Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Size Matters
ELMONT, NY, October 20, 2009--Did you see where the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the racing municipality that started it all, is considering the 0-Minutes-to-Post option for the closing of wagering pools at its racetracks?
If the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission decides to give the practice another try at a Wagering Integrity Committee hearing scheduled for next week, good for them. The experiment was held before at Churchill Downs but later was discontinued.
Is it the perfect solution? Of course not. But does it help send a message that the area known as the Thoroughbred nursery to the world is also responsive to the concerns of its constituency, i.e., horseplayers? You betcha!
The Racing Commission will decide if wagering will be halted after the betting clock clicks down to zero, whether all the horses are in the starting gate or not.
The hope is that this change will result in reducing the number of occasions that odds drop after a race has begun, giving the impression that some people are betting after the pools have closed, known as past posting.
The reality is that past posting per se occurs only in extremely rare circumstances. But those commonplace odds drops that send the wrong message rather is the result of outdated technology and human error.
Redundancies are continually added to the process and has helped cut down on the number of pilot errors. But only cash will help solve the technology issues, a commodity in very short supply these days, even if all tracks were created equal.
That is not an automatic--although it should be--and why it’s imperative for bettors to read the fine print in their official track programs.
Late odds changes affect numerous horse races every year because most of the actual betting occurs in the last few minutes as horseplayers determine the bet-ability of their selections.
Of course, when odds go down on certain horses they must--by definition, parimutuel wagering--inflate the price on its rivals. Unfortunately, the reality here matches the perception that horses very heavily bet late do the preponderance of the winning.
So, by closing the pools earlier, bettors would know for certain that betting has stopped and any odds changes that occur would be noted before the race starts in most cases.
Claims that money will be lost by closing pools “early” are valid, but only for the time that it takes bettors to get used to the idea.
Under current circumstances, last minute bettors will try to get the wagers in earlier, with two or three minutes to post to avoid getting shut out. Internet bettors will adapt, too. No temporary fix is going to be fool-proof, of course.
But technology already exists that allows odds to be computed in decimals. Back in the day I cut my racing teeth at Roosevelt Raceway. Its tote board displayed payoffs throughout the wagering in dollars and sense.
If memory serves, the exact win payoffs were computed and posted immediately so that bettors, especially neophytes, knew exactly how much they would collect after the pools were closed.
The prices on place and show were displayed within a range, generally a differential in actual payouts from about 20-cents to 60-cents, depending on who would share the pool with the one or two runners-up.
The raceway was shuttered about three decades ago . Maybe an archeologist could dig up some of those old totes boards buried below Roosevelt Field behind the California Pizza Kitchen.
Racing has already gone to a decimal system with change in the timing of races 18 years ago when running times were first posted in hundredths instead of fifths.
Before long, the timing of Thoroughbred races in hundredths changed the landscape for compiling track records, race records and the like.
And speed handicappers can now more accurately assess performance for two horses that run six furlongs in 1:09.99 and 1:10.01, a virtual dead-heat, and two others that raced the same distance in 1:09.80 and 1:09.99, or about a length apart.
In the “virtual dead-heat” example, the race timed in fifths would be displayed in the running lines of the horses as 1:09 4/5 and 1:10. In the race where horses were separated by about a length, both horses would have “raced the distance” in 1:09 4/5.
With respect to odds displays, the same principle applies. If odds were displayed decimally, a horse bet down in the final flash from 3.60-to-1 to 2.90-to-1, a difference of only 70 cents, but one that translates into a 7-2 to 5-2 last flash, the industry can avoid the kind of drop that makes players suspicious, irate, or both.
Written by John Pricci
