Twinspires/Brisnet Delta 12/14 Opener

[egreen]

Anyone here know what caused the TwinSpires.com and Brisnet misidentification of the #4 horse in last night's first race at Delta Downs? I was reading some tweets about it and it seems this was only discovered because Witt Stamp was a late scratch from the race. The horse was listed as Witt Sparkles on both the Bris past performances and on the wagering program for TwinSpires. Equibase and other ADWs apparently had the correct info. How in the world does something like this happen? And how can customers have confidence in the Bris pps and that they are wagering on the correct horses through TwinSpires?

[Mulerider]

Originally Posted by egreen

Anyone here know what caused the TwinSpires.com and Brisnet misidentification of the #4 horse in last night's first race at Delta Downs? I was reading some tweets about it and it seems this was only discovered because Witt Stamp was a late scratch from the race. The horse was listed as Witt Sparkles on both the Bris past performances and on the wagering program for TwinSpires. Equibase and other ADWs apparently had the correct info. How in the world does something like this happen? And how can customers have confidence in the Bris pps and that they are wagering on the correct horses through TwinSpires?

Yes, somebody messed up. Witt Sparkles was listed as a FTS on the Bris PPs, yet ran 6f at Retama on 9-30. Witt Stamp, the actual runner at DD, was a FTS. So Bris listed the performance data for the wrong horse.

I guess it doesn't help that besides Witt Stamp and Witt Sparkles there are a couple of other active horses named Witt Six and Witt Seven, along with several other Witt horses whose second name doesn't begin with S.

Mule

[o_crunk]

This is looks like a big time name mix up.

I do not see a horse named "Witt Sparkles" in the Equibase horse db. Which you can search for here

I do see the name "Witt Sparkles" was registered with the jockey club in 2014. Which you can search for here

I do not see a horse named "Witt Sparkles" as running at RET on 9/30. I do see a horse named "Witt Seven".

If you google search "Witt Sparkles horse", you get some very interesting returns. You get some of the foreign sites like skysports and sporting life as running at RET on 10/1 in a race won by The Last Scout. This would be race 8 at RET on 9/30 according to the Equibase chart. Any links on that google search return that go to Equibase themselves resolve to 404 pages on their site. However, a google cache does return a workout page for the horse as working on 9/15 at RET and clicking on the horse name from that page yields a return to the horse profile of Witt Stamp, who shows two workouts at Delta but none at Retama and none on 9/15.

So this is massively confusing and it shows that this error probably originates with Equibase. I suspect that Bris generates their PPs from a simulcast feed of Equibase entries since Bris PPs are not lifetime PPs. Therefore the name mixup on entries is probably with that feed as their other RDS feed does not show any horse entered or named "Witt Sparkles". It also shows how all data providers deal with Equibase data and how they resolve updates - some update as they come in, some don't update all and some have trouble resolving conflicting data issues. You can see this in the google search return for examples of how each data provider downstream of Equibase deals with this.

[egreen]

Seems like TwinSpires and Brisnet need to address this matter publicly. If they are not at fault, then they need to let their customers know this to restore confidence. From reading some comments online, it appears that other ADWs had the correct horse offered. Not sure about DRF PPs, but maybe someone here can address that?

[Tom]

Sounds like these people are Wittless!

[Mulerider]

Originally Posted by o_crunk

This is looks like a big time name mix up.

I do not see a horse named "Witt Sparkles" in the Equibase horse db. Which you can search for here

I do see the name "Witt Sparkles" was registered with the jockey club in 2014. Which you can search for here

I do not see a horse named "Witt Sparkles" as running at RET on 9/30. I do see a horse named "Witt Seven".

For Race 8 at Retama on 9/30, the replay page at RTN.tv lists the as Witt Seven and the as Witt Sparkles. Apparently the scratched. No idea where RTN gets its post position information.

[o_crunk]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

For Race 8 at Retama on 9/30, the replay page at RTN.tv lists the as Witt Seven and the as Witt Sparkles. Apparently the scratched. No idea where RTN gets its post position information.

