In the days when all bets were made on paper pari-mutuel tickets, botched communications like those that occurred on Thursday at Saratoga race course would have led to a stooper's paradise.
As it was many horseplayers were confused or angered about a series of decisions and announcements affecting Thursday's early Pick 5.
With just two minutes to post before Thursday's first race, the opening leg of the Pick 5, the New York Racing Association announced that the third race, a conditioned claiming event originally scheduled for 1 1/16 miles on turf, would be moved to the main track and be run at one mile.
That gave horseplayers – both on-track and those playing at other facilities or via their advance-deposit wagering accounts – little time to adjust their tickets.
That third race scratched down to five horses and was won by Al's Prince, the fourth wagering choice. Horseplayers with winners in the first two legs but who did not include Al's Prince assumed they were not alive to the bet and, if they were holding paper tickets, could be expected to discard them after that race.
However, some 30 minutes after the third race was run, NYRA announced the race would be an “all,” meaning every ticket had the third race winner regardless of who was picked on their ticket.
In the old days, the stoopers would have picked up every ticket on the grounds or started going through trash cans in a frenzy.
Now, with most people wagering on their phones, there are far fewer discarded paper tickets, even at a track like Saratoga that has healthy on-track business.
What happened?
“The stewards determined that the late surface changes announcement did not sufficiently inform the betting public,” Patrick McKenna, vice president of communications for NYRA, said via text message. “As a result, R3 was made an 'all' for purposes of the early P5.”
McKenna said the decision to make it an “all” race was done before the third race but that the announcement was late due to a “confluence of circumstances, most notably an unexpected .43″ of rain that came just prior to R1.”
The $0.50 early Pick 5 (which essentially became a Pick 4) paid $328 and handled $913,846. While making the third race an “all” led to more winning tickets, those who correctly had Al's Prince got a much lower payout than they would have received if the stewards did not make it an “all” race.
Many took to Twitter to express their frustration with the sequence of events.
THIRTY FIVE MINUTES AFTER race 3 is run the stewards decide that race 3 is an ALL-WIN in the early pick-5 due to the late surface change.
— David Grening (@DRFGrening) July 21, 2022
Gotta call a spade a spade. Taking a race that's part of the P5 sequence off the turf with 2 MTP for Race 1 is pretty unfair to bettors.
— David Aragona (@HorseToWatch) July 21, 2022
This is messy. Here are the “surface transfer” rules for NYRA P5. The switch was known before the sequence starts. How can they decide to ignore that primary provision? Image of the rule in thread https://t.co/SzGzSSQTBd
— Pat Cummings (@PatCummingsTIF) July 21, 2022
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