Twice Shy

Ted typed YES, and the screen said merely,

ANY MORE HORSES?

Ted typed YES again, and we found ourselves back at

TYPE NAME OF HORSE AND PRESS 'ENTER'.

'That's not handicapping,' I said.

'Is that what it's supposed to be?' Ted shook his head. 'More like statistical probabilities, I should have thought. Let's go through it again and answer NO to ANY MORE HORSES?'

He typed TED PITTS for the horse's name and varied the answers, and immediately after his final NO we were presented with a cleared screen and a new display.

HORSE'S NAME WIN FACTOR

JONATHAN DERRY 27

TED PITTS 12

'You've no chance,' I said. 'You might as well stay in the stable.' He looked a bit startled, and then laughed. 'Yes. That's what it is. A guide to gamblers.'

He typed LIST instead of RUN, and immediately the bones of the program appeared, but scrolling upwards too fast to read, like flight-information changes at airports. Ted merely hummed a little and typed LIST 10-140, and after some essential flickering the screen presented the goods.

LIST 10-140

10 PRINT "WHICH RACE AT EPSOM? TYPE NAME OF RACE AND PRESS'ENTER'"

20 INPUT A$

30 IF A$ = " DERBY " THEN 330

40 IF A$ = "OAKS" THEN 340

50 IF A$ = "CORONATION CUP" THEN 350

60 IF A$ = "BLUE RIBAND STAKES" THEN

The list went down to the bottom of the screen in this fashion, and Ted gave it one appraising look and said, 'Dead simple.'

The dollar sign, I seemed to remember, meant that the Input had to be in the form of letters. Input A, without the dollar sign, would have asked for numbers.

Ted seemed perfectly happy. He typed LIST 300-380 and got another set of instructions.

At 330 the program read: LET A = 10: B = 8: C = 6: D = 2: D1 = 2 Lines 332, 334, and 336 looked similar, with numbers being ascribed to letters.

'That's the weighting,' Ted said. 'The value given to each answer. Ten points for the first question, which was… um… has the horse won a race. And so on. I see that 10 points are given also for the last question, which was about… er… ante-post odds, wasn't it?'

I nodded.

'There you are, then,' he said. 'I dare say there's a different weighting for every race. There might of course be different questions for every race. Ho hum. Want to see?'

'If you've the time,' I said.

'Oh sure. I've always got time for TOMs. Love 'em, you know.'

He went on typing LIST followed by various numbers and came up with such gems as:

IF N$ = "NO" THEN GOTO 560: X = X + B

INPUT N$: AB = AB + 1

IF N$ = "NO" THEN GOTO 560: X = X + M

T = T + G2

GOSUB 4000

'What does all that mean?' I asked.

'Um… well. It's much easier to write a program than to read and understand someone else's. Programs are frantically individual. You can get the same results by all sorts of different routes. I mean, if you're going from London to Bristol you go down the M4 and it's called M4 all the way, but on a computer you can call the road anything you like, at any point on the journey, and you might know that at different moments L2, say, or RQ3 or B7(2) equalled M4, but no one else would.'

'Is that also what you teach the kids?'

'Er, yes. Sorry, it's a habit.' He glanced at the screen. 'I'd guess that those top lines are to do with skipping some questions if previous answers make them unnecessary. Jumping to later bits of program. If I printed the whole thing out onto paper I could work out their exact meaning.'

I shook my head. 'Don't trouble. Let's try a different racecourse.'

'Sure.'

He rewound the tape to the beginning and typed CLOAD 'DONCA', and when the screen said READY, typed RUN.

Immediately we were asked WHICH RACE AT DONCASTER? TYPE NAME OF RACE AND PRESS 'ENTER'.

'OK.' Ted said, pressing switches. 'What about further down the tape? Say, GOODW?'

We got WHICH RACE AT GOODWOOD? TYPE NAME OF RACE AND PRESS 'ENTER'.

'I don't know any races at Goodwood,' I said.

Ted said, 'That's easy,' and typed LIST 10-140. When the few seconds of flickering had stopped, we had:

LIST 10-40

10 PRINT "WHICH RACE AT GOODWOOD? TYPE NAME OF RACE AND PRESS 'ENTER'"

20 INPUT A$

30 IF A$ = "GOODWOOD STAKES" THEN 330

40 IF A$ = "GOODWOOD CUP" THEN

There were fifteen races listed altogether.

'What happens if you type in the name of a race there's no program for?' I asked.

'Let's see,' he said. He typed RUN, and we were back to WHICH RACE AT GOODWOOD? He typed DERBY, and the screen informed us THERE IS NO INFORMATION FOR THIS RACE.

'Neat and simple,' Ted said.

We sampled all the sides of the three tapes, but the programs were all similar. WHICH RACE AT REDCAR? WHICH RACE AT ASCOT? WHICH RACE AT NEWMARKET?

There were programs for about fifty racecourses, with varying numbers of races listed at each. Several lists contained not actual titles of races but general categories like STRAIGHT 7 FURLONGS FOR 3 YR OLDS AND UPWARDS, or THREE MILE WEIGHT-FOR-AGE STEEPLECHASE: and it was not until quite late that I realised with amusement that none of the races were handicaps. There were no questions at all about how many lengths a horse had won by, while carrying such and such a weight.