So That's How He Did It

[HP]

For your amusement, from drf.com

BC pick 6 inquiry launched
By MATT HEGARTY
The New York State Racing and Wagering Board has launched a formal inquiry into winning Breeders\' Cup Pick 6 bets placed through Catskill Off-Track Betting Corporation, board officials said Monday.

One bettor, making telephone wagers through Catskill OTB\'s account wagering service, bought all six winning tickets on the Breeders\' Cup pick 6, according to board officials. Each winning ticket was worth $428,392 plus consolation payoffs for selecting five winners. The total value of the tickets is well more than $2.5 million.

It was not immediately clear whether any of the tickets have been cashed.

According to several officials, the winning wagers were included on one ticket that picked only one horse in each of the first four races of the Pick 6 sequence at Arlington Park on Saturday, including two longshots, and then used the entire fields in the last two races.

\"It is an unusual circumstance that you would want to look at no matter where it happened,\" said Stacy Clifford, a spokeswoman for the New York Racing and Wagering Board. \"We\'re looking at the entire situation.\"

Tim Smith, the commissioner of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, and D.G. Van Clief, the president of Breeders\' Cup, co-signed a letter sent to the New York State Racing and Wagering Board on Monday requesting an investigation into the wager.
The two groups jointly operate the Breeders\' Cup program, including all wagering.

\"We request your immediate attention in this matter and offer our full assistance in the investigation,\" the letter said.

According to officials, the investigation will focus on whether the bettor was able to past post his wagers, or submit his wagers after the running of one or more Breeders\' Cup races.

Donald Groth, the chairman of Catskill OTB, which is in upstate New York, said that the winning bettor is a 29-year-old Maryland resident who placed the wagers by phone. The bettor has requested anonymity, Groth said. He said that \"there is nothing to indicate that this was anything but a very good day for our customer.\"

\"I know why you\'re suspicious, but that\'s not my job,\" Groth said. \"I\'m familiar enough with the customer that I believe this is legitimate.\"

Groth said that he has personally checked the time stamps for the telephone calls in which the pick six wagers were placed. \"They were all placed beforehand,\" he said.
Investigators, however, said they believed the tickets were not submitted until after the Juvenile was run at 3:25 p.m. Central time. Pick 6 wagers were required to be placed before the fifth race, which went off at 1:37 p.m. Central time.

The winner of the first leg of the pick six, the Mile, was Domedriver, who paid $54. The second leg, the Sprint, was won by the favorite, Orientate ($7.40), and the third leg, the Filly and Mare Turf, was won by Starine, who paid $28.40. The winner of the fourth leg, the Juvenile, was Vindication, who paid $10.20.

The pick six was filled out by High Chapparal, the 9-10 favorite in the Turf, and longshot Volponi, who paid $89 as the longest shot on the board and highest priced winner of the day.

[TGJB]

This is actually very good news. I\'ve been screaming to everyone that would listen (including a producer at HBO Real Sports) about past posting ever since Monarchos won the Florida Derby. If you think about it, the last thing the tracks want is to find out this is happening-- the money isn\'t coming out of their pockets (in fact, whoever is doing it is \"betting\" a lot of money), they would be hurt by the scandal, and if anything is discovered, they might even be liable. I\'m not saying it\'s a cover up-- just that they were never going to try too hard to find out.
If you go back to where this started, they actually gave the fox the keys to the hen-house-- they let a bettor go into the system to\"check the pools\" for his \"computer betting system\", a system that purportedly was retuning a profit of something like 28% on handle over two years at Gulfstream while hurting his own prices by betting huge amounts.

[HP]

The odds of hitting this Pick Six were astronomical (as usual), but the odds of hitting it with four straight singles (including 25-1 and 13-1 shots) have got to be exponentially higher. Maybe some of our math whiz types can take a crack at this to come up with a line.

I was reminded of DeNiro\'s speech in \"Casino\" where he\'s screaming at his slots manager about getting scammed by someone who hit three huge jackpots in a row and he says, \"if you didn\'t know you were being scammed on the second hit you\'re either too stupid to have this job or you were in on it.\"

There are some other great lines in this article.

