Good Point.

So ... I make a wager three minutes to post at the track - I somehow keep a window and teller clear of other patrons trying to bet that race and other races when my race goes off, so I have a teller at my beck and call - in three seconds ... one-onethousand, two-onethousand, three-onethousand .... I :

- watch the gate open
- watch my horse go off
- decide if the break was good or bad enough for my horse
- turn to the clerk and say, "Cancel this bet!" and hand my ticket back
- the bet gets entered and canceled

All of the above three seconds? I don't think so.

Alternative? Cancel a bet from an ADW? Nope. From a betting machine at the track? Nope.

So, the bettor and the teller must have been in cahoots together, with the ticket literally sitting in the machine, the teller's hand poised over the "cancel" button ... and as the "cancel" came through - was finished - three seconds after the break, the decision to cancel must have been made between break and 2 seconds.

Sure. Someone got one hell of an advantage there. :rolleyes:

I dunno, Hoss - that 5 seconds includes the break, initial observation (1-3 seconds?) then decision to cancel, and then getting the bet successfully canceled. Tight timeline.

Definitely would have to be planned before time, with everything in place and someone set to hit the cancel button immediately if the gate break was unfavorable to the chosen horse

(how the heck would you see that break well enough? hard to see numbers/silks on TV's, and at the track, unless break right in front of grandstand?)

That's alot to pull off in a couple of seconds. That would involve someone with tote access placing his own bets, or obvious collusion between bettor/teller. If someone is doing it, they need to go to jail.

I did make $400 or so of wagers once (a huge $$ bet for me), and realized right after I made the bets that I had the wrong number horse - a definite no-way loser - keyed in all the bets. Panic time - I got the bets cancelled literally as the bell was ringing (at Kee). That had to show on the tote at the next click after horses were running.

We just don't know enough. When a whale can deliberately play past-post games and document problems, that's scary.

The question is still how extensive is the opportunity for true past posting (versus the changes that happen with final pool totalisation), and can past posting be reliably exploited and abused?

I suspect the first may be greater than we know, and the second less than we fear.

I could certainly be wrong.

My that was fun today.....

What if the bettor that is cancelling is the teller (they've been known to punch a ticket or two for themselves). Takes the highlighted step out of the equation.

Replace that step with:

- ticket is loaded and finger rests on the cancel button.

I was thinking the same thing. Who would know more about what they can get away with than the tellers?

I doubt it happened that way. More than likely it was on an automatic telller machine. You punch in your ticket but don't log out, your horse breaks poor and you hit cancel. I'm sure people do it all the time and 99% of the time the pools close properly and it doesn't work. In this instance the pool stayed open long enough that the cancel worked.

if i was given a 5 second window after the break, I could watch the break AND get in a cancellation. like many have mentioned, using youbet you have the cancellation loaded and ready so all you have to do is click confirm if you see your horse stumble or whatever.

you couldnt do this with a teller. although you could also do it at a sam machine like sniper said. you load in your ticket and it asks you to confirm the cancel, yes/no. 5 seconds is plenty of time at the break to know if your horse broke well or not.

i don't know what all the controversy is about on this. it would not be hard to do if this loophole existed somewhere. I have never seen it, my perception is that things shutdown pretty much at the break or slightly before during loading.

i cancel tickets quickly on youbet if my horse breaks through the front of the gate, and has to be reloaded.

I have never seen an automatic teller machine that has the cancel function once you have printed the ticket. I have punched out thousands of my own tickets, and the only way to cancel is to take it to a live teller.
If you wait to print the ticket for a few seconds after the break, that would be similar, but not quite the same as cancelling an already live ticket.

You can cancel them yourself here now, as long as it is before 1mtp, at the automatic teller machines.

You've got better machines than we do here in Jacksonville, we can't:mad:

Yeah, we just got the feature I think last year when Arlington started. I think if your ticket is over $500 you have to go to the teller also.

We are getting these new machines now where you can bet off your Twin Spires Club card, no tickets at all. It is a good feature for me because I am probably the most hilarious person with tickets, lose them all the time, although we haven't had one recently. Largest voucher I lost was for $412, that wasn't a good day.

I don't think those machines will be that popular because people like holding a ticket, and then showing everyone they had it.

Tampa too, we have relics.

