In another part of the barn a trainer has brought his horse back from a 9^th by 22 finish. Exactly as planned and he is all smiles. He is going to cash next time. Tell Martha to grab the kids and get ready for a paid vacation.

That is the perception out there in some quarters; we all know that.  When a horse races bad it can be explained by the shady side of racing. When a rider or a harness driver is getting instructions, that secret is protected like Fort Knox. The public should not know, because we are racing, and we keep things quiet.

To anyone who hot walks, trains, grooms, drives or rides, or owns a racehorse in today’s world it is nonsense, or so small a faction of this industry it is not worth mentioning.  Now, thanks to the Internet and racetracks who are actually trying to promote integrity, there is a medium for them to get their voices heard.

Welcome the world of harness racing to Twitter.

Last month, star harness driver and $56M career winner Mark MacDonald started to use twitter to tweet before his drives what he thought of his chances.  “Expect an aggressive drive in the 4^th”, “poor drive in the 5^th, apologies” or “with the rail this horse should be good. I was boxed and had traffic trouble last time” are some examples of what Mark tweets to his horseplaying followers and does so in real time. He does it with 100% transparency, right from the paddock.

So much for the dark side of racing, huh?

Fast forward to Mike Hamilton. Mike is a TV guy who works for Woodbine.  He is finally on twitter and he is tweeting his thoughts throughout the race card. Mike is a handicapper, so a good many of posts are handicapping in real time, but sometimes we get more.

In one part of the harness paddock there is the veritable “scope vet”. Here, horse owners and trainers find out why their horse raced so poorly. Some nights, especially in allergy season, or when a sickness is going around the barns, she is a busy person. Before Twitter the results of such a scope were kept quiet and no one knew why a horse raced so bad. If in three weeks this same horse won horseplayers would scratch their head and wonder if some funny business took place.  Now, thanks to Mike, and his venture into micro-blogs, we have a person who is reporting on such things.

Last week, a mare by the name of AP’s Money Maker came dead last at 3-2. She raced quite bad. Mike was there with this:

“Just watched them scoping APs Money Maker who raced poorly in race 3. Will have more to report mid-week.” 8:21 PM May 1st via web

The trainer was a stumped as we were as bettors, so was the owner and everyone associated with the horse. But this time, the bettor knew. It was not a sinister plot; the horse was probably badly sick.

Harness racing has fallen on hard times; handles are off even more than the thoroughbreds. What they have done more quickly than the thoroughbred game is realize that the game will not last forever unless change occurs  Embracing technology to attack questions of integrity like this might tell us that the people who work in it will not let it go down without a fight.

The Cantor Exchange is one such place (it is waiting for regulatory approval). Scheduled to start trading in April, this exchange will focus on (among other things) a movie market.

“Soon, everyone —I mean, everyone — will be able to bet on the boxoffice, and make or lose lots of money on the outcome.”

They will be using the web as it should be: to viral market buzz. It is speculated that studios, as part of their advance marketing, will try and use a service like this to create buzz about a new film, making sure it is trading at a fairly high price. This would be nothing new. It has been speculated that some presidential candidate supporters have done similar on intrade in the past.

Markets like this struggle for volume, but with studios encouraged to participate (and creating inefficiencies at the same time), it sets the table for a ready-made market; one which the public will participate.

Betting via the internet has been left to horse racing alone in the past few years (legally anyway) and this is yet another new competitor for online betting dollars. With a foot in the door it is not out of the realm of possibility that Cantor can build a brand, economies of scale, and foster more and more political connections whereby if new forms of wagering are allowed for a trading market, they will be first past the post.

This, to my knowledge, is a first for the US in a very public way. In Canada, it was announced recently that governments in Quebec and British Columbia, are looking at online poker, so the ship appears to already have sailed north of the border.

