In R10 at Sandown yesterday, an ordinary Grade 5, the mob sent out Zipping Maisy at $1.90 in Victoria (slightly more in NSW and on F/O).

She had a modest but useful career (46/9-5-4) but no wins and only two placings in her last 17 starts. She is only a moderate beginner so despite having the rails box it is hard to get excited about her prospects - but the market did. She took the lion's share of a $11,138 Win pool in Victoria ($6,288 in NSW), jumped just OK, got to a slight lead in the back and was over-run in the home straight to finish 5th.

Sending out a runner like that at that price is sheer lunacy. A quick way to the poor house. Somehow, there has to be a way of better educating the mob. It's in our long term interests.

PS: There were some smart Maiden winners on the Sandown program.
PS2: Those TAB pools were a little bigger than adjacent ones in the Bendigo Cup heats where much better dogs were on display.

The Mug gambler is the bloke who punts on a combinations of things regardless of form that person is the one who is keeping us going
How many smart punters out there today who have not lost their shirt a few times punting .
I am yet to see a rich punter ..
Punters are Mugs just like us all we love to have a punt and many follow the money as in this case ..
The form is there to read some pick only the red dog some the pink some pick the shortest price dogs because they think something is taking place a late plunge ..The trainers tip who knows there are a number of reasons a dog starts short as you know Bruce ..

Names of trainers names of dogs it don't matter you are either a mug or a genius ...Flip the coin

You are offering excuses, not solutions. In other words, you are ignoring a major trend in Australian wagering - one that is critical to the greyhound code's fortunes.

After many years of turning a modest profit at the end of the year I have regrettably given away the punting caper. I have many mates and past customers in the same position - gone to the horses or to the great betting ring in the sky, or maybe to Betfair, as some claim. We have been replaced by people with an active thumb, which is where their brain lives.

In part, this reflect the outside world, where many kids no longer study maths at all, and where poker machines, Trackside and the like dominate.

It also reflects the fact that the industry has never bothered to educate potential customers - about tracks, about the breed, or about punting. In fact, it does the reverse and cons the mugs into bets that are losers before they even jump (ie Mysteries etc). It puts on crappy races staffed by crappy dogs, knowing that someone, somewhere will reach into their wallet or activate their thumb to have a go at an imaginary windfall.

Do you know what TABCORP does when nobody picks the First Four? It doubles the theoretical pay out and puts an asterisk next to it. Mugs see the dollars but not the asterisk so they are encouraged to invest again in the hope of a big win. Any little investment will do as they now have flexibets to help them along. They all add up.

Once, the big difference - practically and politically - between pokies and racing was that one required skill and the other did not. No longer. Even if you gain the skill the cluttered betting market makes it impossible to find a decent pool to bet into. The corporates will rip you off soon as look at you as they manipulate their books and their payout policies. The bureaucrats don't care (or don't know) as they get a small piece of whatever bit of the pie is used.

The example I quoted previously is the same as going along to a service station and paying $3/litre to fill up. Rank stupidity. Can we afford that? And for how long?

Formguides, Kevin? 95% of these guys never see a formguide. The remainder would not know how to read it properly when they have one. Nor would most trainers because they don't do their sums. Trainers know galloping ability but not the overall odds of success. Over the years I have many times placed a bet for a trainer - not as a commission agent but to do the guy a favour as he is busy getting the dog and putting it into the box. Often I have been tempted to take the bet myself because it is a dumb bet (but I don't). Today, with the disappearance of bookies, that does not happen so the trainer relies on corporate's F/O and is therefore stuck with crook odds (if he can get on). Over time, he has to lose, along with the mugs.

The world has changed, mate. Ignore it at your peril.

What u are saying is correct so no use crying over spilt milk .
The pokies changed everything and in fact many Greyhound meetings have larger betting pools compared to the Twotts ..
Now Bruce you have to understand many today love the Mug punt and there is nothing wrong with Punting your own dog because thats what Owners trainers and breeders do and we know we will get beat but we also understand we don't like to let them go around with nothing on there back ...

90% of the time the trainer will punt his dog ...

The art of punting is gone all over Bruce .....Sorry to say and i love the stories of how those big betting plunges were pulled off years ago by some of our greatest trainers and Owners ..

