Tthe Open bet

Other than the lottery, the tote offers the worst odds of all. Or to rephrase, you have to be significantly better than the norm over a period to win.

Bookmakers who don't absorb the 6% tax on an open bet and charge it to their customers should be shot for grand theft.

Gamblers who generally have small open bets with bookmakers who deduct the 6% should also be shot so that they end their contribution to the gene pool of stupidly.

Moral?
It may not be ethical to shoot people, and it may require a person of poor moral character.

BTW
Just HOW the tote lost the case to the bookmakers keeps me up at night. I can't think HOW anyone can think that the Tote dividend isn't the Tote's product. If the Tote goes down, there is no product! Staggering.

I'm all for bookies and the open bet.I've watched the potential swinger div. on the tote,say sw 1&2 will pay 6.50,you place a R100 on it,it comes down to about 5.70,not with the bookies.even after 6% deduction.Imagine a quartet pays R1000 and you win it multiple times!So for me it works.

Jack, that astounds me too.The argument revolves around intellectual property,and as you say,there is no other way to settle the "open" bet until (or unless) the tote declare a dividend....if that isn't ownership of the product ,I don't know what is.

Firstly let me say I was also surprised that Phumelela did not win the case? Plus would add that bookies had to stop taking bets on the lotto due to intellectual property.
Harris do u mean Taliban ot tab online? Lol I did try and get a summer cup banner 3/4 months ago and got a reply of Friday " how much for 2 weeks" maybe a soccer 6?

Scotia

Bookmakers laying bets on the lotto is not at all like the open bet.

In the case of the lotto, the bookmaker is merely using the numbers in the same way he uses the result of a race.
If the bookmaker paid the same pathetic (say) R19 for two numbers instead of the 45/1 they offer, then it would be similar. The outcome isn't in dispute, but the generation of dividend is.

Rob
Court Case
I think the fact that the Racing Operators never complained about the open bet... until bookmakers jumped on the exotic bandwagon is (partly) what sunk them.

In one part of the judgement, they considered the motivations of the operators as historically they were never unhappy for the win/place dividend to be used like the SP for many years. Although, I don't think letting people walk through a bit of your garden implies you happy for them to wonder through your house.

(Part) from CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA
[14] After reviewing legislative enactments[9] on the issue from as far back as 1961, the majority of the Court concluded that, “apart from a short interval of proscription enacted by the Gauteng Provincial Legislature”, legislation in the Transvaal (more recently in Gauteng) and nationally did not consider it offensive for bookmakers to make use of totalisator dividends in calculating the payout on exotic bets. The Court observed that for many years before 1995, such conduct by bookmakers was expressly permitted and that in terms of the national Act presently in force it is lawful.[10]

[15] The Court took the view that once it was accepted that the practice was legislatively sanctioned and had been so for a long time, it could never be said to be unfair or dishonest. It reasoned that it was unlikely that the legal convictions of the community would, after a long period where a practice was accepted and legislatively sanctioned, suddenly turn around and frown upon such practice.[11] It held that the conduct in question was neither unfair nor dishonest and accordingly did not amount to unlawful competition.

jp abdol Wrote:

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> I'm all for bookies and the open bet.I've watched
> the potential swinger div. on the tote,say sw 1&2
> will pay 6.50,you place a R100 on it,it comes down
> to about 5.70,not with the bookies.even after 6%
> deduction.Imagine a quartet pays R1000 and you win
> it multiple times!So for me it works.

The flaw to your logic is that if all the guys next to you in the bookmaker took the open bet in the same race they have prevented your dividend from being bigger. i.e. if everybody agreed not to take the open bet the dividends would be healthier. Furthermore the quartet that you mention is subject to limits in the open bet e.g 50,000-1 which means that if you have 10% of a quartet that pays R75,000 you will only be paid R5,000 instead of R7,500.

Jack,funnily enough,I realised when reading your post,that my only knowledge of the case was hearsay......I have now downloaded the judgements and it makes fascinating reading,although I have only skimmed through it at this stage.
An early observation seems that the fact that totes were closed and bookmakers filled the breach seems to have indirectly had the effect of precedence.
The other thing that I want to understand better is,that in the original judgement,the court ruled the open bet as a "fixed price product" and that the open bet was not "unfair competition".
I am amazed that "P" conceded the first point and appealed only the "unfair" aspect.....maybe that explains our confusion.I am trying to understand a "fixed price product" that needs a pooling arrangement to "fix" it.
Anyway I have some fun reading for a while!

tipster where do u get your open bet limits from?

Jack my comparison was based on intellectual propery in as much as you can't use someones IP to use or make a payout either by rands or numbers IMO

The elephant in the room is this business of entitlement.

Say you are brand new to racing AND the first horse you buy is Horse Chestnut for say 100K. The money goes to the breeder, and your fees go to the trainer. When the horse is ready, you pitch at the race-course (for which you have never contributed 1 cent), and your horse goes on to earn a fortune (again from a fund to which you never contibuted 1 cent).

What "entitles" you to have all these facilities and all this stakes money? You can pay a grand have colours, and suddenly you are entitled to have a shot at the big payday.

In GC land, the stakes payout is such that they have almost bankrupted themselves. There is not a cent saved. Associations can have a percent here and there, jocks can have 3% extra, trainers can have their 7%, and charge another 8%. If GC had kept 5% for a war chest for 5 years, they would have 100 Mill in the bank and selling racecourses would be a distant memory. Meanwhile we face the definite closure of three tracks after the closure of three.

But the recent gambling show had the operators blaming the bookmaker and the open bet, and confirming that exchanges are the spawn of the devil.

Even IF they were right, they pissed blood and for what. A sign of the times is the traditional opening of the 2yo races was always a MJP fillies in Cape Town on the first Sat in Nov. I see we abandoned that too, at about the same time the operators had to pay R1,000 per runner to the trainers to get a field of 12. What a joke. Makes you cry.

pirates Wrote:

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> tipster where do u get your open bet limits from?

I used as example (see below) from one of the bookmakers websites, although it obviously doesn't mean all of them have the same limits
SWINGERS 500 to 1
TRIFECTA 25,000 to 1
QUARTET 50,000 to 1
EXACTA 1000 to 1
PLACE ACCUMULATOR 10,000 to 1
JACKPOT 50,000 to 1
PICK 6 200,000 to 1

i would love to know what percentage of open bets are taken back from the totes by bookoie .

i have witnessed this with my own eyes .