It has struck many web observers who are race fans as flummoxing that racing has not used their monopoly to expand into some of these areas earlier this decade. Betfair had been growing with similar bets and it looked to be a revenue driver of some sort for racing overseas over 8 years ago. Using racings political clout to get regulatory approval for a betting market, where they could easily expand into Oscar betting, sports betting, presidential betting and so on should they get things approved as Cantor appears to have gotten done, would have given racing a new revenue source in North America. This would have been cutting edge of course, and in a growth betting sector, unlike slots money which is becoming watered down and older. As well, they would have already staked ground in the sector and if new entrants pop up they would have a hard time cutting into racings markets, because of the volume and goodwill gained by being first in the space.

It is water under the bridge now perhaps, however it still brings up a couple questions for racing.

* If Cantor can do this for movies, what stops TVG/Betfair from doing it for racing?

*Would some enterprising racing organization make a move in this sector, and could they succeed if they started right now by setting up a racing exchange? For example, if Kentucky is not giving racing slots, could Keeneland and CDI be approved for such an exchange as a political act of goodwill from lawmakers? With a built -in betting market and customer base (eg horse race bettors enjoy the chase and are much like other sports bettors) they would be far ahead of any onshore competition.

Those are clearly questions out of our scope, with this space guarded by myriad state and federal laws. However, if Cantor can get it done for something like box office receipts, perhaps this is something we should learn more about.

In the late 1990′s we saw the rise of the chat boards – which I would argue are just like Twitter, only worth less money. There we communicated with like-minded folks on whatever topic we chose to. We learned words like “troll”, learned acronyms (some for some really cool swear words), and built friendships. A little later came the blogosphere, where again interaction was paramount. Not soon after – social networking like Facebook, Twitter, and hundreds of other sites and avenues were here to stay.

That was all fine and dandy, and we have discussed here and elsewhere how late racing is to the party for much of this. However, I wonder if we can look forward. What is next, and can racing do anything to be ahead of the curve instead of behind it? I am notoriously bad at predictions (my 6th race “can’t miss” key at Turfway today is evidence of that), so I won’t do much more but bring up a  few things that crossed my desk …..

1. Youtube TV: As Jessica said via twitter last week, Youtube is going to broadcast live cricket games via their medium for the Indian Premier League, in an exclusive deal. This is clearly a first. And it does fit in with a prediction for television for the next ten years, here. The author believes that TV will become less and less relevant this decade and “global communities will dominate the media”. Churchill signed a $2M deal with television recently. Should we be doing something different instead?

2. The Ipad: I must say this looks cool. Since I have a netbook, Blackberry, laptop and desktop I need one like a hole in the head. However, what if racing video could be really, really cool on this? I would probably buy one. In addition our older demographic seems to be married to the past performances. I bet they would look great on this and maybe an enterprising daughter or son could convince their father or grandfather to give it a shot? The bright interface with flippable pages sure would be neat at the simulcast center.  And the first time one of these guys click a horse on their Ipad and get a video replay of the horse’s last race via quick wifi, it might be infectious.

3. Foursquare: Them damn kids today are always doing something new. This time it’s using Foursquare. Foursquare is a social networking system whereby people connect with friends and “check-in” to various venues. For people who check in the most frequently, they get badges. Super-users become “mayor” of a particular venue. Sound strange? Well, someone likes it – they recently received $1.35M in start-up capital and their traffic has gone from zero to 400k uniques in a few months. Businesses are just starting to get in on this by offering deals to foursquare-ers (I have no idea if that is a word, but I am sure it will have one soon) and something is brewing here. Although things like this do not sound plausible for racing now, especially with the demographic, perhaps they will (or should be) on the radar. I don’t think it is a terrible idea to offer foursquare deals to folks who might want to be mayor of the track.

It seems each month something new comes along. Winning companies have paid attention to the way we communicate and I think its best we do too.

Creating a Facebook page for a three word message seems ridiculous, however the ridiculous sometimes works – “I’m with Coco’s” avatar FB page has 318,000 fans, in about a week.

