You may have read about the 'bad beat' at Louisiana Downs
where a horseplayer thought they won a $488,000 Super Pick-5 pay-off
when his horse crossed the finish line first in the last race. After
all, this is what the 'will pay' graphic showed. Imagine his
disappointment when he was paid only $11,983. What happened? The rules
of the Super Pick-5 are that the jackpot is paid out only when one
person has the winning combination. If more than one person has the
winning combination, half of the day's play gets paid out while the rest
is added to the jackpost. In the last race after the graphic was
shown, there was a late scratch and sure enough, his horse became the
post time favorite at the last minute; hence there were two winners.
The
track did nothing wrong as the rules were followed, but it seems like
it is another black eye for racing. Let's face it when you get paid
only a fraction of what you think you are going to get paid, you can't
help but feel you are getting screwed. When others read about the
story, they are going to think racing is not a sport to wager on.
The
fact is the horseplayer, now with options to gamble on, has become more
sophisticated so the wager's rules need to be more sophisticated.
Merely not showing the 'will pays' as Louisiana Downs has done is not
the answer.
A more common sense rule for these
mega-jackpost wagers would be for the jackpot to be paid out when there
is only one 'natural' ticket with the winning combination. Yes, the
person who had the winning ticket on the basis of a late scratch would
share in the jackpot, but at least in this case, the original
horseplayer would have ended up with $244,000 instead of a relative
pittance.
Instead of giving a gambler the post time
favorite, why not offer a consolation payoff? Yes, there could be
multiple payoffs as a result of offering a consolation payoff, which
would deduct from the jackpot but at least in the case of this wager, if
you had thea scratched horse, you would collect if you had all the
correct winners in the the other legs, yet maintain the original premise
of the jackpot being paid out only if there is one winner of the bet.
Better
yet, instead of assigning the post time favorite, why not make the
horseplayer select a substitute runner who live if the original horse is
scratched. Otherwise, it would be possible for someone who had
multiple runners in any of the legs to end up beating themselves by
having to two combinations with the post time favorite due to a scratch,
defeating themselves inadvertingly.
Any of these
options would also prevent gamblers from manipulating the win pool by
betting a horse with no chance to make sure a certain horse is not the
post time favorite. While the track benefits from this strategy, the
rest of the gamblers are at a disadvantage.
The bottom line is you can't offer new style bets with old fangled wagering policies supporting them.
1 comment:
I understand the disappointment the almost BIG winner must have felt when they saw their payout, but knowing the rules ahead of time and knowing there was a scratch, they should have likely known there was a possibility of a split happening and a much lower payout. It sucks I know. Woodbine this year changed their rules for pick 3's and pick 4's that if a future race comes off the turf due to heavy rain after the bet has been made, the race becomes an ALL winner for everyone still alive. So this happened to me and I actually had a the 3rd choice win in the ALL race but had 4 horses anyway. My original prices were around $120 up to as high as $240. But the payout ended up be $33 for a $1 but I was lucky to have 4 choices in the ALL race so I got $132. Sure $240 would have been nice but there was no guarantees I would have won the $240 so $132 was fine with me. It is all apart of gambling. Now had the person at Louisiana Downs not had their horse scratched, it may have been the horse to beat the post time favourite but one will never know, hence the rules. It would be hard to have the horseplayer choose an alternate pick once their horse is scratched because they might not even be watching the races at that time the scratch was announced. In Vegas if you bet $100 on a 6 team parlay you could win $4,000 but if a game is cancelled for some reason then you are credited with 5 winners and only $2,000. Stuff like this happens, its a part of gambling. I love that the CFL plays every down with 3 minutes left in a game with a 7-10 point difference and you can watch another 9-11 plays maybe, but in the NFL with 3 minutes left and the same point difference, most times you are lucky to see 6 plays and that is with 2 minute warning and maybe if team has a timeout left, but the NFL has their rules and I hate it but yet I still choose to bet on NFL games compared to CFL. And 98% of the people who truly likes the horses will continue to play.
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