Done with North American racing until they fix the past posting problem

[Dave Schwartz]

Originally Posted by lamboguy

in my world, that is a very tough explanation to swallow. it sounds so bizarre to me that it would be a tough explanation to make up. in any event, my head is spinning trying to follow the explanation! rock on baby

Actually, I buy it, Lambo.

However, as many of us have said ad nauseum, this is not an acceptable state for racing to be in.

1. No bet should show on the tote board until it is accepted.

2. No updates to the tote board should be permitted once the race begins (i.e. gate opens).



For those who are upset at the complainers... IMHO, they have a lot to complain about. The integrity of the game is not being maintained by those who we are forced to trust.

Even if everything is 100% correct and honest, it does not LOOK or FEEL correct to a significant part of the audience.

Certainly not to anyone with the horse racing intellect of the people here.


Just my opinion.

Dave Schwartz

[Andy Asaro]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Actually, I buy it, Lambo.

However, as many of us have said ad nauseum, this is not an acceptable state for racing to be in.

1. No bet should show on the tote board until it is accepted.

2. No updates to the tote board should be permitted once the race begins (i.e. gate opens).



For those who are upset at the complainers... IMHO, they have a lot to complain about. The integrity of the game is not being maintained by those who we are forced to trust.

Even if everything is 100% correct and honest, it does not LOOK or FEEL correct to a significant part of the audience.

Certainly not to anyone with the horse racing intellect of the people here.


Just my opinion.

Dave Schwartz

Amen. The example I gave earlier wasn't necessarily a betting after the gates opened thing but the odds did go from 16-1 to 10 after I put in the bet which was a couple minutes to post. Then, when they were running I see 10-1. That's a big impact at a major track and a lot less on a win bet. And you would no better than me but I haven't seen any real upgrades in the tote system in years.

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Actually, I buy it, Lambo.

However, as many of us have said ad nauseum, this is not an acceptable state for racing to be in.

1. No bet should show on the tote board until it is accepted.

2. No updates to the tote board should be permitted once the race begins (i.e. gate opens).



For those who are upset at the complainers... IMHO, they have a lot to complain about. The integrity of the game is not being maintained by those who we are forced to trust.

Even if everything is 100% correct and honest, it does not LOOK or FEEL correct to a significant part of the audience.

Certainly not to anyone with the horse racing intellect of the people here.


Just my opinion.

Dave Schwartz

Hey...this could be taken TWO ways.

[Fox]

I’m still waiting for the OP to post the “screen captures”

[Track Phantom]

I believe the complaints are legitimate but the culprit is misidentified. I don't believe it is past posting. I believe all of the money is coming in before the race starts. The issue is the late money being bet is way too smart. I have no idea why it is that way other than it is possible the "smart, late money" has always been more accurate and more precise but there is far less casual money to dilute it.

When I started in the mid '80's I don't remember this being a thing. You actually hoped your horse was dead on the board as it was 50/50 whether the "public" money was important. Now when you see a horse cold on the board, that makes sense on paper, it is much more often than not a toss.

In most cases, the upsets are horses still overbet (should be 15-1 and actually on the board at 8-1) or complete puzzlers that you can't find with normal handicapping.

I have no problem with others outhandicapping and outbetting me. It just feels like it happens far too often.

[TiffaniO]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

For those who are upset at the complainers... IMHO, they have a lot to complain about. The integrity of the game is not being maintained by those who we are forced to trust.

Even if everything is 100% correct and honest, it does not LOOK or FEEL correct to a significant part of the audience.

Certainly not to anyone with the horse racing intellect of the people here.


Just my opinion.

Dave Schwartz

Complaining about legit things are just fine. It’s the false statements like “this Horse went from 9-5 to 6-5 on the far turn” or posting on twitter that the horse went from 16-1 to 10-1 after the race began that turns people off. It took me 15 seconds to watch the beginning of each replay to prove their statements to be false.

Before making false statements, at least go back and watch the replay to see if you are correct before making those statements.

[lamboguy]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Actually, I buy it, Lambo.

However, as many of us have said ad nauseum, this is not an acceptable state for racing to be in.

1. No bet should show on the tote board until it is accepted.

2. No updates to the tote board should be permitted once the race begins (i.e. gate opens).



For those who are upset at the complainers... IMHO, they have a lot to complain about. The integrity of the game is not being maintained by those who we are forced to trust.

Even if everything is 100% correct and honest, it does not LOOK or FEEL correct to a significant part of the audience.

Certainly not to anyone with the horse racing intellect of the people here.


Just my opinion.

