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Originally Posted by Fager Fan
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Very good article you quoted. Especially like this excerpt
The numbers speak for themselves. In 2003, $15.1 billion was wagered on U.S. racing. Twelve years later in 2015, with the major high-volume teams pumping their millions into the pools, handle had fallen to $10.6 billion. And that is despite an infusion into the U.S. betting pools by the computer players that is estimated to be in the area of $2.5 billion annually. It is also important to consider that a track retains a lower commission from a bet from a huge player because of the rebate and other discounts involved than it does off of you and me.
So basically racing decision makers, because of stupidity, have tried catering to a tiny group of whales, who only contribute 20% of the current volume or thereabouts and managed to lose 30% of their handle over 12 years in the process. It has evolved to this at a time when anybody anywhere has a at the palm of their hand a tool to make a bet at any track, any time and anywhere. Should we even factor in the value of the dollar between 2003 and 2015?
Meanwhile, they twiddle their thumbs, horseplayers get more and more frustrated (the point of this thread) and continue dropping out. Those of us iwho continue playing the game have a hard time making any straight bet with any confidence because we just assume that the horse will drop in odds late whether he does or not(I have gotten to the point where if a horse is less than 6-1, I assume that the value that he appear to be as they are loading the gate likely will not remain after off with very few exceptions). IF he wins at an inflated price I pretty much have to deal with it.
You know there actually was a time that you could make a bet on a horse at 5/2 as they were loading the gate and 9/5 was about the lowest you would see in most circumstances(unless the 5/2 was ridiculously inflated). Now horses can go from 5/2 to 6/5 or 6-1 to 3-1 or 2-1 to 7/5 of 6/5 to 3/5 in just about every race. We can't take advantage of the fact that a horse should be 15-1 jumps form 15-1 to 30-1 because the race has already gone off when that odds change occurs. I personally am so close to just reverting to only pick 4's and pick 5's, I cannot tell you. The game is extremely fun when you have some idea of what your odds are going to be. But that just is not the reality in todays betting world. This sport has no chance of building itself up if people betting have no idea what odds they are going to get. The people that don't care are not likely going to provide any significant amount of long term handle.
To those show think that double probable and exacta probables are going to shed light on what a horse will go off at. If they do thanit certainly isn't very hard for racing to provide that information to its fan base.
Horse, odds as 2nd leg in double, odds as first leg in double, oddds on top in exacta, odds as 2nd horse in exacta........It would be a very easy for them to provide that info for everyone and then we can see if it helps. Why do we have to set up our own spreadsheets to do this. They should want us spending time formulating bets not wasting our time pasting the probable onto a spreadsheet.
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