Tote manipulation or false advertising?

We recieved a phonecall earlier today about the below(River Jetez race lastnight)




dear

this is the display i was refering to on our phone call sunday.the result was 1/5/6 the actual place payouts were 1 place R1.40 5 place R2.60 and 6 place R1.80

As you can see the tab gold {and the phumelela site i checked) clearly says closed.

I have checked the betting percentage and there stated dividends are betting to approx 265 percent which is impossible as tote does not bet to loss.{as you know in a 3 place payout the tote probably bets at 360 percent)

I think this is a case of false advertising and have often wondered to myself does the tote do this regularly to increase turnovers by overstating there payouts.seems like this time its indisputable.

kind regards
jon x

There excuse will be that it takes 30sec to 1min for all bets to come in after the race has run... :X

I would of thought that with today's technology, dividends displayed should be real time...??

The explanation was that at the time before the race was that river Jerez was paying well and if someone did have a last minute hit it would have dropped the price and others would have increased in this case all horses shortened ? The call was from a rather switched on trader imo

The USA pools (Win, Place, Exacta) were commingled yesterday. The unit of bet was R8 so only multiples of 8 could be wagered.

If we were betting into the US pool, there is another possible explanation, though I can't be certain.

As far as I know we calculate the payouts as follows: nett pool/3 for the 3 places, then divide that by the tickets on the individual horses placed. With this method, you know what the horse will pay, regardless of the result. In other words, one third of the nett pool is paid out to the backers of each placed horse.

They go: nett pool - (total tickets on 3 placed horses) = profit to share for each place. That profit is then divided by 3, and shared by the tickets on each horse. This means that payouts on outsiders are lower if the favourites place, and higher if the favourites run unplaced. With this method, one third of the profit, not the nett pool, is paid out to the backers of each placed horse, along with their outlay. It means that you cannot know the exact payout until after the result is known. The odds on the tote board are just an estimate.

I don't know if that explains what has happened in this example, but it might be a factor since both the favourite and the second or third favourite placed.

Here again the local operator is skimming big time as pegging the exchange rate @ZAR8 to the US$ is big cushion as the US dollar has never been anyware near that mark in the last many moons, but the ever so comfortable 8 has been pegged for maximum moola ruturn on these US meetings and although the take back on the meeting pales in comparison to other co=mingling ventures the garenteed R1 return on every betting unit is what the punter must pay to fund these affairs.

Thanks Sabre, however imo the tote is a machine it does not have to guess or have estimates, everytime a bet is placed it would calculate the number of tickets and give a dividend.

Please note the poster above...........the tote was closed on

1. on 1.80 and went 1.40
5. on 4.30 2.60
6. on 2.50 1.80

Strange that "all" 3 places dropped, unless we had 3 phantom last minute lucky number punters only backing winners.:S

Basically the way that it should work is that our final payout should be exactly what the yanks(as hosts) got on their payout. It is conceivable that some sort of software on our local sytems is triggered after the race to round out our portion of the pool to receive the host's dividend.

The shortening of horses is one thing but for me the key concern raised by the trader is the %age?

He is saying that the place payouts shown for the full field of runners would see the Tote operating at a loss something which obviously cannot happen. On this basis the shortening of the dividends is not a surprise (every horse in the race probably shortened) but the question is why were the dividends/payouts shown as above in the 1st place (his false advertising claim)?

The only possible explanation I can think of (and I have not done the math) is that the dividends were shown based on the gross pool before takeout and the final dividends were based on the nett pool. To me that would require an explanation.

scotia Wrote:

---

> Thanks Sabre, however imo the tote is a machine it
> does not have to guess or have estimates,
> everytime a bet is placed it would calculate the
> number of tickets and give a dividend.
>

As I said, I'm not sure if it explains this situation but my point is that with method two it is impossible to know before the result what a horse will pay for a place. It depends on which other horses also place. It doesn't matter that it's a machine, if it doesn't know the result, it cannot know the exact dividend. I don't know what calculation they use to show the forecast dividend, but it is an estimate, however it is done.

txs Sabre

I am also trying to consider the logic, agree the result is not known, but the number of tickets is known on each horse that is how the tote board displays the odds you would get that payout if you closed the tote at any moment of time.

Lets say the tote has taken 100.000

we have 5 horses in the race

horse 1 has 50,000
horse 2 has 30,000
horse 3 has 10,000
horse 4 has 5,000
horse 5 has 5,000



you have to say that the 100,000 has 3 dividends the pool is split 3 ways at 33,000 in each and if 2/3/4 arrive, if you had 2 you would get just over a rand, if 3 you would get 3 rand 30 cents and 4 you would get over 6 rand.

And any other combo you would split the pool by 3 and divided by the number of tickets of the placed horses, however this is only my assumption, maybe they don't split the pool into 3

Or on a normal race the punters that are taking the tote price on the display and I am sure its normally very close to the final payout unless massive co-mingling bets come into play after our tote is closed, which I am sure we have established does happen. :S

If you can follow what I have said, you are a better man than me!

Those betting percentages are undeniable proof that something underhanded is going on. In other words, all those payouts look appealing because you could back every horse a place and show a profit ! So late money etc means nothing - the percentages of any tote payouts can't ever be less than 360% with 3 places.