Horse racing has a notoriously checkered past. Even a checkered present, but not nearly as colorful as its past.
In the "old days" there were instances of "putting one over," substituting a faster lookalike horse for the slower one, and then betting heavily on the substitution, who was invariably getting long odds, since their chances were considered slim.
Jockeys "pulled" horses. That is they kept them from winning, either because they were setting the race up for someone else to win, or were trying to hide good form that was going to be unleashed in a subsequent race when the odds would be longer.
Trainers doped horses to run faster. Even in the current era there was something known as "the milkshake" when a carbonated mixture was hosed into a horse to expand their lungs and help them run faster and longer.
Better attention to security and drug testing has helped mitigate a good deal of the shenanigans that were pulled by the intentful. But that never keeps those from trying.
The other day at Saratoga they ran a race named in honor of P.G. Johnson, a venerated trainer on the New York circuit who passed away in 2004 at 78 years old.
Naming a race after a trainer is not unheard of. Johnson achieved that accolade ahead of Woody Stephens, who passed away in 1998 at 84. Woody's achievements were of a higher nature than P.G.'s since Woody won the Belmont Stakes five consecutive years in the 80s. And since the Belmont is a Triple Crown race it is limited to three year-olds. Thus, Woody won the race with five different horses, an achievement as unlikely to be repeated as Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, John Wooden's seven consecutive NCAA basketball titles, and Ted Williams being the last hitter to finish the season batting .400. Some things transcend everything.
P.G. Johnson deserved having a race named after him, just as H. Allen Jerkens, who got a race named after him this year on the Travers card, when the Kings Bishop was renamed in his honor. Jerkens was another legend who was known as 'The Chief' and 'The Giant Killer,' a name he hated, for his prowess at sending out horses that upset legends like Kelso and Secretariat. He was 84, and had been training horses since the 1950s.
Prior to the running of last week's P.G. Johnson race at Saratoga the turf writers invariable repeated the Johnson record, the horses he trained, and the stake races he won. And these were notable, especially for his horse Valponi winning the 2002 Breeders' Cup Classic at odds of 43-1. Anyone who wins the Classic is nearly automatically a legend.
But it is not for the trainer's or horse's effort that I remember Johnson the most. It was because Valponi's win helped expose an attempted betting coup that was being engineered by insiders who were literally at the controls of Autotote and changing numbers on tickets after the results were known. This is moxie.
When I was first going to the races there was a story that was being circulated that someone was in the bathroom at Aqueduct printing winning tickets after the race results were in. If anyone can remember these tickets they will recall they were printed with a swirl, came in different colors based on the denomination of the bet, were printed on a heavier weight paper (a pasteboard, pictured above) that the cashier tore a corner off of when he the ticket was presented for cashing to authenticate the paper, and with a series of letters and numbers that were control codes for the race. The cashiers displayed a facsimile of a winning ticket in their little window that was visible to the bettor. If your ticket didn't look like that one, get lost.
The bathroom printing story was of course nonsense. I used to look at the stalls in the bathroom and laugh, imagining one of them holding a printing press. (Where's the plug going?) There were no laser printers then, so producing a bogus ticket in color would have been a real achievement. And one that was not happening, but it sounded good. An urban legend.
So, how does a 43-1 shot beak up an attempted betting coup? The origin of the horse's name is not obvious from his breeding. It sounds like an Italian dessert, but I've never seen it on a menu. But that's hardly important. What is significant is that by winning the race, Valponi produced a Pick 6 result that was recorded on one Catskill OTB phone account, and was in effect bet six times. Thus, there was only
one person who had correctly bet all six winners! This is huge. This is cornering the market. But it gets even better.
And they did it six times! And they did it by picking
one horse in the first four legs of the bet--what is described as 'singling'-- with two of those singles long shots, and therefore horses that one would unlikely single as a bet. Unless of course they knew what the result would be.
A Pick 6 wager is a so called exotic wager that requires the bettor to pick the winners of the six consecutive races designated as Pick 6 races. The bet is extremely popular because it can produce astronomical payouts, especially when some long shots come in and decrease the number of people who might have winning tickets in the pool.
