More Horse Racing Past Posting

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I read this somewhere else and thought it was interesting.

Report: Bets were placed after Philadelphia Park horse race was over

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Tue, Jul. 8, 2008


Report: Bets were placed after Philadelphia Park horse race was over
By DICK JERARDI
Philadelphia Daily News



Making money at the racetrack is one of mankind's most difficult endeavors. It would be quite a bit easier, however, if one could bet after a race was over.

It appears that is what happened after the fourth race at Philadelphia Park on June 28. Ray Paulick, of the Kentucky-based paulickreport.com, broke the story yesterday that one or more players at Tampa Bay Downs put in several thousand dollars worth of winning wagers after the horses crossed the finish line at PhillyPark.

"We are aware of the situation," Curtis Linnell, director of wagering analysis for the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, told Paulick. "It looks like it may have been isolated to Tampa. It didn't look like it was widespread."

Some 20 minutes passed after the race before the prices were posted. At about the same time, it was announced that the fifth race would run without wagering. Delaware Park canceled betting on its first five races that day.

Magical American won the fourth race and paid $9.20. It is fairly obvious the winner would have paid quite a bit more had the "past posting" not taken place. The daily double, combining the 3-5 winner of the third race and Magical American, paid $32.40, quite a bit more than a 3-5 combined with a 7-2 shot should have paid. Without the very late (and very illegal) betting, Magical American likely would have been 8-1 or so. The $27.20 exacta with second-place Ironton also likely was low.

So people who bet on Magical American to win "before" the race and bet the exacta "before" the race got cheated. They should have won quite a bit more than they did.

A stop-betting signal is supposed to go out seconds before the horses leave the starting gate. In this case, the signal did not make it to at least one of the off-track sites.

American racing has several betting companies at its racetracks around the country. Insiders have long known the system that handles $15 billion each year is anything but seamless.

The holes were supposed to be patched after the 2002 Breeders' Cup Pick Six scandal was orchestrated by a betting company employee, in conjunction with two of his former Drexel fraternity brothers. Their effort was so amateurish, it was quickly discovered and they all went to jail. The bigger problem, however, is still there. *

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Here is a follow up to the story.

Wed, Jul. 9, 2008


Computer problems caused Philadelphia Park betting glitch
By DICK JERARDI
Philadelphia Daily News



Eight days after somebody placed bets on one of his track's races after it was over, Philadelphia Park's chief operating officer Joe Wilson got a call from Florida that he definitely was not expecting.

That was when he learned that "somebody had made some big bets after the race," Wilson said in his office yesterday.

The race in question was the fourth on June 28.

"We had huge tote problems that day with our system that is over at the data center [in Mount Laurel, N.J.]," Wilson said. "The tote system is up and down. It's communicating. It's not communicating."

Yesterday, Wilson was still trying to figure out exactly what happened in that fourth race. One report said a player at Tampa Bay Downs bet $500 to win and a $500 exacta on the winning combinations after the PhillyPark race was over. Wilson could not confirm that account, saying he had not seen evidence of that.

It was suggested that the problem was isolated at Tampa. A well-placed source knows of at least one other track where the betting was not closed until sometime during the race. Betting at Tampa apparently was not closed until sometime after the race.

"We're still investigating it right now," Wilson said.

What is known, according to Wilson, is that "the stop betting time was X and [some winning tickets] were bet at Y."

And Y came after X.

"I have not seen the bets," Wilson said.

Something went wrong on June 28 at the Scientific Games data center in Mount Laurel. The first five races at Delaware Park that day were non-betting events because of the problem. So was the fifth race at PhillyPark.

"Our tote system has us, Delaware Park, Pocono Downs, Ocean Downs [in Maryland] and Indiana Downs," Wilson said.

Apparently, the system was slowly melting down as the day went on at PhillyPark. First, odds were not being posted. Then, there were delays with the payoffs. Then, a total meltdown during the fourth race.

"The tote system in Florida did not get the stop betting [signal] from us," Wilson said. "Obviously, they didn't know they didn't get it or obviously they would have closed it manually.

"There's safeguards built in there that if you are at zero minutes to post and you lose communication, it automatically stops the betting. What happened was that the communication didn't stop. The frame relay port was still talking. The tote wasn't sending out the correct data."

Wilson, whose background is in mutuels, happened to be on vacation that day. He got a call when they decided to halt betting on the fifth race.

"I said, 'That sounds like the right decision. We don't want to have any issue like we find out later that we did have in the fourth race,' " Wilson said.

The delay in posting the payoffs from the fourth race, Wilson said, was because all the money from all of the simulcast locations was not getting into the PhillyPark pools. It has now become clear that some of that money came into the pools sometime after the race had begun and, in some cases, after it was over. Which, really, is not how this game is supposed to work.

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Last follow up



Fri, Jul. 11, 2008


Probes in progress over postrace betting
By Craig Donnelly

Inquirer Staff Writer

Every horseplayer's dream is to bet on a race when the outcome has been determined.

Such was the case at Tampa Bay Downs on June 28, when a betting-system crash allowed simulcast wagering on the fourth race at Philadelphia Park to continue for 15 minutes after the race had been concluded.

Peter Berube, the vice president at Tampa Bay Downs, said yesterday that $2,319 had been bet on the simulcast of the fourth race from Philly Park, $1,258 after the race.

Those wagers were made between the post time of 1:53 p.m. and the cessation of wagering at 2:08 p.m.

A total of $12,418.90 was paid off to bettors at his track on the Philly race, Berube said.

"There does not appear to be widespread volume," Berube said. "But some of the bets were legitimate and some after the race. It has not yet been determined if it just occurred at Tampa, but there were probably other tracks involved."

Berube said the win, show, exacta, and trifecta pools were affected, causing decreased payoffs.

Magical American won the claiming event at Philly Park, paying $9.20 to win. The exacta with the 3-1 second finisher Ironton returned $27.20, and the trifecta with the 9-2 El Campo paid $68.60.

The payoffs do not appear particularly skewed, but Berube said a $500 win wager on Magical American was made after the race.

Some post-race bets were made with mutuel clerks and others on self-service machines. "We suspended betting on the remainder of the Philly races, not taking any chances," Berube said.

The system glich forced Delaware Park to suspend wagering on its first five races that afternoon.

Curtis Linnell of the Thoroughbred Racing and Protective Bureau is investigating the incident.

"There may have been incidents at other tracks. Some bets were made inadvertently, and others were overt; people knew the race was over. But there doesn't appear to have been large, overt bets at other locations," Linnell said.

An inquiry by the TRPB is continuing.

[englishmike]

interesting stuff. I'd love to know where the guy who had the 500 on got his info, be interesting to see if a call was made from hq to the guy on track or whether he was just very clued into what was going on. Wouldn't they have got his SSN for winning that much?

[cadillacb]

SSN is not required on W/P/S bets regardless of payout

[mtneer1212]

SSN is only required at tracks when the payout exceeds $600 and is a result of a win at odds of 300-1 or greater. Also at over $5000, they take the 31% right out of the payout for Uncle Sam.