eHorse

[Rick Ransom]

I just got some advertising from these guys. Does anyone have an opinion of them yet? I think Dick was going to try them. They say they'll take $300 bets on Turf Paradise. That sounds pretty irresponsible to me and totally out of line with what I saw with bookies in Nevada.

[Dick Schmidt]

Rick,

I looked at them, but decided to go with a pair-mutual offshore account instead, at least for now. I must admit that the ability to bet lots of money combined with the rebates make this look really good. Right now I'm still doing real estate most of the time and playing only a couple days a week. When I go full time and get ahead, I'll give them a try. Looks like they are from the same school of thinking that ran the "Sport of Kings" in Las Vegas; no one can beat the horses. I was one of the guys who proved that they were wrong. Don't know how this bunch from Costa Rica will do, but I won't ever leave much on deposit with them.

Dick

[Rick Ransom]

Dick,

Thanks for the reply. It looks "too good to be true" for the small tracks. Some of them only have a $5000 - $10000 win pool at times and a $300 bet on a longshot would make a huge difference in odds. I won't be betting any small tracks until late September though, so I'll probably wait and see if they've been slaughtered before then. I'd like it better if my money could be somewhere else and just transferred for each bet so that one day's bets would be the most I could lose.

[hbo2t]

Their payouts on exotics (if you hit a big one), will be capped at 275--1. People hit trifectas like this all the time. I would only place the non-exotic bets with them. BTW, I've had an account with them for only a short amount of time, but so far, so good. Like Dick said, for now wouldn't keep too much money in the account at one time with them.

[Rick Ransom]

hbo2t,

You're right about exotics, but 275-1 on win bets is unheard of. I calculated the effect of a $300 bet in a $10,000 pool with 20% takeout at 4-1 odds (before the bet). The payoff would go from $10.00 down to $8.60, or a 14% drop!