Rebates and the impact on you

[Boscar Obarra]

Big discussion on another board about this.

  I see it as a simple math exercise.

  Do the bettors getting rebates cause the  NET payoffs on winning tickets, on average, to be LOWER than they would be without them in the pool.

  If the answer is yes, they are costing non rebated players money. I don\'t see any way around that. All the other discussion only obfuscates this fact.

[Rick B.]

Too hard to quantify and verify, and in the end,
it doesn\'t matter.There has never been any
guarantee of fair and equal payoffs for all
racetrack patrons: look no further than the
egregious surcharge on winning mutuels imposed
by NYCOTB (good riddance).
 
Non-rebated players have been whining for years
that they are somehow being cheated, which is
nonsense.

Racetrack rebates are the same sort of \"good
customer\", or volume discounts, allocated to
the biggest and most loyal customers in other
market segments.  

The \"Ma & Pa\" businesses have always been envious
of the discounts afforded to WalMart and Costco.
Such is life.

[BitPlayer]

My take is that good players cost everybody money (it\'s a zero-sum game), and that rebate players are more likely to be good players (otherwise their handle would drop).

[Bet Twice]

I\'m not sure how that could be....what are the details behind the argument for this being the case?