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[Poindexter]

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We have not argued this point. Perhaps defining terms would help. In my view there are professional players, serious players and recreational players. For the most part people on this forum fall into the serious player category.

If a takeout increase only affected the recreational player then it probably could be done. I doubt that many recreational players could tell you what the takeout rate is or even how the pari-mutuel system works.

You speak from your standpoint and not that of a recreational player. My comments pertained to recreational players at the racetrack. With 30 minutes between races they have little interest in taking a deep dive into the DRF and then the action lasts all of 1-2 minutes. Who could possibly get bored?

Contrast horse betting with sports betting. Everybody has an opinion on the probable outcome of a game. All they need to do is bring their opinions with
them to a sports book. Long losing streaks happen but they are rare because there are only 2 ways to bet, for or against, A or B. With horses it might be 1 through 12. Recreational players lose because it is a hard game.
To suggest that the whales are somehow chasing them away is nonsense.


Let's use your terminology. We have a typical racetrack with $100,000 bet win pool per race. We know breakage exists but I am not accounting for it in this post. The Whales account for about 30% of the money bet, at about break even, but feed nicely off of the the rebates. Then you have the serious players who as a group account for another 30% of the pool at -10% collectively(some are rebated and have a smaller target, some thing they can win but can't win etc, some are typical owners and trainers and fans of the sport who may exceed the public but still lose and some are winning players even without rebate and some are your typical serious player, who talks a good game, but when you look at the end of the year at the final outcome, they do not finish in the black or they need rebates to get them there). Then you have the "recreational players" who account for 40% of the pools. Now the track is going to make it's 16% takeout no matter what, so of that $100,000 bet only $84,000 is going back. The whales will get back $30,000, the serious players will get back $27,000, so that means the recreational players are going to get back $27,000 for their $40,000 bet. As a group they will lose $13,000 on $40,000 bet or 32.5% or over double the takeout.

These are estimates but I am sure they are fairly close to reality. No matter how you fudge the numbers it will not make a huge difference. What is so ridiculous is that racing's future is based off the performance of those that get crushed, the recreational player. These are the ones that racing needs to evolve into serious players in the future. However, they have no chance. They cannot overcome a takeout of that magnitude unless they are exceptional (1 in a 100).

So for the recreational player, it is not that they are worried about whales, they don't even know what a whale is. But when their money disappears at a rate of 30-40%, they certainly feel the effects of what the Whales do. You give them no hope and you give them no desire to even play the game. By the way, whales are not the bad guy here. They are doing what we all want to do. The system/business model is the problem (Rebates and excessive takeout).

Now what if the game was fairly priced at 8% wps(with no rebates). The numbers would look more like this. The whales might bet 20%(less betting opportunities) at +6%, the serious players would be at about -3% with 30% of the pool. The track would give back $92,000 per $100,000 but the whales would get back $21,200, the serious players would bet back $29,100 and thus the recreational player would get $40,700 per $50,000 bet or lose about 18.6%. They are still going to struggle as a group, but the sharpest of that group will evolve into serious players, the sharpest of the serious players will evolve into winning players, pools will get bigger, whales have an endless supply of cash and will just bet more because more is being bet and the game grows. Moreover even the weakest of the recreational players will be a lot more likely to stick around because they are losing at a much slower rate.

In the properly priced game, the recreational player can evolve to the point that he can compete, maybe -0 to -6% roi. He will then up his game, take the game more seriously, look for opportunities at more venues and become a valuable asset to the racing industry. This can and will not happen with the current business model. This would be a fairly frequent occurrence in a properly priced game. The serious player of today would have a fairly good opportunity to evolve into a winning player and those that do will make huge increases in how much they bet. The whales just take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves. The current model of catering to 25 or so teams of whales at the expense of hundreds of thousands of others is completely backwards. When you rebate whales to the point they can bet every double and exacta and trifecta and superfecta combo to below fair value and make money, everyone else that plays this game suffers over the long run.