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I found it – it is currently the last thread in General Betting – it seems my memory is ****. Anyhow this part of the OP….
….the GC have written to me today to formally confirm that an owner laying his own horse is NOT a breach of section 42 or the Gambling Act.
Section 42 covers “cheating”
This is indeed a sad Day.
The specific case was that of Leighton Brookes, I had losing back bets matched by Leighton Brookes ( this was confirmed by Betfair)
The BHA took almost more than a Year to conclude the case.
As such the GC would not consider voiding the bet as I had not asked them to void the bet within 6 months (which is one part of the gambling act – separate to the cheating option)
Paul Struthers recently confirmed the BHA ‘hoped’ to concluded all cases within a YEAR. Totally useless and impotent given the 6 month limitation of the, less rigorous part of, the legislation. (Not Section 42)
In addition during my communication with the GC the even refused to;
1) Confirm if I had asked for these specific bets to be void within 6 months (assume the BHA concluded their work in less than 6 months) – if they would have voided them
2) Write to the BHA and ask them to explain why they could not meet 6 month timelines, or even encourage them to do so
Instead the GC have stonewalled me with incomplete answers, avoidance of questions and ultimately finishing with the ominous “The Commission therefore has no further comment to make on this matter.”But between the BHA’s slow response time regarding corruption and the GC’s endorsement of it there seem little hope for the fair participants of this sport.
interesting stuff Pompete, thanks.
but still not the BHA’s fault surely if the Gambling Commission isn’t up to its job, or if the Gambling Commission chooses to define its job to exclude the difficult parts of its remit – "keeping gambling fair and safe":
http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/ga … tting.aspx
the fact remains that it is the Gambling Commission that has the statutory remit and the statutory powers in anything to do with betting, and that it even levies money on the betting industry (and therefore ultimately the punters) to do that job.
if the corruption angle in racing comes in from the betting side, then surely the ball is firmly with the Gambling Commission – however much of a failure the Gambling Commission may be proving to be in practice in that area?
is the Gambling Commission then perceived in the UK to be another regulator choosing to concern itself with soft non-targets (eg even manufacturing some itself as with the 17-year-old-in-betting-shop-stings), rather than actually doing something useful against difficult real targets ?
Agree with Wit here that the Gambling Commission is missing in action. What we’ve seen from the GC so far seems to me to demonstrate, once again, the lack of understanding and expertise in gambling related matters within the corridors of power.
Agree with Barry Dennis that ‘warning off’ is no punishment to those unlicensed individuals who profit from corruption. What would be a punishment would be to freeze accounts and withold payments to wrongdoers. If you repeatedly pulled strokes against a bookie I’m damned sure the bookie would eventually keep your stakes and tell you to go whistle for payment. Be nice to see that happen to one or two of these characters. Can understand why a punter (like the Magician case) is angry that he and his cash have not been reunited.…but still not the BHA’s fault surely if the Gambling Commission isn’t up to its job, or if the Gambling Commission chooses to define its job to exclude the difficult parts of its remit – "keeping gambling fair and safe":
Yes, I agree there is a limit to what the BHA can do.
is the Gambling Commission then perceived in the UK to be another regulator choosing to concern itself with soft non-targets (eg even manufacturing some itself as with the 17-year-old-in-betting-shop-stings), rather than actually doing something useful against difficult real targets ?
I think that would be a fair assessment. From memory I think there was talk of them becoming involved in investigations relating to Tennis & Snooker. However, whether this has happened or was just ‘newspaper headlines’ I don’t know and other than their ‘sting’ operations they have been largely anonymous.
It is difficult to know how they have been affected by New Labour’s sidelining of its plans to attempt to replicate the success of the ‘City’ in making Britain the ‘Gaming’ capital of the world. It is tempting to view the ‘key aims’ of the GC – protecting the young and vulnerable, keeping gambling fair etc’– as the headline goals masking an actual ‘light-touch’ regulation, again copying the approach to the ‘City’ in the days of ‘no more boom and bust’
But tbh I don’t really know.
