I work on the gold coast and I think I know who you are talking about.
The run/ran a shop front in ..... I looked at their system about 6 months ago (don't know if the shop front is still there, I will have a look today). It samples the tab price at about 10 minutes to jump then again at 2 mins to jump. Uses dutch betting on all the shorteners. Yes it works sometimes as you all would know. Might have a winning run for a month or so then fall over big time.
Tell your friend I have an excel spread sheet that does the same thing but better (finds the best price from each tab) that he can have for free.

Cheers
Brownie