Bruce the Mug punter is 90% of us and what you say is true but its over.. we have to move on so we keep pulling the rabbit out of the hat drawing in new Mugs as we go and at least many love the FAST PACE action that the Greyhound delivers ..

Also i would say that every single person on this Earth understands that Greyhounds chase Rabbits ...

My concern is more about the public out there understanding that our industry is so regulated but the Hunters can still go out hunting letting there dogs rip apart native fauna and wild pigs and goats and you tube is full of that stuff but when you consider we cannot even use a sheep skin to sleep on then you get to understand that there is more to this than meets the eye so maybe we should start displaying YOU TUBE clips of Hunters and there dogs ripping apart living animals to make the public aware of our Plight ..

Dogs have evolved into what they are today and do you think the past greyhounds would of all chased with FAKE ARTIFICIAL MATERIAL and we cannot even give them a food reward treat because that is now classed as LIVE BAITING ...

Our dogs have to evolve into pure natural chase dogs and this will take time and years to adjust ...

What other canine industry does not allow treats as part of training ...The greyhound Trainers Owners and Breeders have had to endure this continued punishment from the PTB and they used such aggression and force that they PUSHED OUT HUNDREDS if not Thousands of people from our INDUSTRY ...

ATTACK THE PTB Bruce you dont need to attack the trainer for his dog under performing

I will leave you with one thought.

If we had held on to all the serious punters (not gamblers) which we once had then turnover would be 50% to 100% higher than it is now. That being the case, owners and trainers would be 50% to 100% better off.

Why has that not happened?

Note: You last sentence is wrong. I did attack the PTB and said not a word about the dog's trainer. Please read carefully.

One day Bruce i will buy you a Beer and you can tell me about those big old plunges you and your mates pulled off for years ...lol
PS
Sorry i did not have my reading glasses on ...lol

Quite true in part, but what if you want to back the fav? In any event you are still limited by the size of the pool.

As for "Shouldn't have to spoon feed people" ... well, that's what Ford, Toyota, Kellogs or Coles do. That's the whole point. IF you want to keep customers or find new ones you have no real choice but to get out and attract them. The alternative is to watch them die off - which is happening.

The trots are dieing. The gallops don't care because the pools are large. The dogs are the ones suffering under the present regime, when a $10 Quinella radically changes the odds or the corporates knock you back.

When costs are rising we need double or nothing in income.

On your point about Brainstormer form - just as an example I checked the form for the first heat of the Bendigo Cup. Of the 8 runners, only three had recent Bendigo form (1 each). The other five had nothing, including the three placegetters. That makes comparisons a bit harder, assuming even that they knew where to get the Brainstormer (which they probably don't).

Can you explain your logic behind mug punters destroying markets.

I expect that if a misinformed market sent out a false favourite, the odds of all runners would be weighted against the bookmaker. This would make punters who did their homework more incentivised to lay out on those dogs.

This would act to move the odds closer to a true position, but probably still favouring the punters who did a bit of analysis.

On that basis, I would expect the opposite to what you say.

Where is the flaw in my logic?

My response to Sean did that.

First, there are no bookmakers - not in truth or practice. Consequently, the impact of a bet is on (a) a relatively fixed TAB pool created by a variety of investors, mostly lacking knowledge these days, or (b) one of a large number of corporates with unknown turnover but a clear practice of manipulating the betting to ensure their profit. Broadly, the (a)and (b) groups' prices will follow each other anyway.

Generally speaking, mugs will prefer a favourite as a kind of a "better than bank interest" kind of investment. They see it as getting a decent run for their money. Whatever their reasoning, there are more of them than those who select a longer priced runner. Unfortunately, the fact is that favourites win fewer than half of all races while odds-on favourites win barely half of theirs. In either case, the investor is going to lose money over time. They cannot hope to overcome the 14%-30% margins applied by the various operators.

The associated fact is that mugs do not and cannot properly assess a runner's chances. They are simply playing a four-legged poker machine, or maybe listening to a tipster. (For Vic races, the top selection by the Watchdog is always shorter than it should be).

So, yes, backers of non-favourites will get a better price but, given late betting habits on greys, plus variable bet communication speeds*, neither party will know that until after the race. They are guessing or just hoping. IE the greyhound market is always volatile.

