For many who’ve been affected, it may feel like shutting the barn door after, well, you know how that goes. But track management is at least attempting to keep the problem from dragging on for more than seven racing days. Now we’ll see what effect Del Mar’s new policy has.
The start of the San Diego County track’s glamorous summer season has been plagued by changes in odds in the seconds before races start, the kind of severe and abrupt shifts that can only be produced by computer-assisted players dumping huge bets into the parimutuel win pool at the last moment.
On Tuesday, Del Mar management followed the lead of other tracks that have faced late odds changes and announced that, beginning Thursday, computer-assisted players’ access to the win pool will close two minutes before post time for each race.
“This is part of an overall effort to ensure an optimal wagering experience for fans,” Del Mar president Josh Rubinstein said in the announcement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We had taken steps to encourage CAW (computer-assisted wagering) players to process their win wagers earlier in the cycle, but it has become clear that we need to take additional measures.”
Bill Nader, president and CEO of Thoroughbred Owners of California, said the decision was finalized by Rubinstein and Nader after discussions that began following the first weekend of the Del Mar meet that opened July 18.
“It was very disruptive and unsettling, so we needed to step in quickly and take action,” Nader said, calling the spike in late odds shifts at Del Mar “unexpected” and hard to explain.
“Computer-assisted wagering” doesn’t refer to what you and I do via online accounts using our laptops or phones, so we’re not affected by the two-minute cutoff. It refers to much bigger operations that take advantage of new technology – not to mention financial inducements from tracks coveting their business – to identify inefficiencies in parimutuel pools and pump money into the system in amounts and at late stages in wagering that would have been impossible in the days of pen-and-paper handicapping and cash betting.
The changes in odds caused by those large bets can go far beyond what fans accept as a characteristic of parimutuel gambling, in which odds are directly determined by percentages of wagers on the various horses or combinations and winning payoffs are based only on the final odds.
Odds shifts have been well-documented by Daily Racing Form reporter Steve Andersen and others. At Del Mar this year, race winners whose odds dropped sharply between reaching and breaking from the starting gate include Pokerknightatvees (going from 7-1 to 7-2) on opening day July 18; Indispensable (9-2 to 3-1) and Hannah Buckle (6-1 to 7-2) on the first Saturday; Velocity (8-1 to 7-2) and Medoro (9-2 to 5-2) on that Sunday; Smart Code (6-1 to 3-1) last Friday; and Nanci Griffith (19-1 to 6-1) and Bing Crosby Stakes winner Lovesick Blues (45-1 to 18-1) last Saturday.
Some losers have seen their odds plummet too, and some horses’ odds naturally rise when others’ fall.
Win or lose, rise or fall, it’s a headache for serious players. And even for me.
Smart Code was my top pick (after a scratch) in the Southern California News Group consensus for last Friday’s second race. I bet when he was 9-1 in an early flash of the odds, believing the horse would end up closer to the morning line of 6-1. His late drop to 3-1 meant he returned $8.80 for each $2 bet, meaning my profit was less than 60% of what I expected.
Imaboutago was my choice for Saturday’s ninth race, the Daisycutter Handicap, and when I bet I was hoping to get odds close to the 6-1 morning line. Imaboutago went from 9-2 at the gate to 2-1 as the race started, and finished fourth. I would not have made that bet if I’d known the horse would be 2-1.
Many frequent horseplayers probably have had similar experiences this summer.
It’s a bad look for racing at a time when it is being dwarfed by other forms of sports gambling, in which a player locks in the odds displayed as he or she makes the bet.
With the two-minute cutoff, non-computer-aided fans will at least have that amount of time to see approximate final odds before deciding whether and how to bet, without resorting to estimating final odds based on the “will-pay” data for multi-race wagers that’s available on account-wagering sites and track TV screens. (Los Alamitos and Santa Anita offer “projected odds” based on will-pays, but Del Mar has yet to adopt the helpful feature.)
The cutoff is likely to come with a cost, though. After New York tracks announced a cutoff on win bets several years ago, it is believed CAWs shifted their action to exactas and other multi-horse bets.
Will that happen at Del Mar? Nader said he expects so, with CAWs all but stopping win bets at Del Mar from Thursday onward.
How much could that shrink Del Mar’s betting pools? Nader figured it would mean about $300,000, or 2% to 3%, less betting, a potentially significant hit for the purse fund that TOC members count on.
Could that difference be made up by increased action from non-computer bettors whose confidence is restored by Del Mar’s policy change?
“That’s something we’ll be looking to see,” Nader said. “Maybe there’ll be some increase from (other) segments to offset the loss that we’re going to experience from the two-minute cutoff.”
Nader called it “a tradeoff decision we had to make … to forgo a portion of our handle to restore customer confidence, customer experience and for the greater good.”
The first two weeks of Del Mar’s eight-week meet have featured good wins by Nysos, Formidable Man and debuting 2-year-old Brant, but also the problem of late odds changes.
When it comes to potential solutions, more than for huge computer-assisted bets, better late than never.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.
