A Prime Example of Equibase's Incompetence

[Rook]

Of all the things that Equibase does wrong, the thing that makes my blood boil the most is when a horse that I am going to bet is reported as scratched and then comes in and wrecks a ticket. Here is a copy and paste of what their scratches looked like an hour before the 5th race at HAW.


Race
Horse
Scratch Reason
1 Darla's Delight Veterinarian
5 Callitmyway Stewards
5 Delightful Cart Also-Eligible
5 Royal Sidney Veterinarian


Callitmyway came in 2nd and was part of a $1 super that paid $2328. So instead of collecting this payoff, I go down in flames for relying on them to get this most basic information correct. This is far from an isolated incident as I have seen them make this mistake about a half dozen times this year.

Only in horse racing do the customers have to put up with such incompetence. I have yet to see a touchdown, home run or winning goal scored by someone announced before the game as not in today's lineup.

[JustRalph]

Delightful Cart was on my watch list.......... :bang:

[BUD]

Wow!...I'd be cleaning my weapon.......Sarcasm.....

hopefully the racing gods will make it up to you.

[rrbauer]

Unfortunately, it's more about attitude than it is competence.

They want our money. PERIOD. They don't care about what we want.

A couple days ago, I had an exchange with a guy at Emerald Downs because they didn't post their scratches until after the 1st race. His reply: Well we had some late jockey changes, so I just waited until I knew what they were before I put up the changes. There were about 8 scratches on the card that it would've been nice to know about at least 1/2 hour before the 1st race, but nope, gotta wait for those jockey changes. Couldn't make two posts. One with scratches and track condition (as most tracks do) and then a followup with the other changes.

I had already downloaded stuff for that track, but screw 'em. I turned off my computer and watched baseball on TV.

[john del riccio]

and they wonder why the industry isn't growing.....funny how that works...

john

[Tom]

Yeah, isn't it strange?
I read on Derby List, a guy called You Bet and asked for the Marketing Dept.
the operator said they didn't have one and hung up before he say another word. Ah, You Bet customer service.......never changes! :D

[DJofSD]

Unfortunately, it's more about attitude than it is competence.

They want our money. PERIOD. They don't care about what we want.

A couple days ago, I had an exchange with a guy at Emerald Downs because they didn't post their scratches until after the 1st race. His reply: Well we had some late jockey changes, so I just waited until I knew what they were before I put up the changes. There were about 8 scratches on the card that it would've been nice to know about at least 1/2 hour before the 1st race, but nope, gotta wait for those jockey changes. Couldn't make two posts. One with scratches and track condition (as most tracks do) and then a followup with the other changes.

I had already downloaded stuff for that track, but screw 'em. I turned off my computer and watched baseball on TV.
Sic your brother Jack on 'em.

In all seriousness, I voiced some complaints while on track at DMR at the start of the meeting. It was in person with a track representative. One was about the tote machines not being able to sometimes read the tickets that were printed -- even by the very same machine that printed it. The other complaint was about the the main tote board (the big one that is in the infield). At the end of the betting period, the straight pool totals were being taken down and a flashing display of "Post Time" was left up. Scientific Gaming eventually fixed the machines but the tote board still had the totals removed at the end of the meeting. I thought about complaining about the damn trees blocking the starting gate for the 6 furlong races. When you're in the club house, you could not see the gate or the first so-many strides out of the gate. You had to watch the TV monitors to see it (why not just stay at home).

The track management really leaves a strong impression they really don't give a rat's *ss.

[Rook]

Equibase has put a new notice on their scratch page:

PLEASE NOTE: Late scratches information is not official and is updated only once
before the start of the first race from each track. Please check with an authorized wagering outlet to determine final entries and scratches for a particular race.

Nice of them to admit that the ability to give accurate information is beyond their capabilities.

[cj]

Typical industry response. Don't fix it, just wash your hands.

[Jeff P]

You'd think the industry could figure out a way to at least get this one little piece of things right.

Right? Wrong.

Check out these old threads...

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43800
http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=26616
http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15887

Soapbox time...

Instead of working to fix areas where the game is broken, horsemen's associations and track management continue on with their infighting... ensuring that signals can't go out to ADWs, certain ADWs aren't allowed to do business in certain states...

Meanwhile misinformation such as incomplete/innacurate scratches, races taken off the turf still listed as being on the turf, and the wrong distances of races taken off the turf continues to be the industry norm.

The result?

