Co-mingling?

Actually you'd want them to take bets timeously - I have an infuriating friend that waits until the last minute to take a bet and he often is left tearing up tickets because he only starts to go to the window as the horses are loading and then shows me tickets that should have been - I agree Tommy close earlier and real time betting and problem solved.

The rake on the tote is +-21% of the gross pool, not 6% or 13%.

From what I've seen, the big shifts in the dividends occur 10 to 20 seconds after the off. So I don't believe that the layers of these "crazy" bets we are seeing "know" the result of the race. We are also seeing big post-off shifts in horses that don't win.

So if you are going to lay R20k on a horse why would you choose to do it on the tote? Why not with a bookie? My gut tells me we are only seeing a small part of a much bigger play.

Today's best bet, Bravura drifted from even money to 18-10. The tote paid a measly R1.70

Even more crazy, in the 4th, Beyond Measure drifted from 7/2 to 6-1 with the bookies and paid R2.30 on the tote!

What is it with this drifting? And then the sudden rush of tote money in the end? Some kind of syndicate pricing manipulation at work? I wish I could figure it out. But it's like trying to figure out the size of an iceberg when you can only see the cap.

Iceberg

Mass 20% above water 80% below water line

Can we believe that 30% of the total pool can affect the dividends to this extent. If so then the overseas punters have a very high success rate. Part of the problem may also lie in the local 70% depending when the local pool closes for late adjustments.

[speculation]

If you were running a tote, lacked ethics, and wanted to attract business away from bookies, how would you go about it?

One way would be to withhold a portion of the most popular bets from the live tote boards, making it seem as though they were offering much better value than the bookies could offer. That would attract even more money. Bookmakers would have to lengthen their odds to compete. Then at the off, release all those withheld bets into the live update. Blame the crazy foreigners and their lucky numbers. Any audit of the final pool, wagers and betting times would find nothing amiss.

[/speculation]

technology schmegnology - if we can post on this forum in real-time, surely Phumelela can have their co-mingled data sent in real-time...what, is it coming via satelite???? exactly how or via which technology is the data transmitted? (ref. the soccer/football - satelite delay fiasco and people positioned in the crowds at the actual game phoning through the results to bookies in the UK of a couple of years ago).

print the DATABASE LOG and then you will see its Phumelela (Betting world) that takes back the fixed betting book they have