Thank's for the response.I was by no means crying about getting screwed in that race.I'm new to the site but played races along time.Your right,you always remember the tough ones.You just never really hear after the race : Man,his odds really shot up.Kind of like playing a pick 3 or pick 4.It weems like everytime you spread in a big field you catch the favorite.Seems like everytime.Catch some winners.Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

I think racing knows who the customer is, but they don't care. The CW seems to be 'there's a sucker born every minute' and if we lose some of the suckers others will eventually appear in their place. It doesn't matter that the stands are empty, the place is dirty and not maintained, the teletimer hasn't worked in years, and that lightbulbs in the toteboard have been out since the end of daylight savings time. The problem is that there are too many people saying it's not their problem.

I would feel confident saying that this does happen a lot, but again, it's not due to past-posting.

Whales dump tons of money into the pools at the last possible second. They actually have guys whose job is to sync up TV feeds and tote feeds and figure out exactly when to hit a button and dump in thousands of wagers, preferably at 2-3 seconds before the jump.

Fun side note, this button guy is how they skirt around being declared "robo-bettors" (which are illegal in many jurisdictions), and instead are defined as "computer assisted wagering". Meaning software is still generating all of the wagers, but a human being is ultimately sending in all of the bets.

Whales are also pretty good at making picks. Ergo, when these guys dump $50k+ on the same 10-1 horse that you like, it's not surprising that it winds up at 6-1 instead.

It doesn't really matter if you stop betting when the gate breaks, when the first horse enters, when the clock hits 0 MTP, or 3 MTP, or whatever other benchmark you want to use. There's always going to be a large amount of last-second money, which is always going to result in odds shifting. And unless Elon Musk is going to invest in horse racing and develop a global tote network that operates at the speed of light, there's always going to be a delay in getting those final odds back to the tote boards and TV displays.

One realistic solution I think could help is locking out the whales earlier; say at 2 MTP. The track still gets their money, the public gets to see how it impacts the odds, and then they still have a good 2-3 minutes left to place their bets (or cancel bets that they no longer want). There may still be an odds shift after all betting stops, but it wouldn't be nearly as dramatic as what we see now.

Of course as things stand right now, no track has any incentive to try this (and even less incentive to risk pushing away their whales). So I'm not holding my breath. But it's the best compromise that I can see.

So basically there was 326 avail to be matched at 4-1 (or better) on a 5/2 final odds horse. even when you subtract the 12% commission (which makes it an 8.80 horse) it is significantly better than the tote's 7.40

for a medium sized bettor such as myself the exchange is great.

due to liquidity issues in the US races prolly not for the 500 dollar a race bettor.

Allan

Simple solution - ALL off track betting closes two minutes to post.

Although not a silver bullet still your suggestion will improve drastically the existing mess and make the game a bit better and more honest.

I am wondering, what keeps the race tracks from implementing this simple solution that will provide a significant improvement?

This was tried after the Fix 6 scandal. Betting stopped either at post time or as the first horse was loaded in the gate. There were apparently a bunch of dumbass bettors that were too dumb to figure it out and kept getting shut out, at least that is what we were told. So it went away pretty quickly as handle was allegedly being hurt. I don't remember if there were numbers to back it up.

Of course it would have sorted itself out in due time but tracks have no real incentive to close the pools any sooner than the last possible second.

The improvement will come by stopping all the forms of off track betting (including batch processing) while keeping the on track open for a few more minutes.

Back in the 70s that was how it was done.
Betting at OTB stopped 1 or 2 minutes before post.

The OTB manager used make an announcement EVERY single race - "Betting stops at 2 minutes to post!"

And half the morons still got shut out and whined.

The fact is the track do not care. Most tracks have no clue who the customer is.

The problem with cutting off the off track money at 2MTP or whenever, is that sometimes you have horses that won't load and another throws the jockey and all of a sudden you have a 10 minute delay with all the off track money cut off. Then you have a late scratch and a jockey change. What are you going to do, reopen the off track wagering?

Why not? What is the problem?

There was a company a couple of years ago that came up with a system that could update every 4 seconds so at worst the last odds change would happen 4 seconds into the race. I believe the cost to install was about $50k. Haven't heard another thing about it since. It really makes you wonder what is going on when the cost to improve is so small yet they have no real desire to make any changes at all.

I'd really like to hear more about that.

Have a difficult time imagining the problem being fixed without a major restructuring of the entire system.

http://www.amtote.com/product/gateway-web-services

http://www.amtote.com/product/filebettm

http://www.amtote.com/product/spectrum-software-suite

My first thoughts after reading this is that a individual has the ability to access AM Tote directly and the ability to batch wagers without using a third party such as Twinspires or DRF Bets. Do not know this for sure, any thoughts?

This happens at least 75 times a day.