Eventually even the most dedicated player becomes frustrated. Literally, the industry is telling all of us to take our betting $$ somewhere else.

The result?

Handle goes down. The answer from both track management and horsemen's associations? "It's OUR game. If we only had a bigger piece of the pie..."

BTW - just to be clear... If anyone from the industry is reading this post:

My offer to create a simple web interface to give the industry a single entry point for capturing and displaying scratches and changes still stands. I'm 100 pct serious about that.


-jp

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[Rook]

BTW - just to be clear... If anyone from the industry is reading this post:


The only good thing I can say about Equibase is that it is very likely that somebody from their organization does care enough to scan this board and saw this thread. Of course, if their action was to correct the problem instead of making an excuse, they could have earned our respect instead of our contempt.

Jeff, I hope they take you up on your generous offer to get things done right.:ThmbUp:

[highnote]

Maybe HANA should start a site that is an entry point for scratches.

It could be "open source" -- kind of like wikipedia. Anyone can update it once they log in. So when a change is made it would be possible to know where it came from. Hopefully, that would eliminate false reporting.

My guess is that it would be so successful, even other industry participants would refer to it.

Racing is like the financial markets -- it's all about trust. That goes for everything from past posting to cheating trainers to timely and correct release of information.

When trust disappears so does liquidity. No liquidity. No business transactions.

[Rook]

Maybe HANA should start a site that is an entry point for scratches.

It could be "open source" -- kind of like wikipedia. Anyone can update it once they log in.

Having bettors updating is unnecessary as an automated solution does exist. The irony is that Equibase which on their home page bills themselves as "Your Official Source For Thoroughbred Racing Information" is a worse source for scratches than some two bit offshore outfits.

[trying2win]

I know I'm going against the grain here, but I must give a commendation to EQUIBASE for doing something right. In the recent past, someone gave me a PICK 7 ticket to check out. Most, if not all online result sources for the PICK 7 wager just list a $1 PICK 7 like this hypothetical example:

5/2/1/1/4/8/10 = $159.20. Practically the only result source that lists the PICK 7 results properly is at the EQUIBASE website...i.e. they will list the hypothetical example above something like this...5/2/1/1/4/8/10 (5 CORRECT) = $159.20. See the difference? It makes a big difference! It tells a bettor who has left the track for example, that he might be a winner when he checks his PICK 7 ticket numbers online at home later on. If you don't believe me, just check the many result sources for this kind of bet (including your own ADW) and see how most (if not all sources besides EQUIBASE) don't list how many 'CORRECT' numbers you must have on a particular day to win the PICK 7 wager. EQUIBASE gets it right on their result info on the PICK 7. I say at least give them credit in this case. :ThmbUp:

By the way, when checking the PICK 7 ticket for that person a short while ago, the EQUIBASE website listed the result as paying off on '6 CORRECT'. By golly, this person had a winning ticket! If I remember correctly, it only paid about $70.00, but it was still good news. Must have been a lot of favorites or near favorites winning the PICK 7 races that day at a certain track.

T2W

[Jeff P]

Downloaded scratches & changes earlier tonight and playing MED and TPX while working on some new functionality for JCapper. Not really paying attn to the live track video feeds as my head is buried in a little database design.

So what happens?

MED comes off the turf and I'm not even aware... I think I'm covered because I have a custom piece of software running that scrapes Brisbet/Twinspires to alert me of new scratches and races coming off the turf. But for some reason Brisbet/Twinspires doesn't pick up the change...

I have a free minute and decide to watch R4. The last two horses load and I realize just then that the starting gate isn't sitting on the turf course. It's on the dirt track. It's too late to cancel... let alone re-figure the race.

I watch in horror as bets made with a turf race in mind go down the drain... Please realize I'm not saying I wanted the 6/5 shot that won. What I AM saying is that I approach the race from an entirely different perspective if I'm aware it's off the turf... I'd actually have ended up sitting on my hands in this spot.

I realize this doesn't happen to me if I'm paying attn and not trying to multi task. During the running of the race the MED track video feed had the turf listed as "OFF." Looked at my YouBet interface (after the race of course) and THEY had the race as off the turf. And of course the number of scratches should have clued me in...

Still...

Q. WHY can't BrisBet/TwinSpires manage to list the race as OFF THE TURF?

Can anyone from Brisbet/Twinspires tell me that?... anyone?... Bueller?... anyone?...

