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I think the perennial problem is that those who REALLY know what they are doing when it comes to betting don’t want to share their secrets and edges for a relatively derisory TV appearance fee.
So these programmes tend to attract those who, well, need the TV appearance money because, tbh, they are not THAT great at betting.
The sad truth finally exposed.
Post of the year to date.
You can add to the list those that write books about racing and betting. They hope by writing something down some clues will appear to them for understanding a profession that leaves them totally bewildered.
Then there are the pub-quiz types who can name every Derby etc winner and delude themselves that they really understand everything to know about racing.It is estimated that some 90% of attendees at racing neither bet nor watch the races. It is a day out with friends in the fresh air with access to food, drink and toilets.
Not knowing anything about the job and practicing the art of the bluff is sadly endemic to UK business. Those at the bottom get searching interviews and aptitude tests to go with long hours and low pay. The PR department picks up the pieces for top management incompetence. The quality of the UK media has sunk to the level of parroting the PR handouts. Very few can put forwards any searching questions on anything. The racing media is wholly worthless.
Network Rail has caused mayhem at Kings Cross, Paddington and London Bridge in the last few weeks. So bad that the police has had to be brought in.
"MPs mocked the admission that equipment brought in to reduce breakdowns itself broke down while passengers were confronted with blank information boards in a communication shambles.
Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne was hauled in front of Parliament after thousands of people were left stranded or in overcrowded stations when engineering works over-ran, with East Coast mainline services into King’s Cross and cancellations of services into Paddington."
"The Network Rail report said last week: ‘The equipment failures were unexpected, due to the provision of new hardware that had been bought specifically to reduce the risk of breakdown.
‘However this new hardware had not been tested in the railway environment before deployment, and was not reliable when put to use.’ (How naive and non-technically savvy can a technical company actually be?)
Mark Carne is the sole director on Network Rails Board that has any rail experience. And Mr Carne is quitting.
Meanwhile in Ireland that actually has days rather then minutes between races so that the public maintain a keen interest in all codes of racing. Comparing to UK where 90% of races are of absolutely no interest to anyone beside the winning connections who briefly break out of a yawn. Two meetings a day max for 3 days a week is the most the public can take without losing interest. Also copycat bookmakers not even taking horseracing bets from mugs must be killing the chances of the levy ever getting back to past levels.
"HRI approved for the minimum race value to be increased from €7,500 to €8,000, with significant increases to other base values.
The key priority has been to target point-of-entry races, such as Flat maidens, bumpers, maiden hurdles and beginners’ chases, as a means of encouraging greater levels of racehorse ownership.
Handicaps will be increased on a tiered basis while some black-type categories have been raised under both codes to ensure that Ireland’s premium races remain competitive internationally in prize-money terms.
HRI will also contribute €250,000 towards the joint Anglo/Irish ‘Plus Ten Scheme’ which will see up to 100 bonuses of €10,000 paid out to the qualifying winners of all two-year-old races, excluding black-type races, run in Ireland.
Other key features of HRI’s budget for 2015 include the establishment of a new racecourse capital development fund of over €100 million, enhanced integrity funding and further reductions in owners’ and trainers’ administrative costs."
Simon Clare Head PR Director Corals
"The reality is that over 99 per cent of all bets offered up in our shops on horseracing are laid as requested," said Clare.
"We take roughly 1.5 million bets on horseracing a week and receive around 2,000 calls per week from shops for racing bets that need approval from the traders, the majority of which are laid."The nature of addiction:
Mike the average per spin varies in UK at around the £4 to £5 level. That is a theoretical rate of £960 to £1600 per hour. Even £2 a spin is £600 an hour. Average earnings are £400 a week or £10 an hour. It is the rate at which you can lose that is totally out of kilter with normal people’s income or dole money. What should happen for effective control is that a loss limit of say £10 an hour should be set on the machine and you can’t get back on again for say 2 hours.
Unlike any other betting you do not have the psychological impulse that it is your money in the machine and you desperately want it back out. You are no longer in the real world of home and family but in a make believe world of constant prompts of possible winnings. The value of money starts to lose its meaning – you must surely start to win some of it back but no you are deep in trouble and no one cares.
You have a win but it still does not cover your losses – you have to go on.Go on-line and lose and you don’t feel that way even if you chase your losses you are more in control. In the shop you have the manager on a bonus pressing and daring you to go on a bit longer or providing you cash you don’t have from your credit card. They even do research onto the comfort of the seats so that punters stay just a bit longer. There is no fun in it – there is no betting skill involved – it is just 100% cynical exploitation.
Shops survive in Ireland where the FOBTs are 100% banned.
The caveat is not needed.
