[indio]

Originally posted on 08/03/2016:

All offshore books suck for horses. Really no need to use them for horses when they have legal horse betting sites in the U.S that are much better.

An incredibly stupid and uninformed statement. While betting horses trying to buck 17-26% holds with breakage is pretty fruitless over time for almost everybody, betting through a credible offshore book is much more advantageous to the player. First off, most will give a 5% rebate for every bet placed win or lose, that's HUGE for a frequent player. Also, for smaller and mid sized tracks, not being co-mingled with the pools can make you tens of thousands of extra money when you hit a long shot pick 3 or superfecta that has only 1 or 2 winners in a pool (which happens often with pools that are 15k or less). This scenario depends on the horse book of course, they all have their own rules regarding payout limits. Some are quite generous, others, not so much. And of course, the fact that there are no tax forms on wins of 300-1+ for over $600 is big as well. Naturally, betting through legal US sites means you can legally get your money in days, and it also makes sense when playing pick 5's or pick 6's with carryovers to go through legal sites when looking for real big scores. But for the majority of horse bets, it makes much more sense to place them at an off shore horse book (if you feel confident getting paid from them) that has 5%+ rebates and large limits on smaller tracks.

Sure, betting horses at the offshore books can cost you a few minutes when they close the pools a minute before they actually leave the gate, but that's a small price to pay for all the extra money you make, and let's be real, one should be able to get their bets in at least 3 minutes before post time for almost every race they play.