I remember thinking of starting an “I’m With Frankie” Facebook page when Magna was going through some trouble, but I was cautioned by many that it would probably have fewer followers than a Bernie Madoff Fan Club page. Upon further reflection, I think they were right.

I read recently that CDI has secured a deal to get Kentucky Derby prep races shown on NBC; they will be paying a couple of million for the prep-race infomercials. It’s no surprise I think this is a poor use of funds, as I believe that selling to the masses, or preaching to the choir will not help us in the long-run. I know many do not agree, and that is fine, however some of my reading this morning makes me think I might be on the right track:

Online television station Revision3 offers the aforementioned Conan O’Brien a job. Online stations are gaining more and more market share, specialty stations are as well. I personally liked the CDI deal with Bravo as it speaks to a newer market and racing can be shown in a different way – that is fine. But hammering old-network TV and having to pay for it? Not fine, in my opinion.

Second, Michael Learmouth at Adage has a feature on web tv and the possible loss of cable’s/network’s market share. He believes that within a few years cable companies, and the way we watch TV in general will be forever changed.

Some quotes: “At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, cable operators got a look at a device that could start to eat into another core business: TVs with built-in Skype access. LG and Panasonic announced partnerships to start shipping the sets later this year.”

“….. customers are cutting back on cable bills: while rates go up every year, the average amount consumers are paying for digital cable dropped from $79 a month in the third quarter of 2008 to $70 in the third quarter of 2009 as they drop additional channels and services,”

“Parks Associates estimates that the consumer electronics industry will sell 80 million net-connected TVs by 2013, and there are already 20 million net-connected Xbox consoles in circulation.”

I think spending a couple of million on what we will be doing tomorrow, is better than spending that same amount on what we will not be doing tomorrow.

Then again, that opinion is what it is. Remember, I did want to start a “I’m with Frankie” Facebook page. :)

Bing wants partners

If you are like us, getting race results, historical data, replays or pretty much anything else to do with racing is a maze. Equibase is the central de facto source, but DRF has results, as do ADWs. Sometimes YouTube has race replays, sometimes ADWs do, and sometimes track web sites do. One stop shopping? Hardly. Half the time I do not even know where to go, whether on my desktop, netbook or BlackBerry. In harness racing it is as bad or worse, with several data publishers moving in seemingly different directions.

Search engines can fix much of it. And for other sports, they have done just that.

In the UK, Google has partnered with soccer to give flash results, stats and more. If you search for a soccer team — in this case Arsenal — you immediately see the past results and the next game. In addition, you can drill down to see stats, historical results and so on:

This has not gone unnoticed across the pond. Google has done the same for many major sports in North America.

Microsoft’s search engine has joined the fray of late, trying to be a player. They are fighting for market share from search giant Google and they have spent oodles of cash on web marketing, partnerships and scores of television commercials. Slowly but surely they are increasing search market share. Just this past week they announced their excellent real-time NBA search algorithm. Others are doing this, like Google, but Microsoft plans to go one better.

Here is a screen shot when you search the LA Lakers, courtesy the Bing Blog:

How about searching for a player like Lamar Odom?

I hope this has piqued your interest, because it sure piqued mine.

R2 contributor Jules Boven, Marketing manager of harnesslink.com, wrote an article about this concept, creating a mock-up of what this would look like in Google for a harness horse named Arch Madness, the 2007 Breeders Crown Champion trotter. All you have to do is type in “pp” and the horse’s name, and voila!

So, whether you are at a restaurant or at the track, and you want to look at the trip notes for a horse coming up in the sixth, or maybe you want an easy link to a race replay without logging into your ADW and waiting and waiting with slow bandwidth, or maybe you want a horse’s last running line because you see something on the simulcast channel that catches your eye, you would type your query into a search engine, get the results, and then maybe make a play.

