Last night at Delta Downs race #10, the reported win pool was $31,000 when the horses started to load into the gate. During loading a jockey was injured, and the race was delayed for about 20 min. Right after the horses were unloaded, the win pool was $45,000 and ended up at $47,000. Just shows how much of the handle comes in the last dump. If a large bet or 2 is included in that time on a certain horse, the odds are going to change. And if the bets are made at different sites, and are received at different times, a fluctuation is going to happen.

Another interesting note. The Exacta pool on that race went from $41,000 to $37,000 and back up to $40,000.

How much volume is being matched in NJ and what tracks are they showing?

The odds do not mean much if you can not match decent sized bets at those points.

There are all kinds of ways the process could be improved without a major overhaul.

If there was an absolute fixed time of day that betting in the race would close, and then there was a minimum 2-minute lag before the gate opened, we'd have stable odds throughout the race.

Watch how fast those tracks whose post times are always way too early come in line when that "extra time" is wasted because nobody is able to bet.

People would still be putting in money at the last possible second, but at least you would know when that was.

It would also remove the perception that people are betting or canceling bets late.

Also, when special circumstances arise (such as a horse acting up), a provision could exist to allow canceling of bets on that horse only. Other than that, no canceling in the last 5 minutes.

You would need a provision for late scratch at gate like a mandatory 5 more minutes to allow changes in exotics for people that wish to do so.

Easy enough to accomplish.

It would also make a gate scratch a big deal.

Winning horse odds drop vs odds rising past post.
 

I am not going to deny what my eyes are witnessing.

Horses odds can stay the same, go up, or go down when the gate opens. I submit winning horses odds will go down by 9 times out of 10 when compared to the 1 out of 10 winning horses odds go up ( I am not including horses odds that stay the same). Are the whales that good ? Bet cancelling likely, past posting ?

I am not pretending to know what is happening or not happening but I would love to see how odds change if they ever stop the betting when the first horse enters the gate.

The answer is, very little is being matched on those Sunland races. If you could get $10 down on those "overlays" it would be a lot. By the time you could get more money down, the odds have normalized much closer to the toteboard.

Sorry, I see these pro-Betfair posts all the time and it gets old. It has its good side but there's little liquidity in the pools.

How does this help anything? As you said, it'd make bettors feel more confident that there isn't past posting as there'd be no odds changes during the race. But casual bettors would still see large odds changes after placing their bets, no? So they're left in the same exact spot

Betfair, or exchanges in general, strike me as the best balance between current pari-mutuel system and bookies. Perhaps it's just a perception problem and more people need to be directed there (first open it to all the US). But, bettors would no longer complain about odds changes, and there wouldn't be artificial liquidity restraints placed by the book maker

What I would like to see is having all off-track betting ending at Zero minutes to post, while on track bettors can bet until the gates close.

Maybe there would also be more people going to the track to get the best of the odds.

You know zero minutes to post means nothing anymore to most tracks, at Gulfstream when it says zero you have about 10 minutes to actual post

The tracks fully deserve the accusations they are getting. Their total disregard for their customers is 100% self-inflicted. Late odds changes, drug positives......none of it has to be out there being talked about like it is.

Last second odds changes is one of the major reasons that make traditional betting approaches useless and makes the game quite unattractive and impossible to beat.

Horse bettors continue to spend their time and effort trying to estimate the winning probabilities, predict the winner and discover ways to apply Kelly criterion while in parallel they fail to realize that this approach has no value since the market value will not be known before the end of the race! This people constantly ignore the fact that since the price offered by the market is unknown, trying to discover overlays using subjective probabilities is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Most likely, the game has reached to the point where it is impossible to extract any value from the pools in any kind of a systematic fashion. My impression is that the relative small size of the betting pools combined with the increased sophistication of the large bettors, the betting tools and the special rebate deals they enjoy, has converted the game to some type of a roulette with a 20%+ takeout.

This was talked about extensively in the CRW thread...

but your post is spot on. Looking for value in the traditional odds line/overlay situation is kinda pointless as you stated.

I just typically look for a few plays on a card, and figure out what I would take as acceptable odds based on the strength of my opinion.

I try to play at the bigger tracks where at least there is some money in the pools. 50% of my play has moved to contests where this is not relevant anymore.

That’s it exactly. Why should small horseplayers suffer because of late betting.

No problems with that with fixed odds betting.

The thing is that people in the United States.

There is very limited experience with it.

Instead they take to complaining about it like this thread instead of taking action.

Fixed odds betting makes threads like this one passé.

Only Monmouth has completely embraced betfair.

Other tracks worry about canibalization of their pools.

Exchange betting is great.

Allan