. The Price Basis, in section 6; Prices on the Predict Screens, in section 8.
- Odds Compare. One screen showing every bookmaker quoting a game -
typically forty or more - with the best number of each market marked, how each line moved since it opened, and where the public's bets and the public's money are. Odds Compare, in section 6.
- Predict Straight Up. A third Predict grid beside Sides and Totals: the
formula's outright winner for every game, priced at the money line. The original program could not offer this screen, because it had no real prices to grade a moneyline pick against. Predicting Straight Up, in section 8.
- The Home page. A front door that opens on today's games and three
starting points - ask history a question, get the day's picks, build your own formula. Press Ctrl+K anywhere to jump to any screen by name. The Home Page, in section 3.
- Trend Finder. The trend engine turned around: instead of sweeping for
every trend, you ask one question - Denver after two losses as a home dog - and get its record, with the honesty columns beside it. It takes plain English or a compact command language, and a Copy for LLM button hands the whole exchange to any assistant you use. Trend Finder, in section 9; a cookbook of worked commands is Appendix C.
- My Systems. Save a Trend Finder query and it is graded, from that day
forward, only on games played after you saved it - an out-of-sample record that cannot be contaminated, and the closest thing this program has to a verdict. My Systems, in section 9.
- Honest tuning. The Formula Tuner gains objectives and safeguards: Best
SU Units graded at real money lines, Closing Line Value as an objective, a held-out period tracked beside the fit, and a Luck Line showing what the same search would reach on pure noise. Section 8.5 and the two sections after it.
- Forge. A formula designer that starts from a question - which market,
over what period, judged on what - and writes an ordinary formula you can tune and edit like any other. It supersedes the SureLock Formula Wizard. Forge, in section 8.
- Weather, measured. Pro Football Analyst adds a Weather Board - the
conditions at kickoff for every game on the date - and a Weather Lab that tests every wind, cold and rain cut-off against the betting line, then re-tests the winners on games they never saw. The Trend Finder gains weather filters on the same data. The Weather Board and the Weather Lab, in section 7.
- A fifth package: Pro Hockey Analyst. NHL scores, lines, totals and
money line prices, with hockey-specific handicapping advice - and, by default, a newer engine that models goal scoring directly and makes the money line its native market. Pro Hockey Handicapping, in Appendix A.
- Your account. Formulas, saved trends, systems, tuner settings and your
price basis live with your account, not with a machine. Subscriptions are per package and take effect immediately. Section 12.
Retired, and explained where they stood: keying in scores and lines, weekly downloads, the Formula Warehouse, and the SureLock wizard - each of their sections says what replaced it and why. Gone without needing a chapter: the built-in web browser (you are in a better one), the screen-font setting (use your browser's zoom), and the local data directory (the menu item now opens Data Sources - see section 10).