Dave Schwartz

i am a self-admitted pari-mutuel past poster from 25 years ago. i dealt with race tracks that actually welcomed my action. its pretty tough for me to believe anything other than all these odds changes are past posting. i watched 80-1 shots in Belmont at the gate win and pay $13.
i was in Suffolk downs where the whole place was occupied by people in the self-betting machines and mutual windows calling the break. it lasted for 2 years until the guy that had the column Looking through the Binoculars wrote about it in the Daily News or The Post, whichever one he worked for. they made Suffolk shut betting off with 2 minutes to post. then they got stung from other places and closed betting off early from their own end. New York never welcomed past posting, but other places like Suffolk, could care less what you do there as long as they got their cut.

[Dave Schwartz]

Originally Posted by lamboguy

i am a self-admitted pari-mutuel past poster from 25 years ago. i dealt with race tracks that actually welcomed my action. its pretty tough for me to believe anything other than all these odds changes are past posting. i watched 80-1 shots in Belmont at the gate win and pay $13.
i was in Suffolk downs where the whole place was occupied by people in the self-betting machines and mutual windows calling the break. it lasted for 2 years until the guy that had the column Looking through the Binoculars wrote about it in the Daily News or The Post, whichever one he worked for. they made Suffolk shut betting off with 2 minutes to post. then they got stung from other places and closed betting off early from their own end. New York never welcomed past posting, but other places like Suffolk, could care less what you do there as long as they got their cut.

"ALL" is a pretty big word.

That would mean about 3 races out of 4 at almost every track are being hugely past-posted.

If you believe the game is this rigged, why would you ever make another bet?


Also, why would these great and large whale teams have so many employees if all they need is the software and a few guys to pull the trigger?

[lamboguy]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

"ALL" is a pretty big word.

That would mean about 3 races out of 4 at almost every track are being hugely past-posted.

If you believe the game is this rigged, why would you ever make another bet?


Also, why would these great and large whale teams have so many employees if all they need is the software and a few guys to pull the trigger?

i never said its the whales that are past posting, but between the whales and the past poster's what chance do you have?


my wagering consists of first time starters that are way above my odds model, as luck would have it i had one today in Miami, the horse grabbed the lead and only went down form 2-1 to 9/5 with a big lead out of the gate. the other form of wagering i do is minus pool betting, meaning i know my price before the race starts. once in awhile i go against the money and am subject to the gate punchers taking me down.

[AskinHaskin]

So lets get this straight...


In a business/game where any mutuel clerk who past-posted at Podunkville Downs in the 1960's or 1970's was so often caught and became the subject of a tiny, scandalous story in DRF, now it is believed that some lucky people (never you) are past-posting on just about every race on every card, and never being caught??

Surely some even attribute the apparent change to the extreme lack of DRF editorial material in modern times.

Technology is far more advanced in 2018 than it ever was in the 1960's or 1970's and you almost never see word one written about Joe Schmoe, selling at the clubhouse bar at window #263, who past-posted when some steward forgot to sound the bell to stop wagering.

And you gullible people are buying hook, line and sinker the story that somebody somewhere is cheating - but it's never you.

(pay no thought to the obvious reality that post time in the 1970's found well over 90% of all wagers already tabulated on the toteboard and that, in 2018, that number is much nearer to 15% of all wagering) (making it muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch easier to jumble the final odds with normal wagers being added by machine after the race starts even though they were all entered before the bell)

Perhaps The Drexel Boys are all out of prison and back in the saddle again, this time having perfected a fully stealth, get-rich-quick scheme at your expense. They having now learned that it is unwise to bet on longshots, and that the surefire cure for that is to pound-down any live runner on the far turn (uh, in this modern world where the odds are visible to all ON that far turn?) to where he no longer qualifies as a 'longshot'.

If you're that gullible, you should probably be spending your Sunday's in church instead of with your favorite past-posting mutuel clerks. In church they even let you donate your money to the ruse, but without making you see any odds change that may cause you to become uneasy about the whole scene.


Now how can you collectively be that gullible ???

[BCOURTNEY]

Originally Posted by Pensacola Pete

A man on the HTR forum, who works with one of the groups that pays for a direct tote link, told me that yes indeed the $1,500 bet did come in, and that it was the only bet that registered at the end. However, the bet was actually made with a few seconds to off time, and it came in with several other bets from that source.

The man explained it to me: United and the other hubs have been having problems with some wannabe kid-hackers spoofing big bets. The bets show up in the pools, but they don't pass an integrity check --- some sort of double-verification --- and they're removed from the pool before the final results are in. Other bets, which are larger than a certain amount (he said it varies from track to track, but is usually either $500 or $1,000), don't even show up in the pool until they've passed the verification check, so that the odds don't skew. Once the bets have passed the double-check and been determined to be legitimate, they're added to the pool. The $1,500 bet in question came from one of the sources that has had many problems with spoofed bets, and it was easily the largest bet at that track for that race. It was verified by the system, and then due to its relatively large size (for that source), some operator or supervisor manually verified its integrity. At that point it was added --- which happened to be after the race just finished.