In addition, this could revolutionize the way data is stored for racing. We have not done well at all storing our history. This might be a way to start such a project.

If I were racing, or if racing had a central authority, I think I would be looking into a partnership not with Google, but with Bing. Working historical results, video replays, blogs and more into the search engine, just like other sports have done, would have to help us. Bing could be the search engine of choice for racing — and racing would give back by promoting it as such. And we do have a lot going for us in this regard. Racing is a data-rich game; making Bing the official search partner would surely bring them a whole lot of eyeballs, which is exactly what they are searching for.

Is it a win-win? I think so. Is it doable? I do not know, but if other sports can do it, I think we should be looking at partnerships like this in racing to help brand us for 2010 and beyond.

As is often the case it got me thinking. Most of the time when you or I see a 2-5 shot in a shorter field, we turn the page. There is no engagement for us, there is no ‘pull’ for us to dive in and bet the race in the pari-mutuel pools. Sure we could study and try and beat the chalk (this filly came third, so that was certainly sharp) but more times than not, we simply look to the next simulcast race (I turned right to AQU after seeing the odds board for the Tampa first).

But when we broaden things and market to a new market, this race is not a page turner, this race is an engager. Someone bought the filly at 3-2 (there was over $1000 traded around 3-2) then sold her for a profit. Some people did not like her and bet against her (10′s of thousands were traded at around 2-5), maybe hoping to get her back at 3-5 later. They were completely engaged, whereby this race traded around $200,000.

When we innovate and use different means to engage and energize betting customers we can make a race that is an absolute snoozefest to you and me, a betting event to others who do not bet like us.

It was probably no surprise what was number one. Peer to peer wagering has not only changed horse racing, it has changed the face of gambling.

In this summary post, let’s have a look at a few innovations that did not make the cut, as well as a few “write-in” responses from the panel.

Seth from Equidaily had one thought: “[I think the] growth of broadband internet access — which made some of these other innovations possible,” was important this decade. No doubt a good point. Remember watching race video on a 56 or 28k modem? That was painful. I would imagine I would travel to the track replay center if I had to handicap races at that speed. Ditto for peer to peer wagering – “in-running” betting would be next to impossible. It might be faster to match bets by carrier pigeon.

“O_Crunk” and Seth believed that the blogosphere, chat boards and similar interactive social media made a big impact this decade for racing. The “ease-of-use gives a voice to race fans and places where they can come together and exchange ideas” said Seth. The Crunkster added: “10 years ago blogs were all but a small, geeky slice of the internet.  Now everyone has one and I’m glad that horse players have taken to web.  Sometimes the greatest changes don’t come from the industry, they come from the industry having to listen to their customers.”

Dana really liked Youbet’s MYROI feature and we should give that some props. E*Trade and other online stock trading sites, as well as fantasy football sites (anything stat related, really) have long been at the cutting edge of ROI based, or player based statistics. Making one a better player, or trader, makes one enjoy the activity more and is a major reason word-of-mouth happens. Racing, no doubt scared because so few players win at high takeouts (not to mention a very hard gambling game), have been reticent to embrace ROI-based tools. Youbet’s MYROI is a step in the right direction.

Lisa from Superfecta liked this too, and let us know in her own unique way: “Data is good – data is your friend.” She does not mince words. I think she likes data!

Lisa and Dana might be big fans of data, but I am not generally a fan of racing’s favorite whipping boy (they were second favorite whipping boy before Frank left, I guess) Churchill.  But I have to give credit where credit is due:  Twinspires TV is flat-out awesome. They sunk some serious coin into that system and it is paying off, as the word-of-mouth is pretty prevalent. The picture is wonderful, the ability to go from track to track in a flash is superb, and of course, the feed is almost real time. Add a little bit of HD from Keeneland, and you are in horseplayer heaven. The scary thing to me, is that they probably have barely scratched the surface with this innovation.

