betting | Horse Racing Free Tips

Letter to the Editor: CAW ‘Activity Stinks to High Heaven’

by Walter Toner

Rainy afternoon on Cape Cod and I had a few minutes to kill, so flipped the channel to TVG for a quick flutter. I selected the filly Just Like Magic, approaching the gate at 7-5 as the recipient of a $10 win wager in the 3rd race Oaklawn (3/28).

She charged up the rail and won. Final odds were 3-5. WTF. Sorry for the crudeness.

Racing will never engage the next generation of punters with 15-27% takeout and NO fixed odds, when they can bet on sports with a 4% vig and wagers that are fixed.

In the UK, an extremely sophisticated betting market, exchange wagering in its 20-year history now handles 85% of wagers, plus or minus.

Further exacerbating the industry's vulnerability is the contents of this article. My takeaway from this article is that Stronach and his friends:

Own racetracks
Own offshore betting hubs for friends
From these hubs, friends receive substantial discounts to wager into onshore pools
And we can assume the friends are getting late, direct access to track pools… and perhaps entering the pool after the start

Now the late betting is speculation on my part. It feels like it happens. And from the first four bullets, it seems suspiciously like that might be happening.

This insider activity stinks to high heaven, not just regular heaven.

This beautiful sport is bucking these horrific headwinds of scandal and a less-than-competitive product. Yet racing will always have tremendous potential.

But what is the point of one laboring all night on PPs to arrive at a horse that one feels should be 6-5 or 7-5, only to see that selection drop to 3-5 at the quarter pole?

My introduction to racing was with Win Elliot, the Schaefer Circle of Sports, and Fred Capossella. Old timers can place an era on those names. My first Racing Form cost me 50 cents; what are they now, $10? I can make an informed wager on the Red Sox without that surcharge.

Sadly I am not sure that I'm going to ever see the industry make any real progress making horse racing as competitive and accessible as other wagering products.

Thanks for reading.

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Letter to the Editor – The Aftermath of Disqualifications

I retired in 2019 as the most prolific bugler in horse racing history with over 60,000 performances of “First Call” at a record-setting 51 racetracks in 23 states and Canada. My herald trumpet, which I used at NYRA for most of my time there, has been on display at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame for the past three years. Of this, I am very proud.

But this is not the subject of my email.

The subject is betting on horses, and I had some success in this endeavor. In fact, after my Pick Six score at Aqueduct in January of 1992, I maintained a flat-bet profit of $60,000 for 29 years. The CAWS and past-posting and the drug problem caused me to blow all of that in just three years. I played a few more years and then abruptly quit betting horses (forever!) last September. After sending about $1.5 million dollars through the windows, my net loss over 37 years amounts to $35 a week. Less than the price of a ball game at Fenway Park.

The point of this email, however, is the aftermath of disqualifications. I can recall how angry this game made me and certainly other horse players when our horses were disqualified. We put in a lot of time and effort handicapping, and when we are right, we expect to get paid. And then we don't. This is the only sport where if your team wins you still might not get paid. That's not an attractive thing to market to newbies. “Hey, your horse may win, but you might not get paid.” This never happens in poker. But chopped pots happen all the time and it keeps the game moving.

Why do I mention “chopped pots”? Because this is the idea, I have to help horse racing stay alive. If your horse wins, but the horse is disqualified for any reason, you still get paid-but like a dead heat. You chop the pot with the horse that got moved up. Everything. WPS, all exactas and other exotics. Chop the pot. BUT ONLY FOR THE BETTORS. The connections of the DQd horse are still penalized the same way they are now. They lose the purse, and the purse gets redistributed to the connections of the horse who was moved up via DQ. But the bettors still get paid.

Maybe it's an idea already floated by others, but I hope that this idea might be helpful to the game that sustained me for 32 years. There's not a lot I can do to give back, so maybe this idea will catch on and suffice.

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Premier Racedays To Kick Off at Cheltenham Jan. 1

Premier Racedays, an undertaking by British Racing to market and promote racing's best racedays, will launch with the New Year's Day fixture at Cheltenham, the first of some 170 such programs to be staged in 2024.

Premier Racedays is part of a two-year series of changes with the aim of growing British racing by 'increasing engagement among new and existing customers, improving revenues across all areas of the industry, promoting investment in the sport through the recruitment and retention of owners, and encouraging the best horses to be bred, trained and raced in Britain.'

Premier Racedays will be supported by marketing and promotional suppoer, racecourse marketing spend and plans for a national promotional campaign, pending the submission of an application to the Horserace Betting Levy Board in line with the body's funding criteria.

Premier Racedays through 2024 will also see the introduction of innovation in the fan experience on an ongoing basis, for those attending on racecourses, betting, and watching on broadcast. Over 90% of Premier Racedays are to be broadcast across ITV and encompass the majority of racing's best and most popular racedays.

The key areas of innovation include customer promotion, broadcast innovation, customer experience, a digital content strategy, promotion of horse racing's equine and human athletes and betting, to offer a variety of incentives around Premier Racedays. Significant work is also in development to improve the ownership experience both on and off-course, with initiatives to be rolled out in 2024.

“British racing's stakeholders unanimously agreed the way to grow our sport is to better showcase and sell our best racing. The pilot of Premier Racedays is the start of this process,” said Joe Saumarez Smith, chair of the British Horseracing Authority. “Due to the way that our sport is structured, the first priority for the sport was to put the building blocks in place in the form of the changes to the fixture list and race programme and secure the improved funding of prize money. There is little point trying to sell Premier Racedays if the product is not, in fact, Premier. “I am grateful to everyone who has been involved in the ongoing development of these plans, including those directly involved in the sport and our partners in broadcast, the media and betting”.

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Breeders’ Cup Challenge Pick Six Set For Oct. 7

Santa Anita Park, which will host this year's Breeders' Cup World Championships for a record 11th time Nov. 3 and 4 and storied Keeneland Racecourse, site of last year's Breeders' Cup, have announced that both tracks will combine to present the Keeneland/Santa Anita Breeders' Cup Challenge Pick 6 to players nationwide on Saturday, Oct. 7.

A traditional $1 Pick 6 with a player-friendly 15% takeout, the Keeneland/Santa Anita Breeders' Cup Challenge Pick 6 will include the following Breeders' Cup “Win & You're In” Challenge Race qualifiers and be offered in this order:

Thoroughbred Club of America (KEE)–4:12 p.m. ET

Claiborne Breeders' Futurity (KEE)–5:14 p.m. ET

Coolmore Turf (KEE)–5:45 p.m. ET

American Pharoah S. (SA)

Chandelier S. (SA )

Rodeo Drive S. (SA)

“We are excited to offer a compelling bet for the horseplayer,” said Nate Newby, Santa Anita Senior Vice President and General Manager. “It's going to be a can't-miss sequence combining Breeders' Cup Challenge Races at both Keeneland and Santa Anita with a player-friendly 15% takeout.”

Players are advised that the Keeneland/Santa Anita Breeders' Cup Challenge Pick 6 will be listed as a separate wager/track on all tote and ADW platforms as: Keeneland Santa Anita Pick 6 (KEE/SAP Pick 6).

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