When it comes to tote pools everyone assumes bigger is better. We know that commingling does a good job for increasing pools – or at least looking big. But for the punter, is bigger better?
Let’s take a closer look at commingling.
For a long time now, horse racing’s customers and fans have been fed the line that what is good for the operator is good for the game, and therefore it follows that it is good for the punter.
But that is stringing along a lot of assumptions, and one thing punters know is that stringing things together makes the odds very long and unlikely!
- The first rule of commingling.
Gambling rules had settled by the time commingling came along, and so new rules had to be added to cater for the new offerings.
One rule said an exception would be made for the take out deduction, or the house take, to follow what the “host” tote does.
That was a rule in favour of the local punter because often the local take out is bigger than the commingled host.
Here are some deductions:
South Africa 20%
Singapore 19%
Australia 16.5%
UK 16.5%
Hong Kong 15.7%
New Zealand 14.5%
- The punter should know where he stands.
Another addition to facilitate commingling of pools was that the punter should not be kept in the dark. This is an excellent idea, but ever punter knows it’s only talk.
Since the start of commingled pools one of the biggest bugs is the fact that the dividends change after the race has closed, and even after the race is run. The number of complaints is awesome.
In the USA, the late changes annoyed customers so much that operators closed down computer players minutes before the off to stabilize the dividends for everyone. In some places “late” computer system players got banned in fairness to oncourse customers.
When it comes to exotics, the poor punter is really left in the dark.
Often punters have no idea how they are travelling because ticket updates becomes pure guesswork. Recently the soccer exotic was off while the previous day’s dividend was still anyone’s guess. How is that knowing how you stand?
- Commingling, the tail wags the dog.
When we are the smaller pool and weaker currency, commingling with a bigger and stronger pool returns a greater stability.
Saftote’s biggest weakness is when it is small relative to international bets that get added, and those bets change the dividends.
Poorly supported events and bets that don’t have a following suffer from the effects of a small pool.
Often a punter can end up playing to win mostly his/her own money back and dramatically change the dividends for bets already placed.
When SA plays into a huge pool like Dubai or Hong Kong the local player gets stability that is rock solid.
It means you could have a huge bet in Rand terms on horses like JJ The Jetplane and Variety Club in HK and you wouldn’t move the dividend much no matter what.
Unfortunately when a pool merges with us locally, the weakness of our tote allows for a punter playing in Euros or Dollars to become the tail that wags the dog.
A medium sized bet in foreign currencies can have disastrous effects on the dividends of the local players, who have no protection. Often the late updates mean the local punters can’t even play to get the benefit of other dividends going bigger.
- Who are the NETT winners?
When pools are commingled “into” ours, a really interesting question is who are the “nett” winners over time?
Sometimes when a dividend just looks wrong, one wonders if we lost in Rands and the flow was a loss for the local punting pool and a win for someone else.
Is it reasonable to guess that offshore players are playing more for gain than for entertainment value?
Do they get a preferential treatment, like the rebate systems in HK, Australia and the USA from Saftote?
If some players are playing from higher ground, does that come at the expense of the local punter?
These are reasonable questions that deserve answers.
- The house take (the “vig”, the juice, the cut).
Should punters care about the deductions? Our television gurus often, very often, refer to the stability of big commingled pools as “value”.
Clearly value is a different thing completely.
Once the house has set the takeout, say 20% of the pool, “value” can only be found if you are able to get better odds in another way.
If you are a serious or semi-serious player then value becomes everything. What the deduction is can determine whether you will be a winner or loser. Or just how much you will lose.
In Hong Kong for example, the effective take out is 15.7% and big losing bets have an additional 10% rebate, that gives a player greater chance to break even, or play longer, than if the takeout is 20% or 25%.
Thinking about value becomes meaningless if the dividend can change significantly after you have placed your bet, and it’s worse if you have no opportunity to respond to big changes. These conditions set you with a big disadvantage.
Commingling requires some analysis.
We need to make sure that (at the very least) things are fair for local punters.
Repetition of words like “value” no longer reassures punters.
It’s not enough that very poor information dissemination to punters is brushed off with a sorry for “delayed update” or computer hassles.
South African punters are demanding the information that is guaranteed them by the rules.
Every new product make a profit for Saftote off punters.
