Originally Posted by Sightseek (Post 746084)

You're talking to someone who watches Mountaineer and Charles Town on Saturday nights.

Originally Posted by The Indomitable DrugS (Post 746085)

I did it both on thoroughbreds as a teller when I was 18 - and I still do it everytime I visit a dog track.

It was not uncommon for me to have at least over ten thousand dollars worth of canceled tickets on my cash position at the end of a shift. In fact, I might have had a Joe DiMaggio like streak of it going. No one ever said a single thing about it ... and I doubt it even made much difference in helping me get an edge.

One day - all the machines froze and betting was down for a couple of minutes. I had like a couple thousand dollar win bet on a horse I hated in a race coming up in like 15 minutes. I was about to crap my pants and I went back to the money room to see if I could get the ticket canceled by computer when the machines came back up. I canceled the ticket and never did it again.

No sense taking a risk - when you're not sure an edge is even being created from it.

With dog racing - the strategy is to go up and make four win bets of $50 apiece on the four dogs I like least. This drives down the win odds - I go to a teller with 0 MTP - bet about $70 on quinella and trifecta combos involving the dogs I like... cancel the $200 in win tickets and ask for like a $130 voucher back. Basically - I think it's a good way of getting overlayed quinella and trifecta prices. The odds come back to reality right before the rabbit starts moving.

A simple misdirection of my betting competition in an effort to possibly gain an edge. A fine, upstanding tactic to be sure.

Originally Posted by freddymo (Post 746086)

Well that is something that needs to change.. In the beginning BEFORE you were hooked did you really care about a Thistle thursday?

Originally Posted by Sightseek (Post 746091)

Well the original point of my post was that the current model is putting the cart before the horse.

That said, I can see your point that the original draw for the potential new fan is going to be the exciting stakes horse, but if a track provided the races before and after a particular stake, don't you think it is possible that someone is going to see that a) non-stakes races can be just as exciting b) money can be made in those races too?

I don't mean this to sound as if this is the cure to racing, but to get back to the topic of how racing is using technology correctly, I think this is an area in which they fail for the most part. Though improvements have been made.

Originally Posted by randallscott35 (Post 746087)

GA in your future.

Originally Posted by MaTH716 (Post 746056)

I don't disagree with you Freddy, especially with the lack of a national governing body/voice.

As far as too many races go, yeah you are probably right. In some cases less is definitely more (monmouth being a prime example). But not everybody is looking for the ideal (in terms of good racing and betting) situations to wager. I always think back to when I went to NYC OTB's to watch races and think that many people just want the action and don't care what type of horses and races are going off. They were playing whether there was 3 horses in the gate or 13 and couldn't care if it was a 2k claimer or a 5 million dollar Graded Stake. To limit the amount of tracks/races and actual racing days could also hurt the sport by forcing gamblers to put their money in other betting venues on days where there are very limited places to bet horses. That wouldn't be good for the game either.

Originally Posted by OldDog (Post 746028)

Interesting questions. Tough assigning points/percentages to the various issues -- I could have/would have gone way over 100 if it hadn't kept me honest.