\"I know why you\'re suspicious, but that\'s not my job,\" Groth said. \"I\'m familiar enough with the customer that I believe this is legitimate.\"

So what is his effin job anyway? Since Groth is \"familiar enough\" with the customer I guess that\'s it. I guess he was thinking someone would say, \"I\'m satisfied, pay the man his $2.5 million.\" How he figures this is better than \"I have no comment at this time\" is one for the ages. I have a feeling Groth may be saying \"that\'s not my job\" in a different context shortly.

Why would any 29 year old Maryland resident bet anyplace else but...Catskill OTB? They have such nice...mountains there.

This may turn into some kind of carryover, somewhere! HP

[TGJB]

Uh-uh. What this is going to turn into is law suit city. And oh yeah, the biggest story in the history of racing. The industry is really \"effin\" lucky this didn\'t break while they were trying to put that anti-betting bill through congress, and if this becomes the full fledged stinker it very well might, the damage to the industry will be severe-- can you say Federal regulation?

[P-Dub]

You both bring up good points. Why would he bet through the Catskill OTB??  He has 4 singles, including Domedriver, and he bets all in the Turf where High Chaparral wins at 4-5? He singles Domedriver, running against ROG, and not HC?? Something smells here.

[Mall]

When I 1st read the article I had the impression that nobody else even had 5, but it seems to be saying that someone who hits 6 also cashes the same tix with 5, & that is not the case. Assuming this guy did past post, & I\'d be willing to make a very large wager that he did, then the best anyone did was 5, which would make the consolation tix 4, no? But those tix have already been discarded.

JB: Good for you & your score & your picks, although I\'m not entirely clear on why no one has said anything about Domedriver, who looked very good on the figures I was looking at. More to the point, the reason the Monarchos bettor wanted access to the amts bet was so he could calculate to the penny the impact his bets would have on his odds. There has never been any claim, indication or evidence that he was past posting, & he continued betting after the access was cut off. The interesting thing about the story was the lack of follow-up. At the time everyone was talking about his one(not two) yr return my position was to let me know where things stood after 5 or 10 yrs. Interesting, to me at least, that he is nowhere to be found nowadays, & Gulfstream suffered a 15% decline in handle this yr.

[ExPlayer]

   Yeah, maybe this guy pass posted.  It\'s a very odd wager to make in any event. 6 times? on a wheel of the last two? Prob a crook, but the jury is still out.

   Now, what\'s this nonsense about access to the \'pools\'.  All you need is the payoff matrix and the pool size, to determine the exact stats you need. That\'s it. There is NO OTHER information to be had. You can get  that info for free at americatab.com

   If special access was ever given, it was to place computerized wagers via a program. We should all be allowed to do that by the way. Nothing fishy about it, but it shouldn\'t be allowed for the privileged few.

   Is it too late to play the Super at Aqu from Sunday?

[tony g]

Each of this guy\'s pick 6 tickets would have 18 5\'s, right?  

He had 96 combinations: 4 singles times 8 horses in the turf times 12 horses in the classic.

1 of the combinations hit 6.  The 7 tickets with Voponi & the losers in the turf hit 5 and the 11 tickets with High Chapperal & the losers in the Classic also hit 5.

The other 77 combos had the 4 singles & the various losers in the last 2 races.

If there are other 5\'s those people are entitled to $ and they should be easy to find as hitting 5 was taxable and you had to sign for it.

If no one has 6 it is possible that they only pay 5, or the highest number of winners, and that there is no consolation.

What a disaster.

[The Kid]

According to a later DRF story the guy had not only all of the 6/6 tickets, but all of the 5/6 tickets. That means everybody else is S--- out of luck.

How this might be possible is beyond me. TGJB please explain earlier post about Florida Derby.

[Mall]

Jim: The biggest advantage he had was on the tri, for which there is no payoff matrix. Also, he had up to the second information, which is better than the tracks & Ameritab can offer.

