Sunday Spa Late Pick 5

[Socalman3]

Socalman3 Wrote:
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> BitPlayer Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I see from Andy Serling\'s Twitter feed that he
> is
> > going to have David O\'Rourke, President of
> NYRA,
> > on at the beginning of Talking Horses today to
> > \"discuss events from this past weekend.\"  I
> have
> > no idea what the scope of the discussion will
> be
> > (just the breakdowns, or also the off-the-turf
> > decision making?), but it might be worth a
> listen.
> >  The show starts at 12:05 EDT today and is
> usually
> > uploaded to Youtube afterwards.
>
> Thank you for heads up on this. Due to work, I
> wont be able to listen to it live, but I will be
> very interested to hear what he has to say.  If it
> is anything less than abject acknowledgement of
> the failure, the problem remains.

Well, you have to give the O\'Rourke credit for acknowledging that what they did was wrong and that they need to do better.  So, on the positive side of the ledger, they finally acknowledged wrongdoing (albeit, 3 days late) and admit they need to do something for the bettors.  On balance, his statement was more positive that negative, but there were some negatives.  

One, he said, by way of explanation, that they asked for time to extend the post time and they asked to cancel the bet and were not permitted this.  Well, that seems to me mighty significant. He did not say who he asked and why that person said no, but it seems to me that any dealing with this issue needs to expose exactly what happened here and proactive measures need to be taken so whoever it is doesn\'t make the wrong calls in those situations.  If they had not been denied their request to delay post time or two cancel the bet, this situation wouldn\'t exist. To the extent blame is relevant, it is now clear who deserves to be blamed for this.  This cannot get fixed without getting to the bottom of this.

The other is that he did not address the elephant in the room.  Declaring the races ALL WIN was contrary to the rules and regulations. Did the same wisenheimer who wouldn\'t allow him to cancel the bet or delay post time allow this breaking of the rules?  Why did they choose to break the rules in favor of one group of bettors against another group of bettors?  These were all legitimate questions and the guy did not address them.  

I am not sure who Serling is. He may be conflicted and it is not appropriate that he doesn\'t clearly disclose his interests. Is he supposed to be a journalist, a pitch man, a consumer advocate? Is he on the side of horseplayers or on the side of management? That needs to be disclosed because you cannot understand what he is saying without knowing that. He sort of said that he is NYRA but he is also a horseplayer (sort of trying to have it both ways) - but in situations like this, you cannot really have it both ways, you need to come out on one side of the divide. The one thing I can say is that IF Serling is supposed to be either a journalist or a consumer (horseplayer) advocate, then he completely fell down on the job. He did not ask the obvious tough questions and he allowed the guy to get off with just giving an abject apology without getting into the difficult stuff. However, if he was interviewing his boss, then that is a really difficult position.  I would just say there shouldn\'t be a veneer that O\'Rourke actually faced the betting public because Serling was conflicted and couldn\'t ask the questions a pure member of the betting public could.

It looks, at least, like they have stopped digging in the hole and have throw away the shovel, but they still have a lot of work to do - including addressing the glaring omissions from the talk.

[BB]

I believe it\'s two separate issues, and O\'Rourke\'s opacity was due to his not wanting NYRA to look even worse than it already does.

On the inability to refund the wager, see page 67 of the NYSGC rules on horse racing. There are no provisions for refunding P5 wagers due to any number of surface changes. As to who made that decision, that would be the stewards, who are charged with enforcing the rules as written.

O\'Rourke\'s saying that they WANTED to refund the wagers is either disingenuous (because he should have known they couldn\'t) or damning (in the case that he/they DIDN\'T know that).

As to being unable to delay the race, Im guessing it was Fox Sports that said no. NYRA delays or moves up post times all the time. If they didn\'t delay the race because TV guys said so, well, I guess that puts Fox in charge of the henhouse.

[Socalman3]

BB Wrote:
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> I believe it\'s two separate issues, and O\'Rourke\'s
> opacity was due to his not wanting NYRA to look
> even worse than it already does.
>
> On the inability to refund the wager, see page 67
> of the NYSGC rules on horse racing. There are no
> provisions for refunding P5 wagers due to any
> number of surface changes. As to who made that
> decision, that would be the stewards, who are
> charged with enforcing the rules as written.
>
> O\'Rourke\'s saying that they WANTED to refund the
> wagers is either disingenuous (because he should
> have known they couldn\'t) or damning (in the case
> that he/they DIDN\'T know that).
>
> As to being unable to delay the race, Im guessing
> it was Fox Sports that said no. NYRA delays or
> moves up post times all the time. If they didn\'t
> delay the race because TV guys said so, well, I
> guess that puts Fox in charge of the henhouse.


Thank you, this is very interesting.

I wonder why they couldn\'t have just done my novel solution?  Once they broke the rules by declaring the off the turf ALL WINS, they then needed to declare the rest of the bet ALL WINS so that the breaking of the rules did not prejudice players who played by the rules and expected the rules to be enforced.  Yes, that would have resulted in a $50,000 minus pool with everybody getting back 105% but also it is a result that nobody can complain about.  Who can complain about it?  O\'Rourke himself said he wanted to give the money back and he wants to seed pools.  Well declaring the whole bet all wins does exactly what he says he wanted to do.  Plus, it is entirely justified.

The other thing that is completely missing is nobody is talking about the violation of the rules and why that was okay and why there is no remedy for a breach of the rules. If there is no remedy for the breach of the rules, aren\'t the rules pretty meaningless?  If the answer is one of interpretation - they didn\'t think the public knew because there wasn\'t enough time for the public announcement to be heard by everybody - that would establish an absolutely awful precedent and would be completely unmanageable on a going forward basis.  Imagine every time there is a switch off the turf, you have to do an analysis of whether the public got enough notice or not? Also, how do you make the decision after the fact instead of at the time?  How are people supposed to know the rules before they bet if they are only told of them after the bet? It just seems like a completely ludicrous interpretation and terrible precedent. Who could possibly justify such an action as consistent with the rules?  if it is, the rules are worthless for two reasons, one there is no remedy if they are breached, plus, they are allowed to be changed after the fact with impunity.

[TGJB]

Props for the Fox/henhouse bit, Bob.