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3]ORACLE: NFL88 - Picking 60+ Percent Winners
3]Programs by CODEWORKS MAGAZINE
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     Last year, JUMPDISK published the CodeWork's NFL87 pro football
prediction program.
     And pro players promptly went on strike, throwing the season into
disarray.
     Despite a shaky schedule, missed games and the absence of regular
players for several weeks, NFL87 still managed a record of a bit better than
60 percent. This is compared to 63.4 percent in 1986, and 61.5 percent in
1985.
     Will NFL88 do any better?
     It's all here if you're interested. The schedule has been set up, and
the transfer from JUMPDISK to your own disk is simple.
     NFL88 is a bargain that's included in the price of JUMPDISK. Look in
your hometown newspaper's classified ads, and you're likely to see similar
programs, with no better capabilities, for sale at up to $300.
     Whatever. The National Football League will be going at it before too
long. The program NFL88 might just pick a bunch of winners out of the NFL
season, as it did in 1985, 1986 and 1987. Or it may not.
     If the NFL Oracle works as it should, it will pick winners in
two-thirds of the games played from the fourth week onward during the coming
16-game season, and it will pick the point spread, plus or minus three
points, in about 30 percent of these games.
3]     JUMPDISK recommends that you DO NOT use this program as the basis for
3]wagering money on the outcome of professional football games. It's a serious
3]recommendation, not just a hoo-hah disclaimer. We'd hate to think anyone
3]lost the homestead because of a set of programs meant for fun.
     So you're on your own the moment you reach for your wallet.
     If you get interested, you'll have to enter some easily found statistics
after each week's games. You will also have to first transfer the program
drawer from JUMPDISK onto a separate disk. Instructions will follow. The
program will not make any predictions until you've entered statistics for
the games of the first three weeks. The 1988 season's matchups have all been
plugged into the main program. If you faithfully enter game statistics each
week, you can get a screen or printer report on the coming week's games,
including predicted scores and point spreads.
     The statistics you must to enter are a team's first downs, points
scored, and points given up. That's all. And you're prompted to make them,
with the appearance of team names and such.

3]CREDIT WHERE DUE
1]     This program originated with CODEWORKS, 3838 S. Warner St., Tacoma,
WA 98409, and it is used with permission.
     On the other hand, JUMPDISK is responsible to plugging in the 1988
schedule. So if there are mistakes there or schedule changes, complain to
JUMPDISK, not to CodeWorks.

3]HOW TO SET UP THE NEW DISK
1]     There's lots of time to prepare, but now is always the best time to
ready the single disk you will use throughout the NFL season. So let's do
it:
     1. Format a disk. For convenience we'll call it the NFL: disk.
     2. Copy Amiga Basic from your EXTRAS disk onto the NFL: disk. If you
don't know how to do that, see the "click-and-drag method" described in the
article HOW TO INSTALL BASIC ON THIS DISK, available from the Article Menu
in this issue.
     3. Open both the windows of this issue JUMPDISK and the NFL disk.
     4. Use the click-and-drag method to transfer the program drawer:
        -- In the J window, put the mouse pointer over the drawer labeled
           Oracle_88.
        -- Depress the left mouse button and roll the mouse so the icon is
           moved into the NFL: window. There, release the left mouse button.
        -- When the drive light goes out and doesn't come back on, the
           program is ready to run from the NFL: disk.

3]GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
     First, remember to make a backup of your NFL disk each week after you
have plugged in new statistics.
     Double-click the Oracle_88 drawer icon to open the window to see the
two programs involved: NFLSTATS and NFL88. Not visible is a file called
STAT.DAT, which holds the figures you plug in each week.
     The 1988-89 NFL schedule is contained within the program NFL88. Don't
look for anything readily understandable. The teams are set up as arrays,
and the schedule is comprised of data numbers.
     When you run either NFLSTATS or NFL88, the program presumes you have
the NFL: disk holding the STAT.DAT file in DF0:. If you choose to amend the
programs to address the file via the disk's name, you will have to replace
references to DF0: with the disk name as follows:
     -- In NFLSTATS lines 360 and 1250.
     -- In NFL88 line 520.

3]NEXT, MORE WORK AND THEN SOME FUN
     Before NFL88 will make any predictions, it must have the results and
some statistics of the first three weeks of play by all teams.
     You can find the statistics in Sporting News, USA Today, or perhaps
your local newspaper. Gather all the stats you need before starting the
updating. For each team, you need the number of first downs it made during
the game, the number of points it scored, and the number of points its
opponent scored.
     To enter the statistics, run the program NFLSTATS each week.
     After the third week of entering data, you may run the NFL88 program
and ask for either a screen report or a printed version of the program's
recommendations for the coming week's games.

3]YOU'LL FIND MORE
1]     Both programs have menus for selections, and you will find more
activities than have been described here. There's no real need to explain
these. CODEWORKS has done a fine job of making the programs run in such a
way that you'll easily find your way through the activities.

4]END OF TEXT