Re: the ‘Magician’ he has been posting on the progress of his compliant to the GC for about the last year. As, I’m sure you noticed from the post he had originally attempted to have the bet voided and when this was unsuccessful then pursued the compliant under Section 42…..I didn’t want to give the impression he had only just posted on the subject, as I say it has been on going.
It would be good to have a Q & A with someone from the GC, for you do not have to be particularly sceptical to wonder what on Earth the point of them is.
Then again, I doubt TRF would even be given the courtesy of a reply. I was not when I contacted them about a legitimate concern of my own.
What’s the spread on the GC’s life expectancy in any case? 9-10 weeks?
I’ve heard just about every other non-job Gordon Brown and his chums have created to be ‘ringfenced’ by one party or another, but I’ve heard nobody who thinks the GC is money well spent and worth perservering with.
With massive cuts in public spending looming, these clowns must be living on borrowed time.
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Agree with Barry Dennis that ‘warning off’ is no punishment to those unlicensed individuals who profit from corruption.
There is no corruption!
As far as we know, these 4 guys have done nothing more than take advantage of a situation that they had not engineered, and had nothing to do with carrying out. That is not dishonest, nor is it against the law.
That these hapless stooges have been ‘warned off’, without even a question asked of those within the industry who perpetrated this situation, speaks volumes for the real problem with British racing, and the bullshit the BHA is peddling as its cure.RH,
I was referring to the case that ‘the magician’ is pursuing with Betfair and with the GC where there has very clearly been corruption and he’s clearly been the victim of it.
There have sadly been many instances of corrupt practice in British racing in this regard and they’ve been well publicised. We’re seeing now the first cases in Australia too and we’ll see them in other sports I’m sure all around the world.
The BHA, for all its shortcomings, hasn’t ever stopped a horse or layed a horse they know is going to be stopped. Others have done that all on their own.Betfair certainly has changed the landscape. There was a paper favourite in a pretty good race yesterday that just drifted and drifted and drifted and drifted – and I’m pretty sure the only thing that limited the extent of the drift was the time left until the race began. Had the race been delayed another 10 minutes I am sure the price of the horse would have trebled again…
This is what happens when there are layers out there who "know" a horse won’t be winning….
I’m guessing you are talking about Alyarf here, TDK.
Imo, what makes horses like this more difficult, is that I’d suggest there was no deliberate attempt at skull-duggery by the stable here (there’s far worse stables for this sort of thing). It’s just the word got out that this thing was (for that day anyway) not the good thing it may have looked.
That was the type of race I like studying, & I would argue that no outsider or form-book reader could have worked out Alyarf was going run as fresh as it did (even taking account of it being fto). Apart from not settling early, it’s run the middle of the race too fast, no wonder it folded like it did. On face value though, it was 9-10lb + clear & had far more scope for improvement than anything else in the race, but has probably run 25-30lb below it’s best.
I’m not sure you can ever police this sort of thing these days. It’s very much a case of punter beware & check the exchange moves.
Totally agree Colin. Of course this sort of thing is part of racing to an extent – the question of how fit a horse will be for its reappearance…
It just leaves a sour taste when there are clearly those that possess information about an even money(-ish) shot in theory is going to turn up at the races with virtually no chance of winning given his current level of fitness. Armed with this information, they can pretty much just take everyone to the cleaners laying it on the exchanges.
It is on occasions like this that you would like that extra information for punters that would give us at least some chance – i.e the horse’s weight, recent work reports , maybe a trainer quote for a horse that has been off for a while etc etc. It is all very well saying caveat emptor and "watch the market" – but we all know by the time the market has told us, the deed has been done.
BTW – It is for precisely this reason that you see such pathetic liquidity in UK racing early on in the day on the exchanges – everyone is waiting for the market to "tell" them which horses are fit and trying…
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