A few other items that did not make the final list? HD pictures, which was chosen by a couple of our panelists, was a pretty good choice. There are only a few tracks offering them present day, but that is sure to grow as customers demand better pictures. As well, news aggregators for racing, taking their cues from places like Drudge, have changed the way we get our racing news.

We’d like to thank everyone for participating (and reading) this fun little project and we hope you enjoyed it.

To read articles on the top five innovations of the decade, just scroll below.

In 2000 two men who liked to play card games and make a bet or two created the Ebay of betting – an exchange where players could bet with each other. This relatively simple concept revolutionized betting – especially horse race betting – and it is the number one innovation of the decade as chosen by our panel.

Back in 1908 pari-mutuel betting (beautifully highlighted by Kevin at Colin’s Ghost ) came to Kentucky. This ushered in a whole new way to bet. The betting of the crowd dictated the odds, and those odds could change to post time. In addition, because of the anticipatory increase in betting volumes, the takeout was set at a very low 5% and racing flourished over the next several decades.  This system is ostensibly the same system we use in North America today.

In the mid 1990′s, the way we lived our everyday lives changed forever. Internet access began to sweep across the globe. No longer did we buy a stock by calling our broker and paying a $300 fee, we now did this ourselves for $6.95 a trade.  Pay phones -  long ago banned at the racetracks – were beginning to be obsolete, replaced by cell phones. Email alone changed the way we communicated. People began to demand convenience, ease of use, interactivity, control, along with lower prices for virtually everything they did or bought.

By the turn of the century, many of these features were offered in the gambling market, by a start-up called Betfair. What was once a shell company, scoffed at by bookmakers as a fad, is now the fourth largest internet start-up in the world, trailing only Wikipedia, Facebook and Craigslist in size. In 2010, the firm will handle over GBP20 billion  in turnover, and process more bets than the European stock exchanges combined do stock trades.

How did that happen? According to Nissan Gabbay at Sierra Ventures, they targeted a niche and expanded in primarily two main ways. 1) They targeted not the mainstream consumer, but the sophisticated gambler and 2) They offered a chance for bettors to win, by offering them a competitive price (most bets at the peer to peer exchange have less than a 5% takeout; ironically about what takeout was for horse racing over 100 years ago).

Nowadays it is not uncommon to see over $4M or more traded on a single horse race from the UK on the peer to peer exchange. Sophisticated gamblers, the general public and a new type of bettor – the stock trader, all play racing in their own way, on their own terms. Attracting a new market that has never given a horse race a look, has been an unexpected bonus. The evidence shows that Betfair considers horse racing their number one sport, and has put their money where their mouth is, sponsoring races, racetracks and expanding worldwide.

They have also advertised this new way to bet. In 2008, they released their first commercial, and this advertisement was not only for the UK market.

If you have never seen a Bulgarian TV commercial, well now you have.

This type of betting becoming is becoming more and more mainstream. For example, for the first time deals have been struck between the company,  several racetracks and even the Breeders Cup. Also, they have expanded into Australia and other countries. Betfair’s 2.5 million customers can bet racing, through the tote, and on the exchange.

Web 2.0 has become a buzz phrase for companies that took advantage of their customer base to grow for them, through API’s, community marketing and real time feedback. Peer to peer betting exchanges are built for this. There are literally hundreds of software packages and tools created by developers to use the betfair exchange. many of them advertise, and increase word-of-mouth. Here is one example, from a software package to bet horse races. This looks quite a bit different than anything we have ever seen before in horse race wagering, and it does (especially when looked at in the aggregate) create buzz.

Also this past year, the peer to peer betting leader has moved into the US market (although not officially), through Betfair’s purchase of TVG. This purchase has been looked at like a blessing by some and a curse by others. To some, Betfair will weed away margins for racing. To others it is chance to decrease prices, and expand horse racing to a willing audience, giving it a shot to survive.

