SIMON NOTT: Have What You Can With Them…

I was at one of my favourite courses, Newton Abbot, on Tuesday. It was a very enjoyable evening of summer racing, there were the usual close finishes and banter in the betting ring. What was a little unusual was the decision to reverse the placings of the fifth race.

Milton Harris’ well-backed favourite Presenting Yeats under Paddy Brennan and Nicky Henderson’s Jen’s Boy piloted by Nico De Boinville were locked together from two out and battled to the line, horses and jockeys giving their all. The jolly prevailed by a head, but the stewards deemed that the winner should be demoted due to interference caused on the run-in. This blog isn’t going to champion or deride that decision but concentrate on what some of the punters had to say.

It’s fair to say that Newton Abbot announced that the stewards were looking into the race very quickly. That, as well as the betting exchange market hinting all was not cut and dried meant that I didn’t hear of any racecourse bookmaker paying out prior to the bing-bongs. These days at jumps meetings it does seem a long time ago that there was ever an amended result. The punters that had backed the winner were in cheerful mode happy to wait until the formality of the result standing.

The bookies didn’t appear to expect the result to be reversed either. Ray Emery on the Ivor Perry pitch jokingly offered the lady waiting to draw £18.75 a tenner for her ticket while it was the punters giving Steve Copplestone and Tall Boy Watson the rub-down that they were holding them up, that duo had already started packing down their kit hoping for a flyer off the course to watch the football.

 

The punters on the first past the post weren’t smiling when the amended result message came through. Some of the more seasoned racegoers might have been getting a little uneasy given that the runners for the next were at the post before the decision was made.

Anyway, we all know the rules, on-course bookmakers don’t pay first past the post. One racecourse regular posted his losing tickets on Twitter understandably bemoaning the fact they don’t. His gripe was tongue in cheek, while others that hadn’t been there took the opportunity to have a pop at racecourse bookies not paying the double result.

Similarly, someone recently raised the topic of on-course bookmakers not paying extra places as the off-course firms do, suggesting that they ought to. One of the tweeters appeared to be something to do with a restaurant, it was politely pointed out to them that budget chain pubs do pints and a burger for a fiver, were they about to compete? The original tweet was deleted.
What punters keen to have a pop at racecourse bookmakers need to understand is that they can’t compete with the off-course firms, just the same as your average eatery can’t with a chain pub. There are several reasons for that.

For starters, racecourse bookmakers are generally there to bet on the races at the course they are standing. In the case of Newton Abbot, there were seven. They have paid for their betting badge and their staff to get in, not forgetting wages and the other exes they incur on the day. They have to make those seven races pay to get theirs.

For main course, they are more than likely taking bets from complete strangers, there is no guarantee that they’ll ever see them again that day unless coming to draw if they backed the winner. They also have no idea if the punter is the worst backer known to man or shrewder than the late great Barney Curley. They’ll also take three and four-figure bets from them without trying to find out if they are a winner on balance or not.

And for afters, those firms offering first past the post, enhanced odds or BOG to any sort of money to their punters are doing so to someone for whom this small gesture is a mere finger stem in the flow of money they are almost certain to get from them in the future. The racecourse bookmakers are betting win and each-way near the knuckle to the exchange prices as they can be, they don’t ask for a utility bill before paying you out and will mostly lay you fractions too.

The punter who was having a light-hearted dig said that he could have had the bet in the betting shop, got the same prices and been paid the double result. One of his tickets was £300 on at 5/2 the 9/4 winner, I’m told that trying to have a carpet on in many betting shops would well have been dependant on a phone call to head office and a photo of you not being pinned to the wall. By the time the bet was confirmed, the race could well have been off.

The people that generally complain loudest on social media are those that are restricted anyway, they must have shown that they are winners or at least very hard to beat. They have to accept that the offers, BOG and extra places aren’t aimed at people like you, they are to make people that lose on a regular basis think they are getting a good deal, which of course they are, but are still never going to win regardless.

Those punters that are restricted who sit at home and love to blow their own trumpets and bemoan in equal measure that on-course bookies don’t offer free gifts to their punters are a funny bunch. They’d be much better off realising that they can still get bets to what they like on course and that if they are as good as they think they are without all the concessions, they can win with the racecourse bookies.

Ahh, maybe that’s the moot point.

SIMON NOTT

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Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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Simon Nott is author of: Skint Mob! Tales from the Betting Ring
available on Kindle CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

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