Koko
05-10-2006, 04:46 PM
I'd like to tell what I think is an interestng story, but let me provide a few caveats, first I don't consider myself a particularly gifted storyteller, and secondly, I don't have all the facts nor could they be easily documented, so with that said let me proceed.
In 1990 I made a friend was a speculator who eventually told me about a scenario that had taken place not too long before that. He knew numerous people who frequented the Caliente Race and Sports Book in Tijuana and a few of his friends/acquaintances came across the idea to take advantage of Caliente's retarded policies of allowing good sized bets on Florida Dog Races rather small win, place and show pools.
They had a contact in Florida who would make a $100, $200 bet into the show pool of maybe $400 on a dog sure to come in out of the money.
Of course the show payouts would be phenomenal on the dogs that came in the money. They would apparently bet all the other dogs to show and whoever came in would pay quite well naturally, as long as the "bad" dog didn't hit the money.
His buddies were bright enough to figure this out but not bright enough to do it in the most ideal manner which I discovered later after researching this method. The best approach would be to bet a relatively low odds dog, that you liked, to show, since these animals tend to be underbet in the show pool anyway.
Apparently they nailed them for some unknown number of months before the management at Caliente got wise to the game. Oftentimes, favorites will pay nearly as much to show as to win if they are severely underbet to show and come in with a couple of longshots, so relatively large show payouts on favorites wouldn't be glaringly noticeable.
By the time I got around to investigating the possibility of replicating their efforts, they had severely limited bet amounts to under $100 to show, but they would allow you to bet more to show if you bet 5 times that much to win on the same dog. Of course, since they have 3 different "stores" within 50 yards of each other, you could walk store to store making $90 show bets until you had enough down to make it worth doing.
My math showed that in a typical Hollywood or Hialeah show pool on a Tuesday Matinee of $300-$350 a $125 tweak bet would substantially twist the odds to the point where a $700 show bet on a contender would be fairly profitable long term. I recently called to find out current bet limits and they've cut things back even further, only allowing $20 straight bets on Florida dogs.
Unfortunately I arrived in San Diego a little late to partake of the spoils which, from what I understand were in the hundreds of thousands.
In 1990 I made a friend was a speculator who eventually told me about a scenario that had taken place not too long before that. He knew numerous people who frequented the Caliente Race and Sports Book in Tijuana and a few of his friends/acquaintances came across the idea to take advantage of Caliente's retarded policies of allowing good sized bets on Florida Dog Races rather small win, place and show pools.
They had a contact in Florida who would make a $100, $200 bet into the show pool of maybe $400 on a dog sure to come in out of the money.
Of course the show payouts would be phenomenal on the dogs that came in the money. They would apparently bet all the other dogs to show and whoever came in would pay quite well naturally, as long as the "bad" dog didn't hit the money.
His buddies were bright enough to figure this out but not bright enough to do it in the most ideal manner which I discovered later after researching this method. The best approach would be to bet a relatively low odds dog, that you liked, to show, since these animals tend to be underbet in the show pool anyway.
Apparently they nailed them for some unknown number of months before the management at Caliente got wise to the game. Oftentimes, favorites will pay nearly as much to show as to win if they are severely underbet to show and come in with a couple of longshots, so relatively large show payouts on favorites wouldn't be glaringly noticeable.
By the time I got around to investigating the possibility of replicating their efforts, they had severely limited bet amounts to under $100 to show, but they would allow you to bet more to show if you bet 5 times that much to win on the same dog. Of course, since they have 3 different "stores" within 50 yards of each other, you could walk store to store making $90 show bets until you had enough down to make it worth doing.
My math showed that in a typical Hollywood or Hialeah show pool on a Tuesday Matinee of $300-$350 a $125 tweak bet would substantially twist the odds to the point where a $700 show bet on a contender would be fairly profitable long term. I recently called to find out current bet limits and they've cut things back even further, only allowing $20 straight bets on Florida dogs.
Unfortunately I arrived in San Diego a little late to partake of the spoils which, from what I understand were in the hundreds of thousands.