Whatever the case, this form of wagering, with its aggressive marketing and expansion, built on web 2.0 principles is certainly an innovation that racing will remember forever, and a well-deserved winner of our panel poll. Will it lead racing from the abyss? Will it erode margins, making it more and more difficult for racing to survive? Those might be questions we’ll see answered in the upcoming decade.

One thing is for sure, this type of betting is here to stay and it should shape the landscape for many decades to come, just like pari-mutuel wagering did 101 years ago.

Panelist Comments

“Hard to not envy those across the pond who are legitimately *winning* over long periods of time becuase of this. With the rake so high and the game so hard to begin with, wagering stateside remains a hobby for all but a very, very few whales and syndicates with big bank rolls. If the powers that be ever open up to this form of wagering here then we can begin to steal some of poker’s thunder, youth and, most importantly, dumb money!” – o_crunk

Where would we be without easy to access race replays? I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I can easily spend hours at YouTube watching replays just for fun. But they’re not all fun and games, they’re a vital handicapping tool and have the potential to help market the game.

Since I only came on the scene in 2007, I queried my fellow r2-ers for their insights. Dean had this to share:

Replays are interesting to me, since I used them as a kid and growing up: 1990′s standing at the track watching the replay center races and waiting for a race you wanted to watch, or having to get there early to watch yesterdays races – hilarious. When the racing channels came aboard we would tape the races and that was our replay center.

I can only remember RaceReplays.com as the main source of replays when I first started playing and fellow r2-er Jessica confirms that she had an account as early as 2004. NYRA also used to embed their stakes races from RaceReplays.com into their site (now they have a direct log in which seems less useful).

As far as ADWs are concerned, I had a BrisBet account and don’t recall their replays however Jessica confirmed that they existed but were a pain to use. I’m happy to note that over the past 2-3 years that replays have exploded down the stretch, if you will.

Replays are standard fare for ADWs, and I can only assume some do it better than others.

Twinspires has two ways access them:

1) via track/date/horse search using the incredible TwinSpires TV:

2) via the race card’s program:

Youbet also has an extensive replay library as does TVG and Xpressbet.

While filed under Handicapping Software for the purposes of our countdown, DRF’s Formulator also has embedded replays which makes for some incredible ease of use.

Recent interesting and welcome additions to the replay arena are Thoroughbred Times and Blood Horse. Thoroughbred Times focuses on stakes but Blood Horse has an excellent extensive archive that also includes Non-Graded Stakes, Allowance/Optional Claiming, Maiden Special Weights and Maiden Claiming.

The replays are only one component of the archive that also features order of finish, payouts and pedigree information. They get extra points for having a dedicated Twitter feed (@BH_RaceResults) that automatically kicks out results.

The proliferation of race replays has not only been crucial for a handicappers, it’s also an excellent way for potential and/or new fans to connect with racing. Folks like Partymanners and CF1970, who have digitized their own personal replay collections, are squarely responsible for part of my racing self-education!

Tracks and such have followed suit with Churchill leading the way by adding what seems like all of their race replays from 2006 to the present. Hollywood Park has their stakes races both current and historical while NYRA, NTRA and Breeders’ Cup all make great use YouTube.

Easily accessed AND embeddable race replays have allowed for radically increased exposure to racing. Bloggers post races on their sites and fans post races on their profile pages at social media sites such as Facebook. For every racing fan who posts a race on their Facebook profile, N more people are more likely to see that race (where N is equal to the number of their contacts)… that’s some nice visibility.

And lastly, as a fervent iPhone user, I also enjoy NTRA & Breeders’ Cup replays as podcasts. Podcasts may seem pointless with a web enabled phone but they’re much higher quality than YouTube.

Not only are they useful as racing Prozac, they come in handy as a one-on-one gorilla marketing tool. I’ve been able to easily show friends and potential fans such thrilling races as Rachel Alexandra’s Preakness as we stand on a street corner or are grabbing a bite. Now if someone would just get Zenyatta’s Classic uploaded I would have all the high points of the year in my pocket, and if that’s not innovative I don’t know what is.

