Betting Exchanges , be careful what you wish for

[sixmoreouts]

Of course, it\'s worth keeping in mind that \"bet to lose\" wagering chicanery in tennis (or any other sport) does not have the same ramifications that that type of chicanery does in a sport like horse racing--which is completely predicated on betting.

[plasticman]

I wonder if they will be able to differentiate between a big bettor who was in on the fix and a big  bettor who just had a huge opinion and backed it up with a very large bet and just, by coincidence,  happened to be on the right side of the fix. By refunding all these bets on this tennis match makes me think that a person who had a legit opinion might not get paid. But, that\'s the cost of doing business with exchanges, its something a serious bettor has to consider.

[magicnight]

The big bettor would presumably have a history of making big bets, on tennis matches or whatever. Those who are in on the fix? Probably not so much. The greed that came out once the fix was in turned out to be their undoing.

I\'d bet that when a pro like Bobby Riggs tanked his match against Billie Jean King he made sure that only a small, select circle knew what was up ... and that they didn\'t call attention to themselves by betting ridiculous piles of cash all at once.

[mjellish]

One of my personal favorites was the Pick 6 group from back in 2002.  Most tracks take the Pick 6 bets for simulcasts but they don\'t transmit the data until after the first 4 races are done. That saves them transmitting all those dead tickets.

So these guys figured out how to hack into the system and started transmitting tickets that singled the winner of each of the first four races, and then went ALL/ALL in the last two legs.  They of course won, and took down a couple of six figure payouts.

Now you would think these guys would be smart enough to throw in a few losers in those early races just to make it look a little better.  After all, they are going to win guaranteed.  

Nope.

Not only were they too stupid to do that, they got greedy and started putting in multiple tickets with the same single/single/single/single/all/all structure.  And they were still getting away with it until they tried it at the Breeders Cup.

I remember being at Arlington for the 2002 Breeders Cup and thinking to myself, no way in hell is anyone hitting the Pick 6 today.  But there were multiple winners, which shocked the hell out of me.  Of course it turned out to be these clowns, with a couple of the same exact winning tickets.  The whole thing came unravelled.

Talk about getting greedy.  You know how many these guys could have taken down if they just would have been willing to throw in some extra losing combinations?

[Silver Charm]

The Blushing KD/Silver Charm Oaks Derby Double paid some sort of ridiculous low number compared to the pure Parlay.

There were several download issues of files from the previous days (Oaks Day) Wagers from a few hubs. Like they got there the next morning.

CD said it was fine......

[Rick B.]

In 1997, Oaks winner Blushing KD paid $7.40, and Derby winner Silver Charm paid $10.00 -- both as the 2nd choice in the betting -- so the $2 parlay comes out to $37.00

The $2 Oaks - Derby DD paid $24.80 -- undoubtedly a tad low, but scandalous?

Nah. I think you would find that most of the DD\'s that involve both 2nd faves tend to be on the low side -- every brain-dead player on the planet can read the program selections and fashion a simple criss-cross for $8.

[BB]

They were greedy. If memory serves the ticket was a 6X ($12) play. $2 would have been plenty that day. And the real hero of the day, of course, was Volponi. If he doesn\'t win it at $89, the chalk (Medaglia d\'Oro) takes it and the scandal is buried under multiple winning combinations.

Funny how one single horse did a better job of exposing a betting scandal than any barn full of humans ever did.

[sighthound]

Why is Rick Arthur sticking his 2 cents into this discussion, what does he know about gambling?

“Exchange wagering allows you to bet on a horse to lose,” Arthur said.

“People think there are drugs to give a horse to make it go faster; that’s actually hard to do,” Arthur said. “But it’s easy to give horses drugs to go slower.”

[sighthound]

I used to use YouBet, was transferred to a TwinSpires account; and I have an ExpressBet account, too.  TwinSpires sucks.  Completely, totally, useless.  Not fond of Xpressbet.   No interest in wagering with either of these platforms any more.

[Silver Charm]

I\'m not here to argue with you Rick! That looks quite LOW to me.

The fact that there were download issues from a few Hubs that didn\'t occur until the next morning only adds to the intrigue. If the proportion of winners from those Hubs were out of whack eye-brows would have been raised.

But who else had that data other than the Steward of it themselves and a Betting Scandal in the Derby would not have been good publicity.

Also this was 14yrs ago and one would think that the Technology and Controls have improved significantly since then. At least we hope.....

[Rick B.]

Silver Charm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I\'m not here to argue with you Rick! That looks
> quite LOW to me.

No argument. Polite, sober discussion.

I was hoping that by posting those numbers, someone else would come to the same conclusion as I did about the usefulness of using a win parlay as a measure of how much a Double \"should pay\". (As in, \"Warning: possibly misleading at times.)

What struck me as odd when I looked over the payouts was not so much how \"low\" the DD was (and yes, it seemed a bit low), but how HIGH the parlay was!

$37 for a parlay on two very popular selections? How would that double ever pay that much?

Another point: Blushing KD was a fairly obvious contender, and everyone I knew was on Silver Charm that year -- I don\'t know one person who like Captain Bodgit -- so a low-ish DD payout seemed reasonable, if unpopular.

[Silver Charm]

Interesting Rick, we had been told a month earlier that Blushing KD was a \"freak\"!

Her paying $7.20 was a little surprising but the connections were not the typical \"well known\" type. Meche was the rider and not say a Day, Stevens, Bailey so price wise that helped.

As far as Silver Charm goes, I was on the Paddock Bricks that Derby. Around Noon Bob Baffert entered the track walked right by me and had a look on his face that if you even slightly poked him, he might \"throw up\"!

After having lost the year before in one of the worst Derby beats in history, you could tell he had a look of \"I\'ve done all I can and I may never get one if I don\'t get one here.\"

I\'m sure the next 5 hrs or so were like Chinese Water Torture until they loaded and sprung the gate. But the wait was certainly worth it.....

[Ill-bred]

Here\'s the scary part. The BC Fix Six guys were dumb cheaters. Wouldn\'t it be naive to assume there were/are no smart cheaters?

I\'d love to see a computer analysis of exotic payoff values over time. I bet you\'d see a crash somewhere in the last 10-12 years.

[Rick B.]

Silver Charm Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Interesting Rick, we had been told a month earlier
> that Blushing KD was a \"freak\"!
>
> Her paying $7.20 was a little surprising but the
> connections were not the typical \"well known\"
> type.

When did Blushing KD have that terrible reaction to her Lasix shot?
 
Was that before or after the Oaks?

If before, that might explain the $7.40...

[Boscar Obarra]

I would be foolish to assume that anything you can imagine is not being attempted or achieved.

 And if you see it with your own eyes, and try to get something done, you\'ll be tabbed as a nutcase.