I can't think of anything more frustrating than being spoon fed mis-information while betting. :bang: :bang:

Here's a link to a Brisbet/Twinspires screenshot:
http://www.jcapper.com/images/MoreMisInformation_Med_10022008.JPG

Thanks guys for letting me vent.

-jp

.

[BillW]

Q. WHY can't BrisBet/TwinSpires manage to do the same thing?


.

When I was a customer of Brisbet, I called each time I noted an error on their scratch screen (which included track condx.) on the theory that eventually they would get tired of hearing from me and just fix it. Well, long story short, they won - I am no longer a customer. :bang:

[Tom]

Bill, that was their plan. It worked...you stopped calling! :lol:

[cnollfan]

When I was a customer of Brisbet, I called each time I noted an error on their scratch screen (which included track condx.) on the theory that eventually they would get tired of hearing from me and just fix it. Well, long story short, they won - I am no longer a customer. :bang:

Thanks for the heads-up -- I was about to employ the same strategy regarding Brisnet chart off times, e.g. "2: ", break comments, e.g. "Start Good for all but Good", and missing beaten lengths in PPs at the first call fo 1 3/16 and 1 1/4 mile races, which has been wrong for more than a year. But, I like their downloadable PPs more than DRF, Trackmaster or Equibase, so I'll shut up and put up with it.

I hope I win one of their contests someday just so I can tell the suit who congratulates me my frustrations with their lack of customer service.

[DJofSD]

Let me hasten to point out something but at the same time, don't kill the messenger.

BRIS, Equibase, etc., are in no better position than we are to ensure the information like scratches, surface changes, jockey changes and the like are obtained and posted in a timely and accurate manner. They are consumers of the information too.

Now before you guys jump down my throat let me ask: who is the source of the information? The individual tracks themselves. How are the changes communicated? I'm not sure but I do not think that Equibase, et al, have people at each and every track waiting to obtain information about changes to then post them on the respective web sites, company data bases and the such.

If we are going to get better and more timely information about changes then I think we need to look at the individual tracks and their racing offices. And I'd be willing to bet that most of the problem we're dealing with is a combination of poor attitude toward the bettor and techophobia.

[BillW]

Let me hasten to point out something but at the same time, don't kill the messenger.

I'm not sure but I do not think that Equibase, et al, have people at each and every track waiting to obtain information about changes to then post them on the respective web sites, company data bases and the such.


They do have chart callers at most (not sure how many???) tracks. Don't forget that Equibase is owned by the tracks, so the relationship is pretty cozy.

[DJofSD]

They do have chart callers at most (not sure how many???) tracks. Don't forget that Equibase is owned by the tracks, so the relationship is pretty cozy.
I'm aware of the chart callers but are they responsible for communicating changes too?

[cj]

Let me hasten to point out something but at the same time, don't kill the messenger.

BRIS, Equibase, etc., are in no better position than we are to ensure the information like scratches, surface changes, jockey changes and the like are obtained and posted in a timely and accurate manner. They are consumers of the information too.

Now before you guys jump down my throat let me ask: who is the source of the information? The individual tracks themselves. How are the changes communicated? I'm not sure but I do not think that Equibase, et al, have people at each and every track waiting to obtain information about changes to then post them on the respective web sites, company data bases and the such.

If we are going to get better and more timely information about changes then I think we need to look at the individual tracks and their racing offices. And I'd be willing to bet that most of the problem we're dealing with is a combination of poor attitude toward the bettor and techophobia.

When I called to find out why there were no scratches last month posted for Pinnacle, I was told, "The chart caller there doesn't have internet access yet".

[BillW]

I'm aware of the chart callers but are they responsible for communicating changes too?

Don't know. They work for the track indirectly via Equibase so I guess it's up to the track to define the job description.

[Rook]

BRIS, Equibase, etc., are in no better position than we are to ensure the information like scratches, surface changes, jockey changes and the like are obtained and posted in a timely and accurate manner. They are consumers of the information too.

This is a completely ridiculous thing to say. There is simply no excuse for the self proclaimed "Your Official Source for Thoroughbred Racing Information" to not have the same scratch updates that 5 Dimes or Pinnacle etc. sportsbooks have. Equibase could have this problem fixed in a week if they had the will and the competence to get it done.

One person at each track, whether it is a racetrack or Equibase employee has to be responsible for immediately reporting all changes, period. This is not rocket science, it just has to be a much higher priority. Tracks are in no position to give them a hard time over this, as Equibase has the ultimate hammer of withholding data needed by their customers.