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…what a horrible and stupid, marketing man, quango-ized, won’t-attract-a-single-punter, dumbed-down idea the decimal thing is.
Once racing for change has finished it will have drained every vestige of charm and mystique out of the game – and still not converted the football morons they so want to attract.
As a matter of interest, what were your views on the introduction of decimalised currency in 1971, assuming you are old enough?
I was a year old so no thoughts either way. However, the way things are going in this country I’m beginning to think regularly of something Alan Bennett said in one of his documentaries: if it’s not necessary to change, it’s necessary *not* to change…
All this simplification won’t attract new punters. Only winning and pleasure will. Winning at the horses is currently too difficult. Bookies need to have loss leaders but they are too greedy to give anything away. Retail do it, breweries do it; bookies are too greedy to. For all the waffle in the Racing Post about jumps a lot of it is a bl*ody bore and a p*sspoor betting medium to boot.
Whether we like it or not, people these days like to get a hit out of something quickly. Racing doesn’t do that. What’s thrilling about standing in a betting shop/ring feeling like a mug? They’d rather stick fifty up their nose. It’s the way things have gone.
- Total Posts 17716
…what a horrible and stupid, marketing man, quango-ized, won’t-attract-a-single-punter, dumbed-down idea the decimal thing is.
Once racing for change has finished it will have drained every vestige of charm and mystique out of the game – and still not converted the football morons they so want to attract.
I love the dramatics
I both sympathise and agree with your "mystique out of the game" comment but realistically change is inevitable.
When I went to school back in the good old 60’s you did your 12 times table and when I started betting working a double at 7/4 and 2/1 is something you could do in your head instantly.
Nowadays most kids can’t count they use calculators for everything.
When decimalisation came about it was totally foreign to people for my generation and still to this day when I vist Betfair I have to think 8 is really 7/1 and what does 1.46 work out at in fractions.
The fact young people are the exact opposite and us old codgers won’t be here forever, fractions on the bookies boards will die a natural death as the younger generation move in. I doubt if 25/4 will survive when it does it will be 8.25 and 6.05 that will be the name of the game in the future.
If you want to attract young people to racing you have to simplify the betting so everyone can understand it and they don’t have to rack their brain. They call it progress
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Not that we need another thread on the subject, but how is someone who isn’t thought capable of dividing 15 by 8 suddenly supposed to multiply £25 by 2.875? Perhaps Racing For Change would like to remove each 0.125 step to make it slightly easier for the people they patronise? Better yet, let’s just keep it to whole numbers and remove all of the magic completely.
If you go in to any supermarket you will invariably see obscure prices – 59p for a cabbage, for instance – on a majority of items and ‘3 for 2’ offer upon ‘3 for 2’ offer. Forgive me for being thicker than the offspring of Jordan and the village idiot, but are the latter not, in essence, fractions? Do people flee from cut-price Coca Cola through fear of a fraction-induced melting of the brain? Are supermarkets any less busy because their prices aren’t all in decimal form – 59p should surely be written 0.59 – and set at convenient amounts?
It’s nonsense.
Not that we need another thread on the subject, but how is someone who isn’t thought capable of dividing 15 by 8 suddenly supposed to multiply £25 by 2.875?
Because a large number of newcomers to the sport cannot even grasp the concept of 15/8, it means absolutely nothing to them.
Now of course seeing 1.875 or 2.875 (depending on how odds will be displayed) may not mean anything initially, however it is a much simpler concept to explain.
So why overcomplicate something just because it has always been done that way and there is a simpler way of doing things?
So why overcomplicate something just because it has always been done that way and there is a simpler way of doing things?
I don’t see what’s complicated about it.
It is also aesthetically unpleasant. I like to see 16/1 etc.
Repeat, it will not attract new punters.
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Every single person who currently has an interest in racing knows what 15/8 means, Paul. Why? Because when they were introduced to the sport they were told what it means.