For a race at Randwick or Flemington, most of that is irrelevant because the weight of serious money far outweighs the influence of casual mug bets. In a small grey pool with multiple betting operators the opposite is true.

So, on the one hand you have a crook price (see my above example at Sandown), which means the cluey punter would withdraw anyway,
while on the other there is some hope for a non-favourite backer but he is still delving into the unknown. That's not punting, it's gambling. And even a shrewd punter will have to limit his bet in a small pool so that he is not buying back his own money. And all of it is volatile in the extreme.

The market is destroyed.

* A well-equipped pro could well use sophisticated programs to implement a bet at the last minute if certain conditions are present (eg his price limits). However, there is little incentive to bother with that in tiny grey pools or in low class races. The reward does not match the effort.

Here's more.

Now that Vic has applied minimum bet rules that will encourage one punter to have a go, say for $500. But, given the quantum of the pools, it would murder the TAB market while a corporate would simply raise the price to an impossible level to avoid any further betting on that runner. The minimum bet rule is therefore nice but it is a once off bet, thereby discouraging any further betting on that runner, or perhaps on the race as a whole.

The end result is to discourage any further knowledgeable betting on that race, leaving mugs to occupy any remaining space. That mug business principle also applies to exotic bets where small investments can materially alter the odds and payout. You may get a hint of prices for Quinella and Exacta but not for Trifecta or First Fours. And it is still all happening in the last couple of minutes and subject to instant change.

Previously, First Four was immune from that but now TABCORP has a Mystery First Four ticket that market will be distorted, too. All Mystery bets, as well as boxed Trifectas and boxed First Fours, serve to distort the market because the bet assumes that each runner has an equal chance - when they are almost always different. The TABCORP computer selects a random runner from each of three brackets - short, medium and long priced - for a Trifecta. Add to that the numerous mugs who take the favourite on top and add two other random runners at will for his Trifecta. All these events distort the end payout.

Here's an example. In a huge Melbourne Cup pool (horses) a few years ago I picked the Trifecta. Based on Win prices it should have paid $650 but the dividend was only $370. Why? Mostly because the fav ran 3rd and so many mugs had put it in their boxed Trifecta.

Buy any Mystery bet and you have lost before the lids open. Most boxed bets produce a similar result. It is simple arithmetic.

All these events emphasise that volatility and distortion are always present in greyhound markets, or in any event where mugs invest - such as mums and dads betting in the Melb Cup. Only a bigger national market will help, but not solve, the problem.

Old time bookies would be good, though.

Min bet limit has nothing to do with any 'pools'... Its a bet to win 500 on the fixed option...

Your comment is true in isolation - as I said, "The minimum bet rule is therefore nice but it is a once off bet".

The subject here is mug money and the integrity of the market. I have been indicating that the more mug money there is, the poorer will be the integrity of the market.

The simplified answer is that the more fingers stirring the overall betting market (we have 22 operators) the more unpredictable that market will be. If more mugs are investing the problem will worsen further.

It matters little whether you are talking about TAB pools or corporate offerings - they all influence each other to some degree. The related point is that your $500 bet could well be at bad odds (and probably is due to the habit of corporates of offering 130% books) so, over time, you are going to lose. And the more people take those odds, the more the corporates (and Tabcorp F/O) will continue to offer them.

Previously, the market was defined by a largish Tote pool and was relatively stable as both punters and oncourse bookies watched trends closely. Now the market has been split into umpteen pieces, mostly unknown, that stability is no longer there. Plus, all the action takes place in the last few minutes - or even after that as information dribbles in from far-flung centres - so trends are barely visible.

Sure, there will be the odd investor who gets set for $500, albeit probably at a crook price. But the serious punter will take a quick look at this dog's breakfast and look elsewhere - eg to large, stable pools at the gallops. There, he will also have a Betfair option as well as corporate prices which are more in line with the dominant TAB market.

The overall effect is to reduce the proportion of serious greyhound punters and increase the proportion of mug gamblers.

It leaves open the only way to make profits is to employ a scam, or near scam, as occurred in the famous Lucy's Light deal at the Gold Coast, and thereby make the system work for you. Very difficult these days. They can hear you coming.

The solution? Only one seems possible. Put all the bets into a single national pool and let the operators compete on service alone.