Tony: You\'re right of course on the 5 of 6 payoffs on his \"losing tickets.\" Assuming what I feel certain happened in fact happened, check my rough estimate math on what this cost the others with 5 of 6. The total pool was $4.5 million, & approx $2.4 went to Mr Single, with the remaining $2.1 going to those with 5 of 6, who received $4,600, which means there were 456 such tix. Assuming that his tickets are bogus, the whole pool would have gone to those 456, minus his tix, so the 5 of 6 would have paid in excess of $10k. At this point, there are probably a few people who wish they had not used a 10%er to cash their 5 of 6 tickets. I obviously didn\'t read all of the fine print on this pk6, as I thought there might be a carryover to Sun, the last day of the meet, which is when these bets are usually paid out even if nobody hits 6 of 6. AP did not even have a pk6 on Sun.

[Mall]

According to the article, Kid, there were 186  5 of 6 tix & of those 186 Mr Single had 108, which they\'re saying would result in a $33k payoff per other ticket if all of Mr Single\'s tix are voided. The article also implies that the reason they would not pay 4 of 6 is because it would be too difficult because most if not all tix have been discarded, which was my original question. Interesting, isn\'t it, that Mr Single had only opened the acct 2 weeks before the BC & this was his 1st ever bet using the acct.

I\'m not JB, but the punter in question, known at the time as the mystery man from South or North Dakota, made an approx $280k win bet on Monarchos a second or so before the gate opened which, as a result of the 1 min cycle in use at the time, made it appear as though bets were made after the race had started. BTW, it\'s funny no one ever mentions that the bet in question(and similar bets) caused the odds of the other horses to go up. The cycle has since been reduced to 30 seconds, which is apparently as good as it\'s going to get if most of the money is bet offtrack & you want to give some guy in an OTB in Kansas, for example, the opportunity to make bets up to the time the gates open.

[ExPlayer]

   Mall, there\'s very little advantage to having up to the second info in the exactas or the tri.  I\'ve been watching these pools for over 25 years, and very little of importance happens at the bell these days.

   The pools are remarkably efficient, and tend to be so well before the bell, especially at large tracks.

   The only thing we need to be concerned with here is if some clown in the computer room got greedy.  How sloppy the controls would have to be , I leave to your imagination, but past posting is trivial to implement if you are the Wizard behind the curtain.

[derby1592]

At first glance this guy looks about as innocent as OJ but then you have to start wondering.

He was so clever that he planned this all out weeks in advance. Obviously, had an accomplice on the inside and somehow rigged a complex network of computers to allow a post-race wager that enabled him to cash in on a sure thing.

Very impressive.

But he was also stupid enough (or cheap enough)not to spend a few extra bucks on the tickets and select 2 or 3 horses in the first four legs to avoid making it look so obvious. That would have cost a few thousand rather than a few hundred bucks but, big deal, he knew he could not lose. And after the 2 longshots had already won, he should have known there was no need to play more than 1 ticket since he was almost guaranteed a big payoff regardless of the outcome of the last 2 races.

Very stupid.

This guy is either the dumbest smart guy on the planet or the luckiest stupid pick-6 better of all time.

I cannot imagine a worse scenario for the racing industry. The integrity of every wager past and future now comes into question. The ridiculous reaction from the NY official is mind-boggling. This thing is going to take on a life of its own. The pressure to downplay what happened is tremendous so be prepared for all sorts of spinning on various fronts.

Chris

[mholbert]

according to one article, he had another $2 ticket all/all/ and four singles, in which he lost.

[HP]

According to today\'s Times - Autotote says he made the bets at 2.13 and 2.14, well before the 2.37PM deadline. The winner, Derrick Davis, says they made a mistake taking his bet and put him down for $12 instead of $2, which means this \"mistake\" (giving him the pick six about 5 extra times, math not guaranteed by HP Industries Ltd.) is what may have cost you pick 5 guys a lot of green.

However, from yesterday\'s article

\"Investigators, however, said they believed the tickets were not submitted until after the Juvenile was run at 3:25 p.m. Central time. Pick 6 wagers were required to be placed before the fifth race, which went off at 1:37 p.m. Central time.\"

No word from Mr. Davis on handicapping. HP