Panelists Comments

“When YouTube hit the web around mid-decade, everyone knew the web would never be the same. Video sharing was impossible (slow & clunky) to deal with before YouTube and the proliferation of Flash players. Sure HD is great but to get that souped up race car we had to start with the Model T. Having replays on the web, at the push of a button, changed *everything*.” – o_crunk

Reading a racing form to prepare for a day of racing can take hours. In harness racing where horses race week to week, having your pulse on each horse is a full time job.

But computers have changed everything.

During this decade, software, spreadsheets/databases and myriad other tools have exploded with horseplayers. We have all seen the ads, or heard a friend speak of a new handicapping tool he/she might be using. What took some players hours upon hours, might now take only seconds. This has arguably helped handles. With wall to wall racing (on some Saturday’s we can play over 30 tracks) how can one possibly handicap all of them manually.

“I can play every track if I want to with software,” said professional player James Erickson at a recently concluded conference at the Meadowlands. “It gives me information in a manner that makes it easy for me to have an opinion on the race. I still have to use my brain to decipher the numbers that it gives, but it gives me a quick, precise summary on what I have to look for. When I go to the track without my software I might only play $20 or $30 for fun.”

To contrast handicapping by hand, and with software, take this scenario, where the two players land on the same horse. Let’s assume the players have never played this racetrack. Also, let’s make the winning horse lone speed, dropping in class, the track bias is heavy to speed and the trainer of the horse is shipping him in and has a hit rate of over 50% with dropping shippers.

With a program, the pen and paper handicapper will see the lone speed, after some study. She will then go through all the charts and see the track bias of the past several cards. She will find, either in the form or elsewhere, trainer numbers, but maybe not a subset of them. Regardless, she lands on the lone speed and believes that the trainer is pretty decent in this situation. It takes some time, and skill.

Conversely, with the computer capper, he downloads the file and uploads it to his handicapping software. Immediately he is alerted to lone speed – he does not even see the form, it is there for him. He then checks the track bias “bot” in the software and sees that the track is heavily speed friendly. He then runs over to Formulator, or uses his own software and sees a model on the trainer signaling a green light shipper. He also has a minimum odds or probability line he will take on this horse, that he has used with this model through thousands of races. Poof, in seconds he has come to the same conclusion.

If you read chat boards, or follow racing closely with ADW players, you get to see just how important software is this decade. It is not uncommon to see talk and arguments on software packages and/or the inner workings of them, that a laymen might find difficult to understand. In fact, some packages have what many would describe as a cult status.

In a society that is busier and busier, where we are bombarded with numerous gambling and entertainment options and have many races to choose from on any given day, the speed and accuracy of software is a big part of the handle picture, and certainly one of the top innovations of the decade.

Horseplayers have many laments: Takeout rates are too high, data costs too much, and stewards rarely explain their calls. And then there’s the frustrating problem of late odds changes, particularly those last-minute odds drops in which a horse enters the gate at 2-1 and leaves it at 6-5.

While conditional wagering can’t save handicappers from the fickle fluctuations of the tote in the final seconds before a race, the technology does give players significant control over the conditions under which bets are made. Introduced by Premier Turf Club in 2007 and now available through TwinSpires, Youbet and other ADWs, conditional wagering allows bettors to select the horses they want to play and the minimum odds they’ll accept well in advance of the time wagers are placed by the system, which can be anywhere from 45 seconds to post to several minutes out. If the minimum isn’t available, the bet isn’t made.

“You’ll never have to wait around again for a specific race to ensure you get a fair price on a runner you want to back. This will end the cries of, ‘If I knew that 6-to-1 morning line horse was going to pay $30, I would have played him,’” Premier Turf Club CEO Ian Meyers told the Thoroughbred Times when the feature launched.

