Polytrack Unfair, Punters Claim
Trainers, owners, and jockeys have lots of praise for Polytrack, but British horseplayers are less than happy with race results on the synthetic surface:
“The reputation of Polytrack is tremendously high with racing professionals,” says Mordin, “and you can see why — it reduces abandonments and increases betting turnover — but it erodes the main difference between horserace betting and all other forms of gambling, which is that you can hope to make a profit through the use of skill. Races are harder to predict and are unquestionably more competitive. When you’re betting on a horse, you hope that it has a significant edge. Polytrack denies you that.”
Seems that since Polytrack was installed at the first British racecourse four years ago, the percentage of favorites at that track winning races has dropped from 36% to 30% and that of horses with odds greater than 10-1 winning has increased from 19% to 23%, which apparently has reduced wagering “to the level of a lottery, almost.” It’s that “almost” that kills the complaint. I haven’t played Turfway, which is the only American track with the surface, but my understanding of Polytrack is that it eliminates track biases, allowing horses with different running styles to win. That’s the kind of change that would seem to make handicapping and betting a lot more interesting — which is exactly what the numbers cited above suggests, as does the 82.5% increase in handle that Turfway has seen since January 1 — if horseplayers are willing to change their approaches to handicapping.
Anyone who plays California regularly will have to adjust to synthetics starting in 2008. The state racing board passed a motion a few weeks ago mandating the state’s racetracks install Polytrack or another synthetic surface by the end of 2007, which has Andrew Beyer fretting about “uniformity”:
If the Polytrack advocates prevail, and all racetracks are basically the same, the game will lose many of its subtleties …
Beyer is specifically concerned that California tracks, “the only place in the racing world where horses regularly speed a half-mile in :44 flat or faster and keep running,” will lose their distinctive speed-favoring qualities. Patrick of Pulling Hair and Betting Horses posted a pretty good response to Beyer’s worry: “The surface is fair … that means good speed will still kill in racing, and cheap speed will set up for stalkers, and ludicrous speed will be used on ships in Spaceballs and set up for closers.”
More: Jennie Rees reports that all running styles are faring well on the surface, with speedy front-runners still winning a good percentage of races:
Turfway has been charting the running styles of winners since Jan. 1. Elliston said statistics show races being won by 42.6 percent front-runners (horses never farther back than second or a length off the lead), 22.7 percent stalkers (never farther back than fourth or four lengths), 10.1 percent midpack horses (never farther back than sixth or seven lengths) and 24.6 percent deep closers (back of sixth and at least eight lengths back early).
