THE INSANITY CURRENTLY GRIPPING THE INDUSTRY HAS TO END NOW!
 

This is the straw that breaks the camel's back for me. I've pooh poohed people in the past for complaining about late odds drops, but this one was out of this world insane.

I'm tired of it.

Keeneland Race 5.
TWELVE horse field.
Wire-to-wire winner was 9-1 at 0mtp.
Wire-to-wire winner was 9/2 after she crossed the finish line.

If the industry doesn't start seriously investigating and putting the breaks on whomever or whatever is causing this rampant and massive pool shenanigans, we the betting public will have no choice but to throw this game into the trash bin where it belongs under these current operating conditions.

I've loved this game to death for over 30 years, but what has been happening lately is nothing short of perverse. Everyone knows it's happening, everyone knows why it's happening, but the powers that be will never put an end to it unless we force them to, and honestly, I don't see that happening.

This is truly a sad day for me.

40% of the win pool appears at Keeneland AFTER the race goes off.

#feelsbadman

If you can't bet after the bell in today's game, then you are facing an effective takeout of at least 30% on the win end...and 40% on the exotics.

I don't think people are betting after the bell. For the record.

But when 40% of the pool doesn't show up until after the gates open, even at a huge venue like Keeneland, never mind the tiny tracks, we have a serious problem on our hands.

I do. How else can all the late money focus on only one horse?

i have watched the boss's thread now for 2 months. what i have picked up on is that for the few winners he has., all of them have gone down in price. the ones that lost for the most part have gone up in odds.

you may want to believe this is pure coincidence, but trust me, ITS NOT. i am an expert at after the bell betting because i spent 2 years of my life doing precisely that. but my time has passed and i simply don't know where to get down after the race starts these days. but someone is, i promise you that much.

This was not past posting, the horse actually broke a smidge slow for a front runner, this was massive late money.

Now the inside seems like its biased to me so I guess the KY sharps unloaded on the inside speed.

Let see how Uppercut does in the next race, she has real speed as well.

I have been researching and playing this game seriously since 1982...and I dare say that few people here have pushed as much money through the betting windows as I have. I've had a passion for this game all along...and it hurts me to say things that label me as a "hater" of this game, or as some sort of "conspiracy theorist". But, IMO, this game is so overrun by fraud and incompetence that I can't believe anything that anyone tells me when it comes to the game's "integrity", or lack thereof.

Financial woes have sent the horse racing industry begging to the politicians for casino licences...and the grandstands are empty during the racing meets of the most renowned tracks in the land. And the industry has had to roll out the red carpet for some well-heeled Wall-Street boys, who are now allowed to wreak havoc on the tote board to the detriment of the rest of us. In the absence of a unified governing body...who knows what kind of bargain a "Whale" can strike for himself...when he promises to infuse an astronomical amount of money into the mutuel pools, during the "troubled times" that our game currently finds itself in?

When things get desperate, even an HONEST business enterprise has a difficult time maintaining its virtue. Imagine what can happen if the enterprise is dishonest to begin with...

Yet another mugging at the racetrack. Imagine that.

Now that you have seen the light, perhaps it is time to lead the boycott.

Agree. It's uncanny and becoming too much to tolerate. I discounted these claims for too long. I see 3-1 shots routinely going out the gate and by the stretch they are hammered down. Who are these magicians putting these perfect wagers in just under the wire? It's not like these horses are obvious by any stretch. No doubt in my mind coming from a Software / IT background something is up.

PA,

I know you are steamed. Welcome to the club.

Seriously, the answer is not that complicated but it does take a change in thinking.

What I have done... and many of my users have done... is to simply stop using the tote altogether. Almost 4 years since I stopped.

Amazingly, my handicapping life is actually BETTER.

What we do is create what I used to call "phony odds." Now we call them "object odds" or simply "aML," which stands for "artificial Morning Line."

It is based upon the idea that we can predict How the Public USUALLY bets the money on a horse like this one.

The driving force is what we call a handicapping object. That is nothing but 5 or 6 factors weighted together, and then normalized to 100%. The individual horse percentages become the "phony pool."

All the factors should be "high-level" factors. Just think in terms of factors that have high hit rates because they will always correlate with the tote board.

The primary factor is almost always Morning Line. Others include factors like BRIS Prime Power or HDW's Projected Speed Rating. Think of which factors you might add beyond that.

BTW, I actually use the ranks in these factors as opposed to raw ratings.


Not only is there great freedom in this, but there is a bit of logic as well, in the sense that horses SHOULD be bet based upon HOW THE LOOK (in terms of important factors).

Now, races with FTS and foreign horses present a problem. Even HSH does not handle that well. Much easier to overcome in a spreadsheet.

BTW, do not think for a minute that this approach is going to do a near-perfect job. There is no such thing. Not even the whales, who have the benefit of not only a much more complex approach than a 5-factor object and also tote board patterns.

But trust me when I say that it really doesn't matter. If you implement this you will find that you are no longer hitting a moving target.

Will you bet a horse expecting to get 6/1 and wind up at 5/2? Absolutely. You will also see 12/1 pay 4/5. Why? Because the horse really shouldn't have been 4/5 based upon how good he looked.

In fact, I actually built a seminar called The Renegade Handicapper around this concept:

1. Create the Phony Odds.
2. Pick Contenders based upon your handicapping factors.
3. Create probabilities from the REAL ODDS.
4. Penalize the Non-Contenders' probabilities hugely and make new probabilities.
5. Bet into the Phony Odds with your Probabilities.

If there is sufficient interest, I will arrange a free seminar to teach people how to do this. One MUST expect that it will take some work.


Dave
PS: I've not talked about it in a long time but I am really within 6 weeks or so of releasing the beta version of my new SMALL DATA software. That software will have a BUNCH of these aML objects built in.

I’m convinced somebody is betting after the bell and have been for 3-4 yrs

Isn't it time for tracks to use computer-generated ML's?

Look at some of the gross errors made by the track handicapper.

Example: Wesley Ward's Bound for Nowhere in yesterday's Shakertown 20/1 ml. Opened around 7/1, went off a little higher around 8/1 and won.

Anymore, I do not know what to think. I do not believe that there is past posting going on. But instances like this, and many others always make me think twice. 40% of the pool being put into the pools in the last seconds is standard for Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Aqueduct, and now Keeneland. It also does not seem to matter the size of the pool. If there is $100,000 dollars in the pool when they are loading, $40,000 is bet after that. If there is $200,000 in the pool, $80,000 is bet late. I think that along with the amount being wagered late, there is also money that was wagered early, and canceled. The odds up to post time is a dog and pony show. You are seeing what others want you to see.
The accuracy of the late money is too accurate. There is no way this money is being wagered with out information that is not public. We are playing against the people who own and train these animals. They might not be exactly who is wagering the money, but the horsemen are receiving some of it. Follow the wagering pattern of the horses trained by Pletcher, Fawlks, Rodriguez, Baffert. Did you see how Justify was bet yesterday. He was going up against one of the top 5 3 year olds out there, but opened at 1-5, and the money kept coming. You can not tell me, know matter how good the horse looked on paper, that the wagering should have been that lopsided.

You might not have seen these, from Tampa. Yes, they had a "tote delay", but the tote delay did not stop the winner from going from 7-2 to 5-2 after the gates opened.

Justify was a lead pipe cinch to win that race. That's a poor example to use.