Bookmakers were using the whole population that had ever had a bet and then saying problem gambling is a tiny, tiny percentage of that huge population. It is how many regular punters get into trouble that matters, not the once a year Grand National punter.
They regularly mislead.What the new research shows is exactly what bookmakers have been in denial about. That is, a large percentage of regular gamblers who get attracted to the FOBTs get into trouble. They should do so, as the machines are psychologically designed to cynically exploit the weaknesses of gamblers. Again bookmakers try to throw people off the scent by saying that the problem gamblers will just go somewhere else to gamble. They won’t – their money is in the machines and they want it back – loss aversion is one of the most powerful psychological drivers. Smashing up of FOBTs by enraged heavily losing punters is a daily occurrence. Again bookmakers will not report the cases to the police as the police will then have damning evidence of the problem, that can be obtained by a freedom of information request.
The other thing that bookmakers are still denying is that they focus their multi-shops into areas of deprivation and desperation. The local Councils effected who want to kick them out of clusters in their poorest areas must be imagining things again.
Are the mythical "arbers" parasites or are the real parasites the 4 FOBT per shop bookmakers that switch on the machines and then rake in half their profits for zero effort?
This what Clare was quoted as saying in the article in the Post on Friday:
What has changed in the last decade is the arrival of a new breed of punter who use the fluid nature of exchange prices to pinpoint fixed-odds prices with bookmakers that have effectively suddenly become unprofitable or overbroke.
"This betting strategy requires no skill or knowledge, and will guarantee a certain profit over time, and every day tens of thousands of individuals are trying to pick off bookmakers in this way.
"However, it is no surprise that there isn’t a bookmaker in the world who won’t heavily restrict such customers, and they are easy to identify as they are all following exactly the same parasitic strategy.
If bookmakers submit their prices to odds-checker etc then punters reading that will naturally go for the best price on offer. It is the bookmaker offering the price. These punters are not "arbers" – just shoppers. Less than 10% of horseracing punters bet on Betfair in any case and they would have to risk not getting the bookmaker part of any "arb" actually laid or the price dropping before the bet was approved. There is absolutely no guarantee of profit. A huge risk and effort for an unlikely few pennies. I would be surprised if Corals can provide hard evidence of more than a handful of these "easily identified" "arber" attempts in the last decade. In any case how can any single bet make a race over-broke or unprofitable? – SC does not seem to have even the most basic clue as to how bookmaking works.
Not that bookmakers both on course and in the offices are not glued to Betfair prices – they are the ones "arbing" in £thousands each race. Their computerisation adjusts in split seconds to whatever Betfair are offering and their individual liabilities on the events – so the actual development is that there is now no chance of "arbing" – that is unless they actually want to lay at higher prices to balance books or because they think they know the horse will lose.
Our research is that some 60% of horseracing bets are heavily knocked back or reduced to pennies which is much the same as refusal.
No "arbs" involved – just trying to put a bet on at the price the bookmaker has decided he is offering.The first rule of PR is that you put your client’s case forward in a positive light. You do not tell patent untruths that make your client a laughing stock. Rule 2 is you never insult your customers.
Simon Clare in the Community has now claimed that Corals use PLT Permission To Lay ie call in a trader on a bet for only 1% of bets asked for.
The majority of those 1% are accepted as bets. Yes they really accept 99.5% of all the bets folks ask for without question.
The queues outside Corals were a quarter of a mile long today and their website crashed with so much new trade. Yes, you can make up any fantasy you like but producing credible evidence is another country.Tracks are irrigated in the spring and summer, two to three times a week, so as to maintain the level of the available soil water reserve, or even a little more often to ensure that the ground is soft and the horses don’t get injured. Generally, when the grass is mown it is left quite tall, between 10 and 12 cm, allowing the turf to retain moisture and providing a further cushion. Race times make the ground seem even slower as they run very steadily until the sprint finish.
"The BHA says a project is underway to roll out a revised method of measuring course distances on jump tracks to bring it into line with protocol for the Flat, whereby measurements are taken six feet from the inside rail and all starts are professionally surveyed to the nearest yard."
Yes, BHA are clueless as to what is going on. No professional surveyor would be the 10s of yards they have run flat races at Warwick and Lingfield AW this year alone. No course has even set the furlong markers in the right place either which is even easier to manage. They just don’t give a toss because they know the BHA will do absolutely nothing.
It does not matter if you have a new rule measuring 2 yards or 2 miles from the rail – the point they just don’t get is that no course ever measures any distance and then only until well after Twitter points out yet another error and the media pick up on it. Action by embarrassment, not action because you want to do the best job for racing’s integrity.
The Flat was measured professionally for the first and last time in 2 centuries in the 1990s. (That is why race distances have odd yards added to the official distances as they could not even be bothered to reset the start to full furlongs. The jumps have never been professionally measured.