The man told me that this will explain why sometimes you see large bets show up at the end, and also why it appears the money was taken out of the race after it ended. It isn't past posting. It's large bets that need to be verified and that are usually correct (which causes a delay) but sometimes spoofed (which means they didn't really exist and need to be removed).

The man also said that there have been at least ten known instances in the past ten years in which flagrant past-posting has occurred. All were patched/fixed when discovered. The "best" one for those who exploit past-posting was for 10 days in 2015: it was possible to get a bet in on Australian racing (the North America pools hosted by Woodbine) up to 15 seconds after the race went off. This was supposedly due to a lazy (possibly Sky Racing) employee who didn't send the "STOP" signal to North America soon enough.

Take it for what you wish. I still believe that past posting happens, but at least some of the weird money makes a little more sense.

These companies continue to use non-stateful protocols. So they will remain prone to security breaches until that is directly addressed at the protocol level, relying on digital signature techniques (slow) versus solving the problem the right way then the tote update times suffer. Millennial and/or outsourced technical team problem now and it will never get fixed, all the Gen X'ers that wrote these systems are dead, retired or working directly with syndicates to exploit them, haha.

Maybe the exploit that is happening is like what was happening on Wall Street a few years back when a couple of programmers realized by posting buy and sell orders in a particular way they could get their purchases to effect the board prices. So these exploits would be committing sums of money to certain horses and then canceling bets or have the bets unrealized by the system when posting the odds, so that the posted odds represent funds finally committed to each horse, based on this story one should ask the tote companies.. are the odds displayed offered are for transactions that have been received (promised) into the pools or both received and also verified as well.

I would forward the idea that funds cannot and should not be verified after the post time, as that is logically and physically equivalent to "accepting" a bet past post time since the money isn't committed to the pool yet, then how is it possible that it can win money from other mutual players?, perhaps a small time gambler should make a case of this, that received transactions that are received AND not verified before post time are not legitimate wagers, because the funds are not committed to be able to be won by other players. The larger wagers would need to arrive prior to 1 second to post if a verification process is needed, and we know they need that time.

Are tote companies aren't subject to any sort of security audit or technical review process so what protocols are they following or enforcing? How are they known to be offering a legitimate and guaranteed secure parimutuel pool to the public?

[BCOURTNEY]

Originally Posted by Pensacola Pete

<snip>
supervisor manually verified its integrity. At that point it was added --- which happened to be after the race just finished.
<snip>

Hypothetically: Someone spoofs a bet on every runner for say 500 dollars and then an internal operator/manager (working concert with the spoofer) then declares wagers on all runners but the winner (after the race is completed) to be spoofed and then subsequently canceled sounds like a heck of a business plan to print money between them right? Best excuse would be doing it under the guise of security... of course this couldn't happen right?

How can bets be added to the pool after post time? The fact its because of a verification process doesn't make it ok for the bet to be placed into the pool. Anytime post-verification processes are allowed after outcomes occur security breaches will happen, all verification happens before post time, just like checking your id or running your credit card at the store while you are present. This post verification process is corrupt, backwards, not security best practices and exploitable, there are better exploits than what I tried to illustrate. Additionally, I think someone could argue that the pools aren't parimutuel if some of the bets are allowed to be verified and added after post time.

[Fager Fan]

From what places are bets coming from that aren't automatically and immediately verified?

[sour grapes]

Originally Posted by lamboguy

i am a self-admitted pari-mutuel past poster from 25 years ago. i dealt with race tracks that actually welcomed my action. its pretty tough for me to believe anything other than all these odds changes are past posting. i watched 80-1 shots in Belmont at the gate win and pay $13.
i was in Suffolk downs where the whole place was occupied by people in the self-betting machines and mutual windows calling the break. it lasted for 2 years until the guy that had the column Looking through the Binoculars wrote about it in the Daily News or The Post, whichever one he worked for. they made Suffolk shut betting off with 2 minutes to post. then they got stung from other places and closed betting off early from their own end. New York never welcomed past posting, but other places like Suffolk, could care less what you do there as long as they got their cut.

please prove that an 80-1 shot paid 13 at belmont,this is pure bullshit but on the internet everything is true.

[lamboguy]

Originally Posted by sour grapes

please prove that an 80-1 shot paid 13 at belmont,this is pure bullshit but on the internet everything is true.

this was 25 years ago, if i can find that article i will post it for you to see.