Sidebar

[$w1fT]

Originally Posted by mr chicken

I am not a $2 bettor. I used to wager between $1,000 and $5,000 per day. However, I have reduced by amount drastically. WHY? The powers to be have ruined racing for me and many other large bettors. Back in the 60's and 70's when I started the minimum wager was $2.00. In Today's money that would be probably around $20. Instead of increasing the minimum......what do they do they lowered the minimum to 50 cents and in some cases 10 cents. Well, because payoffs are based on the amount of winning tickets even a 10 cent bettor can play combinations with longshots thereby increasing the number of winning tickets and thus reducing the amount of the payoffs. When the powers to be changed Exactas and Trifectas to 50 cents I could no longer bet the same way. 10 cent superfecta even made it worse. So I quit betting exactas, trifectas and supers. When the Hi5 came along I switched to only betting those races and especially when there was a carryover. Gulfstream was my major play as it was a rolling Hi5. Well, someone at Gulfstream (who probably knows nothing about betting) decided to drop the rolling Hi5s. Over the past 10 years I probably bet over $1million dollars at GP. But with their decision I have dropped GP completely except maybe the last race when there happens to be a carryover. So now I've dropped by betting to maybe just a few races a week. So, instead of putting a few hundred thousand threw the windows yearly I'm down to about maybe at most $10,000. And if you are one of those people that says just buy more tickets on the same exacta or trifecta than you don't understand and I don't want to even talk to you. Another thing I don't understand is why so many tracks have gone to these jackpot payoffs. I thought tracks made their money with turnover of dollars wagered. The jackpot races simply take money out of the bettors pockets that they can't rollover. Where is the logic here? Maybe the tracks make more money with the interest on holding your money than they do on you turning the money over. Just doesn't make sense to me and I will never bet a Jackpot race unless it is a Hi5 carryover. Bottom line is that I think many of the high rollers have given up on racing and move there money elsewhere, like Football or some other sport. Until the powers to be are replaced I see betting the horses as a dieing sport. Just maybe this is intentional - I don't know. Losing someone like me is like losing 100 or more $2 bettors. Guess they want to cater to the masses instead of the hard core gamblers.

I'm gonna call BS on this one.