Those cries can still be heard, but conditional wagering surely has freed many horseplayers wagering through a number of ADWs from tote-watching and worry about underlays or missed opportunities. The idea seems simple in retrospect; implemented, it’s one of the most bettor-friendly innovations of the past decade.

Trakus, in action

Developed by Massachusetts-based TKS, Inc., Trakus was initially used by the New England Patriots, the NHL, NASCAR, and the PGA for real-time data collection before the parent company switched their focus to horse racing. Now implemented at several tracks, including Woodbine, Keeneland, and Del Mar, Trakus has become an integral part of those track’s simulcast and in-house productions.

Using a wireless radio frequency system with small radio antennas positioned around the racetrack and corresponding ultra-lightweight radio tags located within a horse’s saddle-cloth, Trakus provides real-time data that the track can display. This is done with either the chicklets, which Woodbine uses to display the horse’s position on the racetrack, or as part of an automatically updating full-field rundown, which is used by both Keeneland and Del Mar. Following the completion of a race, Trakus can also be used to generate a three-dimensional replay or a race chart.

Digital Replays

Furthermore, after tracking each horse during the race, Trakus also stores information in a database about the horse. This information includes how many feet the horse ran during the race, how much ground it covered in comparison to other horses, how fast it ran during the race, and the horse’s final quarter. Trakus is also useful because no matter what kind of weather the track may be experiencing (fog, rain, snow, etc.) or what kind of camera angle the track uses, the Trakus system is always available to display the exact location of the horse.

Trakus is taking a multi-pronged approach to the future. First, they are making races available via mobile phone through their website, trakus.com. After signing up for the service, a fan or bettor can access a Trakus feed of any race at their participating tracks. Trakus has also moved overseas this year, debuting at racetracks in France and Turkey. Finally, with their Trakus Network or T-Net, which is available at trakus.com, industry professionals, fans, handicappers, trainers, owners, etc. can get access to a myriad of features including full-field results databases and replays, discussion forums, and industry expert analysis.

With all the features Trakus has — its ability to display automatic full-field rundowns, its ability to chart and store information about horses for future use, and its ability to let fans and bettors know exactly where their horse is on the track at all times, it will be exciting to see where this technology goes and if it will be available at all tracks in the near future.

Panel Comments

“It will never change the way I watch races but it certainly could revolutionize the gathering of data. Jury is still out here but I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a lot more to this than chicklets and real-time position.” – o_crunk

This article was written by Greg Reinhart, a web reporter for The Harness Edge. Prior to joining the Standardbred publication in 2007, Reinhart developed LucOuellette.com, the first web site used by a harness racing catch-driver.

The panel (in no particular order):

Jeff Platt – Jeff is the creator of Jcapper software and President of the Horseplayers Association of North America

Seth Merrow – Seth is the well-known owner and operator of Equidaily.com

Sid Fernando – When Sid isn’t busy as a pedigree consultant for eMatings, he can be found  blogging and  tweeting, especially about international racing.

John Pricci – A long time race fan, bettor and journalist, John is chief editor at Horseraceinsider.com

Kevin Martin – Kevin blogs about the history of racing, among other things at Colinsghost.org

Craig Milikowski – Craig is the creator of Pacefigures.com, a popular software/figure package. He is also a moderator at Paceadvantage.com

Lisa Grimm – Lisa is an archivist, homebrewer and lifelong racing fan who writes about the sport at Superfectablog.com

‘o_crunk’ – This racing tweeter extraordinaire can be found on Twitter at @o_crunk and  @HRFattheTrack

The top five:

12/21/09 – #5 Trakus
12/22/09 – #4 Conditional Wagering
12/23/09 – #3 Handicapping Software
12/25/09 – #2 Race Replays
12/27/09 – #1 Peer-to-Peer Wagering

Read more:

Innovations drag racing into new millennium: John Pricci reviews his top five.