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Originally Posted by Poindexter

I don't think you are the only one that has/had that attitude. One of the reasons I started posting about it a number of years ago was because I grew tired of people rationalizing it and comparing it to airline rewards. If I fly from Vegas to New York, and pay the going rate in coach, doesn't affect me one iota (or anyone else on the plane for that matter) that some guy who makes that trip 200 times a year might be sitting in First class and paying half as much as I am. I pay the going rate, he pays a discounted rate because he provides value to the airlines and they are smart marketers. I am not paying more for my seat because he is paying less for his seat. He is entitled to his special rate as I would be if I chose to make the trip 200 times a year.

That should be clear for the extremely challenged in this audience.

Originally Posted by Poindexter

Racing is not like that. If some huge bettor is getting a 6 to 8% rebate in the win pool and working on -3%, he is netting 3 to 5% profit, which is fine. What is not fine is that he is driving up the takeout on the rest of the betting public and more importantly he is driving down the prices on the horses who have the best chance of winning long run.

Uh, nearly everybody in your audience here would have all others reading believe that they too are in the same category (of "Driving up the takeout on the rest of the betting public").

(which is likely numerically impossible, but we continue to believe their written words despite all of the proven fiction routinely penned here)

Originally Posted by Poindexter

He (she/they, whatever) does not lose 3% long run betting huge amounts of money because they are lucky. They are darn good. Once again, them being good is not a problem and is fair game. The rebates are a problem because it motivates this person/group to drive prices down on all live horses below fair value. One can argue that by these groups hammering the 3-5-7-9-11 they are giving the public better prices on the other 6 horses. Agreed. But the net effect of all this is that they ultimately drop virtually all horses to below break even. The horse that was -40-% may now only be -24%, so if you bet this horse win and you bet him, you will be paid more the time that he wins, but over all races your are still losing money.

"the rebates" don't truly even fit into the parimutuel equation at all because they are administered only after the fact (hence the name) and they come from the constant, not the variable. (The variable remains the concern, and what is indisputably still driving the general public from racing)

Originally Posted by Poindexter

Now if you have found a leak in their game and do better today than you did many years ago, more power to you. The majority of folks playing this game are either lying to themselves, getting really good rebates themselves, or are flat out losing and don't care. There is a reason a lot of people who enjoy this sport, don't even play it anymore. It became futile to try to win. Maybe some have just transitioned into tournament play (Derby Wars etc where everyone is on a fair playing field I believe).

(borrowing your thought process for a moment: we don't care whether they're lying to themselves, or flat out losing and don't care... it's the lying to us here in print which is the concern)

Originally Posted by Poindexter

Now the one thing I omitted from this post was late odds drops. Obviously if caws are betting in the last seconds and knocking every solid contender that is above fair value to below fair value, then a lot of times you will see huge odds drops. If they are knocking a horse down from 3-1 to 4/5 (which often shows up after the race starts) you can bet your last dollar that somewhere around 4/5 is the correct price not 3-1. We know a 4/5 shot should win about 48% of the time, so there is little reason to be shocked that the horses that are bet like that win often. TLG, has posted that Caws are not in the win pool and that he is not seeing the same kind of late odds changes he was prior to them being told they had to bet by 2 or 3 minutes to post (whichever it is).

All of the talk about "late odds drops" is babies crying over spilled milk. They habitually infer past posting when it simply is not happening in significant numbers of circumstances (one or two at some county fair meet every five years). LOL If 40 years ago the inferior technology of the day evolved to tell us through racing media which cowboy mutuel clerks clicked precisely which exacta combinations 4 minutes after the bell sounded, then today's technology would be able to report what color the cowboy's underwear were on the day it happened. Yet we read next to zero on the subject.

Originally Posted by Poindexter

So basically caws getting big rebates just about eliminates all value from the pools and creates bigger last second odds drops (if they were not getting big rebates the 3-1 to 4/5 would be more like 3-1 to 6/5). It thus makes it mandatory for anyone else to get big rebates themselves to beat the game unless they are handicapping with strategies that are far different from conventional handicapping wisdom. If you have found a way to beat the game using strategies that consistently put you on horses that have odds that go up rather than down after the race goes off, than the caws are your best friend. For every person that can say this there are at least 99 others than cannot. Not exactly a great way to build a sport that has a heck of a lot of competition these days.

Again, "rebates" in this context are occuring after the fact, and simply are not a part of the raw equation since those rebates are derived from the constant, and not the variable.

"The problem" surrounding rebates is that entities offering them are doing nothing to support racing's bottom line. All of their customers are only "taking" from racing while giving zero back to it.

"Late odds changes" alone are an easy puzzle to solve by merely putting the public at large on the true contenders long before the bell rings.

Originally Posted by Poindexter

Bottom line is that the fact that this real smart money is not in the Win pool at NYRA, should be a huge welcome sign to anyone that bets horses. The majority should do better with them either out of the pool or in it minimally. They also have nickel breakage which is a lot better than dime breakage. Keeping Caws out of the win pool and the pick 6 pool and cross country pick 5 pool is not exactly the solution to horse racing's problems but at a circuit as huge as NYRA is definitely a step in the right direction. If you enjoy betting horses and you aren't beating this game and you want to beat this game, I cannot think of a better idea than to play only win bets at NYRA.

You are insane if you believe for two seconds that the entities who back the CAW are not invested in the NYRA win pools.

For the entire duration of this message board, individual players here have been wholly concerned with their own position in the giant equation and habitually remiss in (not) considering the picture from the standpoint of the dimwits who are running North American tracks. Those operators only lift one finger toward the betting public and racing has circled the toilet for many years as a direct function of the complete ineptitude of track management everywhere.

Meanwhile, yearling prices and horse ownership revolve around a separate, speculative game driven most by those fewer and fewer fabulously wealthy who (basically "need") more and more avenues to 'invest' their wealth. Yet industry bigwigs cite higher yearling prices as if they are any indication of the whole of racing trending toward the positive. Same would occur if suddenly ping pong balls were arbitrarily said to have giant dollar value a la GameStop (GME) stock or the like.


When eventually horse racing in present format buries itself it will have only itself at the very top to blame for its demise. It won't be "rebates", it won't be "late odds changes", it won't be "past posting".

Pure stupidity at the very top of present day horse racing set the barn afire long ago. Most people had the good common sense to run away from the barn fire. Meanwhile, racing's would be fire department can't even smell the smoke. Present day track operators are most like the horses themselves, and everybody knows what a horse's instinct tells him to do when his barn is on fire.