The first time I went to a speedway meeting I saw my dad write ‘TX’ in his programme after a Coventry Bees rider had been a little too keen to get the race under way. I had no idea what ‘TX’ meant – it could have been shorthand for ‘what a complete and utter useless tosser’ for all I knew – but did I leave the stadium in a fluster because I couldn’t work it out? No. I enquired as to its meaning and my dad said ‘son, it stands for tape exclusion, because he’s a complete and utter useless tosser’. And guess what, from then on I knew to write ‘TX’ alongside the name of other similarly completely useless and tosserish Coventry riders (of which there have been plenty) who jumped the start and broke the tapes.
Why is it suddenly beyond novices and newcomers to learn the significance of 15/8 and 13/2, in much the same way they’ll have got to grips with the offside rule, what constitutes a backpass and the distinction between direct and indirect free-kicks? And how is ‘you bet the right-hand number to win the left-hand number’ any more difficult an explanation than ‘you multiply your stake by that number to work out your return, but you must either subtract your stake from the result or multiply your stake by that number less one to work out your winnings’?
I’ve been racing with plenty of people who were neither horseracing fans nor razor-sharp mathematicians and not one has ever taken more than five minutes to familiarise themselves with the basic concept of betting. In fact most of them didn’t really care, they just wanted to pick their horse, see it win and go and collect.
You only have to tell someone to divide the second number by the first – not exactly rocket science is it? If someone can’t manage that they shouldn’t be betting in the first place and they have absolutely zero chance of getting a proper understanding of the sport anyway.
Decimalising the odds is a totally pointless exercise which, as pointed out already, takes some of the specialness out of betting and horse racing in particular.
Still at least in brings us in line with Europe
which when Europe merges into a superstate that nobody but arrogant, power hungry, money grabbing, corrupt, scumy political b*****s want, will be quite handy.Using decimals as Paul says is much easier to explain to the uniniatated. It tells you what you are going to win to a single unit stake. You then multiple that by whatever stake. Its like buying a pint or a round of drinks, you have an idea of what a single unit will cost and multiply accordingly.
As for the offside rule and backpass rule and goalkeeper running round his area with the ball, all of these have been changing over the last thirty years so if you are over 40 you will have had to relearn these rules more than once. So if we can relearn those why can’t we learn decimalisation ?
I have no problems with changing to metric measurements and this is from someone who loves a pint, the issue I have is when there is an agenda that goes with it such as, using the pint example above, giving an opportunity for a pub/brewery to give you less for your money.
I think in itself the idea is neither good nor bad; fractions or decimals are about the same in terms of their easiness to grasp.
My worry with the initiative is I don’t think it will generate a single new racegoer or persuade a first-timer to come again. It is an irrelevance in the debate of how to boost attendances. Of more importance are things like the Rule 4 deductions, the anal announcements that leave newcomers not understandimng what is happening; the high prices of entry, food drinks; why has that horse I backed who has won his last 4 races come last; why is the jockey hitting the horse I thought animal cruelty was against the law; there have only been 3 races why don’t i get any of my money back …..
OK so there are many things that could be done to improve attendances, you might agree with my points, you might not, you might have your own – but I bet not many have thought in the last few months Hmm those damn fractions must be really putting people off coming racing.
The inordinate number of posts discussing this small part of the ‘Racing for Chamge’ initiative – and it’s only an experiment remember – reminds me of the backs-to-the-white-cliffs wogs-start-at-Calais resistance to the Euro: it would be a shame to lose our beloved Pounds and Pence but it’s actually of little consequence compared to the more important issues besetting EU membership
I like halfcrowns, florins and groats; miles, furlongs, chains and yards; tons, hundredweights, stones and pounds; bushels, pecks and gallons; gills, drachms and minims; butts, hogsheads, firkins and pipkins; acres, roods and perches; 100/30, 75/20, 85/40 and 21/20…but they were a pain in the ar*se to work with unless you learnt them when still in short trousers and thus had them indelibly stamped on the little grey cells for life
They will always be there and, like many another childhood blue-remembered hill, can be recalled at a whim and enjoyed.
