Mutuals: Segment - 8

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Pick-N Pools/Progressive Scans

In the past, a scan was generated by the Host System immediately after the penultimate leg of the Pick-N was made official. However, the Pick-6 past-posting incident in October 2002 made it clear scans were needed after each official leg of the Pick-N pool so that mutuel managers can identify any anomalies in betting totals, as well as any potential fraudulent activity.
Consequently, the tote companies in cooperation with ARCI developed ITSP 5.18 to safeguard tote systems against such breaches. ITSP 5.18 and 5.19 can generate a “progressive” scan after each leg so that all dollars can be tracked, losing as well as winning, throughout the wager.

Progressive scans provide an increased level of security by maintaining a constant log of the distribution of wagers throughout the Pick-N pool. Each scan is important in immediately identifying situations where there are imbalances or errors, in pool totals and/or winning dollar amounts. While every tote company has integrated automatic alerts to advise of any potential problems, mutuel managers should verify the integrity of the pool with every progressive scan generated by the Host System.

Step-by-step instruction of manually interpreting progressive scans, can be found at:

http://www.tra-online.com/ProgressiveScans.ppt

For Pick-N pools, it is important to identify scratched horses so they can be eliminated as live runners. Any delay in identifying scratched horses in Pick-N pools is unfair to the betting public and hinders interest in the wager. Continued wagering on scratched entries will dilute the payoffs unnecessarily and unfairly if the post time favorite wins.

Advance Day Wagering

In making the decision to offer advance day wagering one should evaluate potential increases in handle against possible technical or customer-related problems that could arise. The term "advance" denotes additional time for Murphy's law to come into play through system problems or drastic changes in the condition of the race in question.

The Triple Crown races and Breeders' Cup Day are events whose enormous public interest
justifies the implementation of advance day wagering.

National Wagers

Multi-race national wagers such as the Breeders' Cup Pick-6 and NTRA National Pick-4 are specialized national common pool wagers.

National wagers can confront one with the challenge of operating across multiple time zones, coordinating races from different locations, and merging pools from Guest sites with widely varying systems and networks.

Experience in national wagers identified three areas of paramount concern:

• All pools lock at stop betting.
• Pools totals are accurate.
• Winning dollars are accurately reported and prices correctly calculated.
From a mutuel and tote room perspective, scratches, the official order of finish (OOF) and the listing of post time favorites must be accurately entered into the Host tote system and
communicated through the Protocol to each wagering outlet.

Any delay in identifying scratched horses in multi-race national wagers prior to the first leg is unfair to the betting public and hinders interest in the wager.
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