IS UK RACING A FRAUD ?

C

cosmic

Amateur Rider
Joined
Jun 29, 2024
Messages
12
Location
Athens
There is an element of fraud in all types of horse racing.
Al Capone used to own horses back in his time and there is somewhere an old youtube video
in which an old journalist recollects when Al gave him a certain winner and he made some money.

Traditionally it is this: Some crafty ones manage to make big money with small money.
This again does not necessarily imply a blatant and flagrant violation of racing rules but sometimes it does.
So a horse that excelled in some secret trials, away from the prying eye of the stopwatch men,
can be the vehicle to riches and it's not a flagrant violation, but a jockey instructed to jump from his horse is such a violation.

But we all accept it's part of the landscape and have we not profited ourselves by eavesdropping ?
My own historical such win was a rider called Von Spee, after the German pocket battleship.

This type of hanky panky stuff takes place everywhere on earth.
In somee racing jurisdictions it happens more often, in some otherS it happens less often.
Could n't have been worse than in Saddam Hussein's Iraq according to an Iraqi stable lad I knew who left Iraq and was working in Ireland - Saddam was fixing all the races through his brother who was the chief of police he said to me.

Be all that as it may, it's for the history books.
There are new boys in town.
The bookies are doing it now in a new systematic way.
How ?
By controlling the mass media.
The media used to be the source of information for the races, for all of us.
So what if we make them write nonsense ?
If we do that who will sue them ? The capital gains commission maybe ?
So let's see the effect.
We make them name false favourites all oever the place, we downgrade them - and we pay them back
by placing ads of course.
The Racing Post have deliberately downgraded their website sometime in 2016. The new site is as we all know a rubbish site compared to what it was.

What then happend if we do this ?
Won't it be a boomerang ?
The racing savvies will slaughter us.
But not really, they won't.
The play becomes one sided, the money goes to the jollies and the steamers (false jollies and steamers) and the in crowd are few and in any case we control them.

So by downgrading the services the bookies are on top and they have customers from all over the world these days who are more gullible.
After some serious stuying i have come to the conclusion that the dirty mob are out to get us and they succeed but ultimately they will destroy horse racing.
 
barjon said:
Oh dear! Another mad conspiracy theory hits the internet :machinegunner:
Click to expand...

Why is it a conspiracy theory ?
Everyone knows racing post was downgraded.
I was not unhappy to pay a subscription. I bought one before the downgrade but all there was to it as premium content was a small TS table, with many mistakes as well. Then the idea of on the spot reporters was mine and I passed it to them sometime in 2010. Where are they now ? Too many winners for the liking of the bookies ...
Same goes for the other websites.
Of course the racing authorities don't even care about such things. They want the horses to run and the floodlights to work.
Turnover dwindles but for the bookies there are still many cows to milk and if race courses close down they will find some other thing, kino, lotto - is the way they think.
Anyway we know the bookies like false pennies so it's not conspiracy theory.
 
He's right with the bit about the media

Without the revenues from bookies ad's they would go bust, Talkshite deffo would
 
Strictly speaking there should be tote system everywhere,
Under tote the betting companies would have no reason to interfere or to limit accounts (unless one is well and truly found guilty by a court of justice). From the moment we have accepted bookies to run the show we are in it.
The reasons we have bookies are historical. Bookmaking existed in the 19th century but electronic totalizator systems did not exist. So they succeeded in maintaining the upper hand.
 
Couldn't agree more, the corporate bookies are ruining the game for the punter. We need a proper Tote/PMU system ASAP.
 
trefflich said:
Couldn't agree more, the corporate bookies are ruining the game for the punter. We need a proper Tote/PMU system ASAP.
Click to expand...

Been saying as much off and on since I joined this forum in 1996/97.

Got laughed at regularly for suggesting it.

As you say, though, it needs to be a proper system that replaces it. It might need to lose money in the early years to gain traction and probably needs to go global but the long term benefits would be enormous for the industry.
 
The big bookies are absolute parasites on racing and, more worryingly, society. They have caused untold damage to sports funding and the lives of people in general.

Nothing against the straight bookie who is willing to roll with the punches but the large corporates are tying their customers and racing's hands behind their backs before entering the ring.
 
trefflich said:
The big bookies are absolute parasites on racing and, more worryingly, society. They have caused untold damage to sports funding and the lives of people in general.

Nothing against the straight bookie who is willing to roll with the punches but the large corporates are tying their customers and racing's hands behind their backs before entering the ring.
Click to expand...
Lives are destroyed by any system.
About 1% of the racegoers is my experience, because they don't know the rules of gambling behaviour.
Gambling takes much of your time also if you want to take it seriously but that's another chapter.
When I was young they told me that the banks will never give me a loan if they knew I was gambling on the horses yet what made me shy to admit was not that, it was the time it takes.
Anyway I think the French are managing their races better but I have liittle experience, never spent a lot of time in France.
 
walsworth said:
I was told that a bank was a place where you could borrow money if you could prove that you didn't need it.
Click to expand...