I'll try that at Keeneland meet, just to see if it works (enter a horse to win, cancel just after the break) ... there are machines where I can readily see the break happen live for certain races.

Now, that's another thing I've noticed. I've seen where both Youbet and Xpressbet have a 1-2 second delay - or not - in the telecast of races vs. live. It varies, it's not consistent. I've watched many a race on Xpressbet or Youbet play out with the "live" call via "At The Races" (I'm listening via computer feed) on delay - but to hear the race feed via ATR play with the video on Xpressbet or Youbet delayed is weird.

Youbet video is delayed longer than TVG which is at least 10 seconds behind live.

I've seen it done many times before.

It's much easier to do when no one is there. It's a piece of cake in an empty or near empty room.

If it's a busy day it's much harder - if so, the way it's done is that the teller holds the ticket, he closes his window as post time approaches (excuse like having to go to the bathroom, or having to check money for a short)

He watches the break from the big screen right in front of him, and if the horse doesn't break well, it's about 1/20 that he gets the ticket cancelled.

Hell, I've seen someone do double cancels with 100% accuracy before.

If you get a trotter race with breakers - and two dominant horses both at like 7/5 odds or so. Which you do is bet them both to win for the same amount. If one of them hasn't broke by the time the race starts, you cancel them both.

If one of them has broke you cancel only the breaker and you have an edge.

The person who did it told me he practiced a lot with $2 show tickets until he got it down pat where he never messed up.

I think most tracks and OTBs have done away with the 5 second window, which I believe was time meant for tellers to cancel a last second mistake.

I bet from home now - so I don't know for sure.

You actually bet ?


I ran into an old friend of yours who says you dont bet...

His name.........

























Smokey Stover

Any year now your Smokey Stover jokes will start getting old.

There are 2 things certain in the world.....


The sun rises in the East....


Busting on you about Smokey Stover will NEVER get old.....

I bet via machine at the track and watch the odds.
You just put all your stuff in and wait to hit the button and make
the bet. If the odds stay as I like, I punch Print ticket, if they change,
I dont print. Its easy if you find an empty place with a TV, which
I have.

On a few (3 or 4) occassions I have hit print ticket late, after the horses got
off on accident, and got a bet through. The vast majority of the time
I get shut out.

So there is a glitch in the system somewhere with machines..
Last one I can remember would have been about
4 weeks ago while betting... I believe it was Sam Houston.

Anyone else have this happen?

This was/is a very interesting thread,
I was waiting to see if anyone had my experience
but I dont think I read any so far.

I think your scenario makes alot of sense, especially w/Standardbreds.

So if the video is delayed to the ADW, and I can bet up until the video shows gate opening on my ADW at times - does that mean I am dumping into the pool long seconds after the real gate has opened at the track and the race is underway?

Sounds like it.

I had on the 2nd at OP on the computer and on HRTV at the same time today. TV was at least 10 seconds faster.

I keep telling you that they tried your idea and got so many complaints that they scraped it. At least come up with an original idea

Arlington tried this after the P6 scandal, and people were livid, and rightfully so.

All these bozo's need to do is spend some money on technology and everything would be fixed. A simple sensor would solve ALL these problems.

You are in the wrong major in school ;)

The one horse in the last race at Aqueduct was 4-1 when the gate opened, 7-2 at the half mile pole, and 3-1 down the stretch, while winning by a handful.

Maybe you dont understand that way more customers were complaining when they tried it your way. There were big bettors that stopped betting on races at Churchill because they were tired of getting shutout or being forced to bet earlier than they wanted. They told management that they wouldnt be participating. So dont act like you have come up with some ingenious way to magically solve the problem. It has been attempted and was met with severe resistance from horseplayers.

How do we know it isn't those same big bettors that are taking advantage of the flaws?

There must be a lot of them because I was told they were getting a 100 complaints a day, more if there was some kind of delay at the gate.

Everytime the issue is brought up you jump in with the same old, just shut down a minute before posttime. And everytime I repeat that they tried it but due to tremendous negative response, they stopped. So what makes you think that the same tremedous negative response wouldnt happen again? That is not even taking into consideration that the tracks almost never lose sight of the short term bottom line and how it would be negatively effected.

No, do something that has already failed

100 complaints for big bettors, or 100 in general?

A lot of people complained they had to wear a seat belt for awhile, but we didn't revert back to it being a legal choice.