Betting on the Dwyer, A Game of Bait and Switch

[Wandering Eyes]

As the field loaded into the gate for Saturday’s GIII Dwyer S. at Belmont, the odds on Firenze Fire (Poseidon’s Warrior) were 5-1. That seemed about right. He was 6-1 in the morning line and was last seen running 11th in the GI Kentucky Derby. The gates opened and Firenze Fire was still 5-1. Fifteen seconds later? 5-1. At precisely 19 seconds after the race started, his odds plummeted to 5-2.

Trained by Jason Servis, the hottest trainer in America, he won by nine lengths.

When it comes to bad optics, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

It’s fairly obvious what happened here. At least one of the handful of huge bettors who rely on computer programs to come up with what they believe the actual odds on a horse should be saw Firenze Fire as a huge overlay. It appears they also believed race favorite Mendelssohn (Scat Daddy) was an underlay. He was even-money at the start and went up to 3-2 during the running of the race.

Able to bet at the very last second before wagering is closed, the person or persons pumped a huge win bet into the pools. It looks like the wager was in the neighborhood of $40,000 to win. Firenze Fire paid $7.50. If so, they won about $110,000, plus what ever large rebate they receive.

Here’s the math: There was $858,275 in the win pool. After the takeout, $720,951 was returned to winning bettors. A total of $190,524 was bet to win on Firenze Fire. In order for his odds to go from 5-1 to 5-2, something in the neighborhood of $40,0000 to $45,000 would have had to have been bet on him to make that drastic a shift in the odds.

It is possible that the bettors’ whole strategy revolved around Mendelssohn losing, so they may have made late win bets on one or two other horses. And, they did take a risk. Had Mendelssohn won, they would have lost a healthy amount of money.

There is not a track in America that doesn’t love and cater to these computer whales. Racetracks need handle and these players are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the pools. They get enormous rebates that aren’t available to the ordinary player.

But none of this comes without a cost, and the Dwyer was a perfect example of this. It’s time that the sport starts to take a more serious look at this issue.

Nothing illegal happened in the Dwyer and the people who have come up with these computer systems are brilliant. But the sport can’t forget about the other 99.9% of it customers. They have to have complete faith in the betting markets and if they don’t, they are not going to play anymore.

While people understand this is pari-mutuel, and not fixed odds betting, they have every right to expect that the price of a horse when they make a wager won’t differ dramatically when the race goes off. This is particularly true of a track like Belmont, where a $200 win bet is not going to do a thing to change a horse’s price. Had Firenze Fire gone down to 9-2, no one would have even noticed. But his price was cut in half.

Imagine going to the grocery store and picking up a gallon of milk with a $3 price tag on it. You get to the check out counter and are told the milk now costs $4, that they decided to raise the price in the nine seconds it took you to get there from the dairy counter. Or maybe you bet on the Philadelphia Eagles at

-9 points, but 30 seconds before the game starts you are informed the spread is actually -12.

As preposterous as both examples seem, they are pretty much what happened to the Average Joe who wagered his $20 to win on Firenze Fire thinking he was going to get 5-1. His profit went from $100 to $55. It’s not rigged, but it makes you feel like it is. Especially when the horse draws off to win by nine lengths. That guy might just have made his last ever bet on a horse race. Could you blame him?

The computer players are a secretive bunch and the racetracks and ADWs would prefer it that way. So you won’t get any information on how many there are, how much they bet, what kind of rebates they receive and how much they are winning. But they’re becoming the equivalent of the poker player who wins every pot, wipes out his opposition and is soon sitting at the table by themselves. Their winnings are coming at the expense of the recreational horseplayer and it’s only a matter of time before they drive them away.

We recently did a series for the TDN on “super trainers” (click here for part one and part two) and how their dominance is threatening to drive the smaller training outfits out of business. This is no different. These are the “super bettors” and there may just come a time when they have no one to compete against but themselves.

One solution is fixed odds betting, which has taken off in Australia and is said to be among the reason racetrack betting is on the rise there. But to go to fixed odds betting would require a seismic change here in the sport, a sport where even the simplest things cannot get accomplished.

So get used to it. 5-1 doesn’t mean 5-1 anymore. The odds don’t mean anything, not least until the super bettors have thrown their huge wagers into the pool a half second before the windows close.

In the meantime, NYRA owes the public an explanation here. What happened? Who bet what? How does a horse go from 5-1 to 5-2 after a race starts? Transparency never hurts and perhaps the answers will squelch some of the anger this race generated among horseplayers.

Soi Phet Becomes a Millionaire

The public loves those the old, hard knocking horses that keep getting it done and few fit that bill better than Soi Phet (Tizbud).

A 10-year-old gelding who was claimed by Leonard Powell in 2013 for $16,000, he went over the $1 million mark in earnings with his win last week in the Bertrando S. at Los Alamitos. A total of $978,170 of his earnings have come after he was claimed. Still game and determined at his age, he won by nose, and it was his second straight stakes win. He’s won 15 career races, including eight stakes.

He’ll head to Del Mar now. You won’t find him in the GI Pacific Classic, but in lesser open stakes or maybe in a Cal-bred race.

What a cool horse.

The Curse of the 2017 Triple Crown

When Tapwrit (Tapit) ran fifth in the GII Suburban Saturday he continued what is becoming a lengthy losing streak from last year’s winners of the Triple Crown races. Always Dreaming has gone 0 for 5 since winning the Kentucky Derby. Cloud Computing (Maclean’s Music) is winless in three starts since his victory in the GI Preakness and Tapwrit is now 0 for 3 since the Belmont. The total for the three is 0 for 11.

A Quiet July 4

Many tracks are now creating Super Saturday style cards where they put six or seven of their major stakes on the same program. That’s what Belmont did Saturday with its Stars and Stripes card. They’re great cards and the public is betting on them with gusto.

The only problem is that there aren’t enough stakes to go around, and a lot of days that used to be important ones on the calendar no longer include a race of any significance. Take July 4, which used to the day the Suburban was run in New York. The feature at Belmont that day was the $100,000 Manila S. Elsewhere, there wasn’t a single graded stakes run in the country. Perhaps moving the Suburban back to July 4 would add spice to that card while still leaving enough big races for Stars and Stripes Day for that to remain a spectacular card.

 

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