Before the economic crisis I was reeiving phone calls everyday offering loans.
One day I phoned the bank for assistance over the fixing of my passwords and the next day they called me "hello, I 'm the girl from yesterday, do you want a loan ?".
Now as you may have heard we have no races at all in Greece. Race course closed by orders from above, disgrace - they say they will make it a storage area for window glasses.
Except what exists in the internet from other countries.
 
walsworth said:
I was told that a bank was a place where you could borrow money if you could prove that you didn't need it.
Click to expand...

They certainly used to make you jump through multiple hoops before they did sanction a loan.

Then they seemed to realise there was more money to be made lending money to people who couldn't afford them and making their lives a misery. It all goes back to Thatcher.
 
cosmic said:
Before the economic crisis I was reeiving phone calls everyday offering loans.
One day I phoned the bank for assistance over the fixing of my passwords and the next day they called me "hello, I 'm the girl from yesterday, do you want a loan ?".
Now as you may have heard we have no races at all in Greece. Race course closed by orders from above, disgrace - they say they will make it a storage area for window glasses.
Except what exists in the internet from other countries.
Click to expand...
Out of curiosity are you a Brit living in Athens, or a Greek living in Athens? And if it's the former how long have you been out there?
 
Since the UK market is free the only way to fix things is if some industrialists come forward and creates something like the PMU.
The present Tote is no good, also it belongs to a bookie company now (Betfred ?).
The punters traditionally don't like Tote because they are afraid of some huge downward drift.
While this is true for someone who has a "secret weapon"in his hands, for the public the effect is insignificant and we have to suffer
from the bookie companies.

The bookies have taken it too far.
Back in the days I knew some. One who was doing it illegally was an old schoolmate of mine.
Then somebody else I knew makes a big bet with the old schoolmate and wins some 10-15 thousand.
So he pays up. He pays up in banknotes, one dollar bills, coins and a cheque.
As I was present, I grab the cheque because the winner was owing me some money and I went to the other side of town, to a
home appliances shop to cash it.
Then the bookie says to the winner "you are out - I 'm not taking no more bets from you".
Well, a little later all three of us went for a friendly Chinese dinner to a restaurant called "the dragon" and that was the last I saw
of both.
So you see it's all about money and systems of wagering - no blood, no gunboats, no shooting.

But they have destroyed gambling is my opinion and something new is needed.
 
cosmic said:
Since the UK market is free the only way to fix things is if some industrialists come forward and creates something like the PMU.
The present Tote is no good, also it belongs to a bookie company now (Betfred ?).
The punters traditionally don't like Tote because they are afraid of some huge downward drift.
While this is true for someone who has a "secret weapon"in his hands, for the public the effect is insignificant and we have to suffer
from the bookie companies.

The bookies have taken it too far.
Back in the days I knew some. One who was doing it illegally was an old schoolmate of mine.
Then somebody else I knew makes a big bet with the old schoolmate and wins some 10-15 thousand.
So he pays up. He pays up in banknotes, one dollar bills, coins and a cheque.
As I was present, I grab the cheque because the winner was owing me some money and I went to the other side of town, to a
home appliances shop to cash it.
Then the bookie says to the winner "you are out - I 'm not taking no more bets from you".
Well, a little later all three of us went for a friendly Chinese dinner to a restaurant called "the dragon" and that was the last I saw
of both.
So you see it's all about money and systems of wagering - no blood, no gunboats, no shooting.

But they have destroyed gambling is my opinion and something new is needed.
Click to expand...
Think you're out of date with the Tote?
As far as I know(don't bet with them)they are under new ownership,and pay SP if it's better than Tote return?
 
reet hard said:
Think you're out of date with the Tote?
As far as I know(don't bet with them)they are under new ownership,and pay SP if it's better than Tote return?
Click to expand...

People like betting with bookies because they get a fixed price.
If the price drifts downwards they won't be affected and this is particularly attractive when somebody has advance information.
With mutuel, when we had no bookies, these people were placing their bets a few seconds before the off so nobody could follow.
Sometimes the savvies were placing their bets a bit earlier so people were following.
Again sometimes this produced a "lemmings effect". I remember a horse called Red spy who made some initial move downwards in price and then it was backed so heavily as to make the real hot favourite into a 5 to 1. Red spy is still running.
Yet I was not unhappy and the bookies now are so precautious that nobody trusts them.
They arealso capable of throwing "cheese" into the market to make you into a lemming. I don'tlike them.
Another thing I don't like about the bookies and the tote is the poor selection of markets.
I wrote to bet365 once and asked them "why you have only 3-4 racing markets and at the same time in the football matches you have 45 ?".
Their reply was that they have few markets so their traders can control them.
 
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