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Plonk’s Pipe Dream

Jeremy Plonk lays out a year of racing with staggered meets, staggered post times in his latest ESPN column:

Circuit	Jan-Feb	Mar-Apr	May-Jun
Early 1	Gulfstream	Aqueduct	Belmont
Early 2	Philly Park	Oaklawn	Churchill Downs
Early 3	Fair Grounds	Delaware Park	Pimlico
Mid 1	Hollywood	Santa Anita	Fairplex
Mid 2	Sunland Park	Zia Park	Hawthorne
Night 1	Retama	Penn National	Presque Isle
Night 2	Mountaineer	Hoosier Park	Lone Star
Night 3	Prairie Meadows	Evangeline	Indiana Downs

Circuit	Jul-Aug	Sept-Oct	Nov-Dec
Early 1	Saratoga	Calder	Hawthorne
Early 2	Monmouth	Keeneland	Tampa
Early 3	Arlington	Laurel	Suffolk
Mid 1	Del Mar	Oak Tree	Golden Gate
Mid 2	Ellis Park	Louisiana Downs	Turf Paradise
Night 1	Colonial Downs	Canterbury Downs	Turfway Park
Night 2	Remington	Meadowlands	Sam Houston
Night 3	Delta Downs	Ruidoso Downs	Charles Town

Beautiful, except that the Belmont fall championship meet is missing, and relegating Suffolk Downs to winter racing seems harsh. What about the MassCap?

Posted in The Industry on November 12, 2008

Alternate View

Perhaps not despite the fact, but because there were:

According to Equibase Company, the official statistician of horse racing, wagering on all races conducted in the United States through August is down 3.99% compared to last year, from $10,273,868,002 to $9,863,917,032.

This despite the fact that there were 29 more race days this year.

I point to numbers crunched earlier by Steven Crist.
John Pricci comes to a similar conclusion about market dilution, in a lot more words.
Re: Equibase, usually mild Blood-Horse editor Dan Liebman is outraged at the “preposterous decision” made by the industry’s data collector to stop providing meet-total handle figures. That is preposterous! And not only because such a ridiculous decision makes it harder to report on trends in the industry, but because the attitude behind it is so contrary to this era’s ethos of increasing access to information and data. Another reason for “the brash and the bold to take over,” as commenter JS put it elsewhere …
In happier news, Monograph Mile season kicks off: The Thoroughbred Times is taking nominations for its annual book award, won last year by T.D. Thornton of Suffolk Downs for “Not by a Longshot.”

Posted in Data/IP, The Industry on September 12, 2008

Sure Thing

One of the biggest and most underreported stories in racing is the ongoing scandal that is the technologically-outdated tote system. While it seems to work most of the time, news of past-posting incidents of varying seriousness keeps breaking, creating a nagging sense of doubt among players. The latest occurred last month, Ray Paulick reports:

The fourth race at Philadelphia Park June 28 was just a run-of-the-mill claiming contest until the Scientific Games totalizator system malfunctioned shortly after Magical American crossed the finish line as the winner. The top three finishers (4-2-3) were put on the board, but the problems with the tote delayed Philadelphia Park from making the race official and posting the payoffs….

A little over a thousand miles away at Tampa Bay Downs on Florida’s Gulf Coast, some horseplayers became curious about what impact the tote failure had on the AmTote wagering machines there.

Lo and behold, they discovered wagers made on the winning horses in Philadelphia Park’s fourth race were still being accepted. The Paulick Report has learned that players started punching out win tickets, exactas and trifectas. The delay, from the time the Philadelphia Park race was run until someone in the Tampa Bay mutuels department realized there was a problem, was about 10 minutes, at which time betting was halted. It was nearly 15 minutes from the time the race was run until the Florida track received a stop betting order from Scientific Games (formerly Autotote).

When the system was restored, Tampa paid out more than $13,000 to bettors who’d taken advantage of the glitch (most of that to one player, who apparently made $1000 in wagers). Dick Jerardi, picking up on the story, points out that the payoffs were unfairly affected for players who had legitimately bet the race:

It is fairly obvious the winner would have paid quite a bit more had the “past posting” not taken place. The daily double, combining the 3-5 winner of the third race and Magical American, paid $32.40, quite a bit more than a 3-5 combined with a 7-2 shot should have paid. Without the very late (and very illegal) betting, Magical American likely would have been 8-1 or so. The $27.20 exacta with second-place Ironton also likely was low.

A couple themes apparent in other recent reports of past-posting appear in the telling of this incident: That the tracks involved, or the TRPB, did not disclose the problem and its effects immediately, and that for all the investigations and fixes in various processes (more on that in Frank Angst’s ThoroTimes article on the incident) there is little sense that there is any urgency on the part of the industry to plug the gaps and update the tote network. Meanwhile, the Wagering Transmission Protocol (PDF), which would be a huge step forward into transparency and accountability, languishes, and bettors are left wondering again how much, really, they can trust the system in which they play.

Posted in The Industry on July 8, 2008

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