It may be a sign that you’re ‘a serious punter’ when you can sum the over-round of 20 fractions within five seconds but for those lacking the skill decimals provide an obvious remedy
Anyway, for those of us who use a spreadsheet to compile tissues and play the exchanges fractions are already redundant and essentially an anathema
The inordinate number of posts discussing this small part of the ‘Racing for Chamge’ initiative – and it’s only an experiment remember – reminds me of the backs-to-the-white-cliffs wogs-start-at-Calais resistance to the Euro: it would be a shame to lose our beloved Pounds and Pence but it’s actually of little consequence compared to the more important issues besetting EU membership
I like halfcrowns, florins and groats; miles, furlongs, chains and yards; tons, hundredweights, stones and pounds; bushels, pecks and gallons; gills, drachms and minims; butts, hogsheads, firkins and pipkins; acres, roods and perches; 100/30, 75/20, 85/40 and 21/20…but they were a pain in the ar*se to work with unless you learnt them when still in short trousers and thus had them indelibly stamped on the little grey cells for life
They will always be there and, like many another childhood blue-remembered hill, can be recalled at a whim and enjoyed.
It may be a sign that you’re ‘a serious punter’ when you can sum the over-round of 20 fractions within five seconds but for those lacking the skill decimals provide an obvious remedy
Anyway, for those of us who use a spreadsheet to compile tissues and play the exchanges fractions are already redundant and essentially an anathema
No but yes Mr Wainwright.
I am someone who compiles tissues to bookies fractions. Knowing what all those fractions mean in percentages; I prefer working with bookies prices and will have to change if it’s going to be in decimals. However, that should not be difficult.
Think it is an idea worth trying, can see that novices may prefer decimals, even if it is not something I might not like.
Let’s give it a go lads and see what happens.
Value Is EverythingAs a kid of 10 in the 70’s I remember asking my teacher, "why we weren’t taught inches feet and yards"?
Answer, "by the time you leave school there won’t be any such thing".
Now in my 40’s; when doing a carpet measure, I still get asked "but what’s that in proper measurements"?
Don’t expect change too fast.
Value Is Everything- Total Posts 17716
I’m confused.
Are the Brian & Ben people suggesting that this decimal fractional figure will include your unitary stake (as in the French system); or will it be the winning decimal fraction, with stake to be added back on top?
This business of stake returns is in my direct experience FAR MORE confusing to novices, than the relative ease of dividing 6 by 4, or whatever. In fact, it’s far more confusing to me, because the Tote does one thing, and Bookies quite the other.
Hmmm.
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Not that we need another thread on the subject, but how is someone who isn’t thought capable of dividing 15 by 8 suddenly supposed to multiply £25 by 2.875? Perhaps Racing For Change would like to remove each 0.125 step to make it slightly easier for the people they patronise? Better yet, let’s just keep it to whole numbers and remove all of the magic completely.
If you go in to any supermarket you will invariably see obscure prices – 59p for a cabbage, for instance – on a majority of items and ‘3 for 2’ offer upon ‘3 for 2’ offer. Forgive me for being thicker than the offspring of Jordan and the village idiot, but are the latter not, in essence, fractions? Do people flee from cut-price Coca Cola through fear of a fraction-induced melting of the brain? Are supermarkets any less busy because their prices aren’t all in decimal form – 59p should surely be written 0.59 – and set at convenient amounts?
It’s nonsense.
Different altogether, I can just see a bookmaker putting a sign up think of cabbages before you place a bet.
The bookies aren’t there to re-school kids so they can have a bet.
Anyway it’s much easier to calculate 25 quid at 2.875 = 2.875/4 = 71.87 than it is to work out than 25 x 15/8 + 25 = 71.87p.
Plus most people are terrified of what they don’t know. you slap 15/8 at them they wouldn’t have clue where to start. Not unless they get taught fractions at school. I am pretty sure in this day and age teachers do no more than touch on it.
Your behaving like a butcher who won’t sell potk because he doesn’t like pork. It’s not what you and I like it’s what the buyer likes that count in business.
The future of bookmaking lies in 2.875 not 15/8 whether you think it’s unnecessary or not.
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