If you actually look at the replay, both parts of the entry ran on 9/30. The tote and Equibase entry data had the horse name for 1A as Witt Sparkles. The only problem with that? Witt Sparkles, at that time, was a gelding and the race is for fillies. The chart for the race lists the 1A as Witt's Town but that is not the horse that was entered. One would hope that Witt's Town actually did the running in that 9/30 race and that Witt Sparkles, who was the entry declaration, did not. Impossible to really know, I guess.

But back to Witt Sparkles. Witt Sparkles, as I mentioned earlier, is not in the Equibase db. It appears because of this mix up, the horse's name changed on Nov 11 to Witt Stamp, which in my experience is incredibly rare to have a horse's name change here in the US.

So this appears to be a pretty big mix up and the data re-sellers down stream of Equibase where this mistake originated have handled it in various ways and update at different times.

Either way, I'd expect everyone to keep pretty quiet about this one, including Equibase. What can Bris say? They get everything, like everyone else, from Equibase.

[egreen]

Regardless of how/where the error originated, TwinSpires needs to speak up about this. Bad enough that the Brisnet PPs were wrong, but TwinSpires offered wagering on a misidentified horse only to be saved by the scratch. A horseplayer shouldn't have to dig through Equibase, Jockey Club names or anything else to wager on a correctly identified horse. And there are plenty of folks out there, my wife included, who wager on horses by names. Those people need to be protected. If the Nevada Gaming Commission had oversight for TwinSpires, the company would be hit with a big, fat fine.

[o_crunk]

Originally Posted by egreen

Regardless of how/where the error originated, TwinSpires needs to speak up about this. Bad enough that the Brisnet PPs were wrong, but TwinSpires offered wagering on a misidentified horse only to be saved by the scratch. A horseplayer shouldn't have to dig through Equibase, Jockey Club names or anything else to wager on a correctly identified horse. And there are plenty of folks out there, my wife included, who wager on horses by names. Those people need to be protected. If the Nevada Gaming Commission had oversight for TwinSpires, the company would be hit with a big, fat fine.

You do not understand the nature of racing data.

Here's straight from Bris, which is similar to Equibase and every other PP seller:

The information, products and services on this web site may include inaccuracies or typographical errors, and may be provided by third parties. While the information contained on or through this web site is believed to be accurate, BRISNET is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

While I'm telling you exactly how this happened, like I said, no one officially is likely to own up to it. Mistakes happen and racing is very complicated to keep track of. I wish Equibase was better at what they do so the resellers can be better at what they do.

Bris is not as good as some of the other resellers when it comes to accuracy, IMO. I have many suspicions about why that is having worked with the raw source data for a little while now. That's on them and they don't seem very responsive to customers. But ultimately, this issue boils down to Equibase as "racing's database". They need to be better at what they do because it's certainly not cheap to support what they do.

[egreen]

I said TwinSpires needs to address this. They accepted wagers on the misidentified horse. Others listed the horse as Witt Stamp. The Brisnet error is a major problem, but they weren't taking wagers on the race.

[o_crunk]

Originally Posted by egreen

I said TwinSpires needs to address this. They accepted wagers on the misidentified horse. Others listed the horse as Witt Stamp. The Brisnet error is a major problem, but they weren't taking wagers on the race.

They are the same people - TW and Bris.

Everyone who wagered on the 9/30 race 8 RET, wagered on the misidentified horse. It happens.

[egreen]

They are owned by the same parent company, but they are two separate companies. Certainly ADWs are regulated differently than a data provider.

[o_crunk]

Maybe consider changing who you trust. Parent company also owns a tote company too. Either way, root source is Equibase, even for the totes.

[egreen]

So why was TwinSpires the only ADW to incorrectly identify the horse? That is what they need to address and the Oregon Racing Commission, which governs them and not Brisnet, should investigate.

[o_crunk]

So you want to investigate TW for a horse who never ran after being scratched? Seems like the track saw the error and scratched the horse.

Everyone who bet the RET 9/30 races prolly has a better claim but not really.