Re: To Janis Joplin (389 Views)
Posted by:
mandown (IP Logged)
Date: April 06, 2005 02:29PM
Hi Tony,
I was working for Robert Maxwell in the UK when the owners/originators of FigsForm tried to get Maxwell to invest in the operation. Maxwell, as was his wont, played hardball and we ended up going though the courst before acquiring their assets (principally the database and its associated software).
I was not involved in any of the Figs development but thought they had some good ideas. Robert Sinn, who has been mentioned here before, was the main originator of the various figures/stats and graphs that were in Figs.
He was a very clever man but an archetypal 'mad genius' who didn't temper his genius with common sense. I think a lot of the stuff in FigsForm was just too hard for the average horseplayer to grasp.
We found when we launched the Racing Times that the hardest thing was getting people to spend more than a couple of minutes getting used to a slightly different layout, not to mention having times in 100ths rather than fifths.
You might think horseplayers are always looking for the added edge but for the most part they just want to handicap races and dealing with something new just gets in the way of that.
Cheers,
George