You're thinking of betting syndicates.
Twinspires used to run these as "Players Pools" where they'd raise 10k-100k and attack big days/big carryovers. The results were quite abysmal, with the mass majority running losses(sometimes 90% of the pool). Their ticket construction was all over the place, from massive caveman tickets to singles and whatnot in between. Basically it seemed like they just wanted to hit SOMETHING one way or another...whether they made money or not.
I don't know that they do these anymore, as they used to publish the results and they were terrible.
There was also an incident where James Scully and Ed Derosa were in charge of a players pool in the 2017 Derby. The pool had all losing tickets in the superfecta, but Scully cashed on his own personal bet on the Derby superfecta. Kinda ridiculous if you ask me...and Twitter/online was not kind to them (appropriately so)
https://crunktrunk.tumblr.com/post/1.../bury-the-lede
Quote:
James Scully hit the Derby super with a $364 ticket that paid about $76,000.
"Scully, along with Ed DeRosa, led a panel of experts for Twinspires’ Player’s Pool which bet into the same superfecta pool and struck out, cashing not one ticket while wagering $33,058 in total of Twinspires customer contributions, of which $9,417 was specifically bet in the Derby superfecta pool.
By some back of the napkin calculations, the losing Player’s Pool tickets, for which DeRosa and Scully were responsible for creating, boosted Scully’s personal, side winning ticket about $55."
"Scully mentions DeRosa had a piece of his winning superfecta. So, the only two people charged with forming their respective Derby Player’s Pool tickets had side bets that were much different than the plays they made with Twinspires’ customer money."
DeRosa said: “There were five people whose tickets I bought into blindly, and yes, James was one of them. Some people bought into my tickets, too, and those didn’t do so well”.
"In the aftermath, it’s clear now that Twinspires has no policy on panelists who create Player’s Pool tickets from betting on the side either on their own or with someone else. The Player’s Pool tends to go after big carryovers and jackpot bets - the type of bets that one unique ticket takes down the entire pool. This raises even more questions about the lack of clear policy for panelists forming opinions and thus bets for the Player’s Pool. Do they place Gulfstream Rainbow Six bets that are completely different than the ones they submit for the Player’s Pool? There does not seem to be any policy that would preclude a panelist from doing this."
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