They cannot even work out that their new rule to advise the public on rail movements still does not correct the fact that the advertised distances without rail movements are wrong in the first place. More than 2/3 of courses don’t even attempt to comply with the BHA October 2014 rule. Still BHA does nothing to enforce its own rules.
So someone with zero CEO or racing administration experience and from the most mismanaged bookmakers in UK is being put forward as a BHA CEO. Were BHA impressed with the offer to introduce BAGS racing at Newmarket?
Hardly expressed much faith in any future for racing in the recent past:
"Says Mr Rust: "Since the National Lottery launched, these people have grown up with a level of comfort with gambling. They think that sports betting is fun to do. It also coincides with Sky.
"There is now so much more live sport. It has became far more of a part of British culture, and from that comes betting. It provides a better way to get involved, and we are seeing a lot more growth than through horse racing. We see lots of people coming for a fiver or a tenner, sometimes 20 quid. They’ll then stay and watch the match."
"This, it is hoped, might cut down on the number of people using the shops to view events, while using their mobile phones to bet with competitors such as Betfair." (Betfair being the only place you can actually get an actual modest sized bet layed)
It is thanks to younger gamblers that the gross win through machines (FOBTs) in Ladbrokes shops grew. Over-the-counter bets remained flat, despite the tough economy, and that was helped by the continuing growth in football betting and the boom in punting while events are running – or "in play". This is another favourite of the more youthful punter."
Where do you get information for ‘sectionals’?
Someone must record the time at each furlong marker but who publishes it?Mick,
The only published full blown UK sectionals are supplied by Turftrax and for a very few of the major turf and some AW meetings. We may or may not get a few more meetings in 2015.
See tracking data:
http://www.turftrax.co.uk/going_maps.htmlSimon Rowlands does some hand timed sectionals for his regular Timeform articles – mostly AW.
Most professionals record their own private sectional data.
I have been doing sectionals since race videos were first available and have developed my own software to automate most of the donkey work and analysis.It may not be possible to use sectionals at every racecourse, but it is for a lot, possibly most racecourses.
GingerT,
Timeform UK are not permitted to use sectionals for their ratings as far as I know.
Robert99,
Frankel’s Timeform Rating after he’d won the 2000 Guineas was upped I believe it was 4 lbs from what the basic form value had it as; purely because of "sectionals". ie Frankel ran the 8 furlongs in a way not conducive to a fast over all time. In other words, he ran the first 6 furlongs too fast, at top class sprinting pace and therefore inevitable had to tire in the final 2 furlongs. Had he run the 8 furlongs in even fractions the winning margin would have been greater. Therefore his performance was worth (ie it was obvious he was capable of) a rating better than the form suggested.Sometimes sectionals tell you a horse is capable of better than its basic (length by length) form suggests and it would be stupid not to allow for such things in its rating next time out. ie The form rating MUST portray what it is actually CAPABLE of; otherwise ratings would be inacurate.
GT,
You have changed the argument.
If there are Turftrax sectionals available for the few races they cover then Timeform may or may not use them. If Simon Rowlands does not do his hand timing, Timeform do not have any other sectional data to use. This is not the general use of sectionals for rating by Timeform you claimed. Any rating organisation must rate consistently using a commom method. The data that is consistently available governs.
There are quite large errors built into Timeform or any other rating. They know that, but if they said Dobbin is estimated to be around 97 plus or minus 9 pounds (88 to 106) then people would not buy or even be able to use the ratings.If you look at the sectionals of Frankel or any other horse you will immediately see that no race is ever run in even time. It is yet another complete myth that you are parroting. The first furlong and last furlongs are slower, bends are slower, uphill is slower, patches of soft ground are slower, going wide is slower and so on. A horse does not have an even output of energy to run an even time even if the jockey knew what that was to even attempt an optimum time. A horse runs its fastest time when it races at its own particular pace limits for each and every furlong.
GingerT,
Timeform UK are not permitted to use sectionals for their ratings as far as I know. Simon Rowlands seems to be the lone experimental figure allowed to stray from the true path of the ancient Dick Whitford style of beaten length style ratings and even then he does not exactly rate horses, just hand times them to identify hidden ability. Perhaps they think they cannot ever change methods too radically as it would alter the continuity of ratings over the decades. They would also have the huge expense of sectional timing every race meeting by hand. Timeform US do have the sectionals readily provided so can use them.
Others do use sectional data, paths, humidity, wind speeds and directions for their time analysis over the whole track and it give information far different from the traditional.
The worst thing you can do with time is to convert data into to so called "speed" ratings. Such ratings do not measure speed.
Nevertheless, high speed rated horses do win slowly run races which becomes obvious as soon as you start "rating" races.