At NYRA tracks, the minimum bet is $2. Generally, betters don't just try and pick six horses "cold," which is only picking one horse in each race. Trying to win a Pick 6 pool like that is a sniper shot at 1,000 yards. Most bettors bet several horses in each leg, perhaps singling a horse in one race, maybe two races at most.
Betting more horses in each leg increases the permutation count, which when multiplied by $2 can get up there in the money needed to make the bet. Usually, when there are significant Pick 6 carryovers-- days in which the Pick 6 pool is not hit--syndicates, or ad hoc partnerships of bettors form on the spot and play into a significant number of those permutations in hopes of bringing home the Pick 6 pool. Multiple winners of the pool share in the final payout, It becomes split amongst them.
Previously described in this blog is the story of The Assembled, who once bet one horse in five legs, and two horses in one leg, producing a ticket that held 2 permutations and cost $4. Another ticket was purchased with single winners picked in 5 of the races, and a different race with 2 horses picked, again costing $4. Thus, amongst four of us, we bet $8 in the Pick 6.
We hit. We hit the
consolation prize, in this case $11. Heavy favorites won 5 of the races. We were second in the first leg. My estimate was that a perfect ticket for us would have probably only yielded $70 or so. Still better than splitting
$11! four ways, which we did.
Pick 6 bets at the track once were required to be placed by filling out a betting slip, which resembled an SAT test, in that the circles next to the numbers had to be darkened and submitted to the cashier who fed the piece of paper into the betting machine that produced a ticket. This was very much similar to how lottery numbers are bet.
Lots of the betting has changed from the days when I first started going to the track. The Pick 6 bet is now entered by the bettor at a self-service SAM machines. The screen displays are easy to follow, and complex Pick 6 tickets having multiple selections are easily assembled.
Telephone wagering has also changed to allow for automated, touch-tone betting. No person needed to talk to. If your fingers are up to it, you can bet this way quite easily. When using the phone, I generally opt for touch-tone wagering.
Years ago, there was no such thing as a telephone at the racetrack. There were no pay phones on purpose, and cell phones were decades way. The tracks kept telephones out so as to discourage bookies from doing their business on the grounds.
In fact, the premise for establishing OTBs was to 'fight back' and put bookmakers out of business.
This was a glorified reason for the state to make it easier to take money in the form of takeout percentages from dollars wagered off-track. Eventually they even cut themselves in on taking a percentage of the winnings. A 5% surcharge. Talk about a hungry house.
Since there was never really a census as to how any bookmakers there really were, no one ever really knew if OTBs were accomplishing their stated purpose. How many Radio Shacks closed we know, but non-existent bookmakers? Not so much
It is now so long ago now that I'm sure no one even remembers why they were established. In New York City the OTBs were such a source of political patronage and kickback deals on the infrastructure that Mayor Bloomberg was able to just plain get rid of them. They were actually
losing money. They had been around since 1971, but now no longer exist in NYC since the beginning of this century. Other regions of New York state still have their OTBs, but at the high watermark in NYC there were once perhaps 110 outlets throughout the five boroughs.
Telephone wagering produces no ticket. You call, talk to someone, or make your bet using the touch-tone system.
You don't have a ticket, but there is an "electronic" ticket of your transaction in your account.
However, in 2002, using extensive inside knowledge, an employee of Autotote, the firm processing bets across the nation for approximately 65% of all wagering, on-track and off, was able to bypass controls you would have naturally thought would be in place.
The employee, Chris Harn, who helped set up the Catskill OTB system for Autotote, knew that there was no record kept of the touch-tone wagers. Thus, with the right access, they could be changed electronically.
But surely once a bet is made, it is transmitted to the track. It can't be altered after it is placed, right? Well, not really, not then.
Pick 6 wagers were not transmitted by Capital District OTBs in real time. They were held in the system until after the fourth leg of the bet, then transmitted. Thus, if someone could wipe out the original bet, substitute the winner of the race because it is now known, then the losing ticket could be a winning ticket, right? You're catching on.
One of the silly things done by The Assembled is to write over a losing ticket the winning number. This of course is never presented to anyone, namely because nothing would happen. The betting machine would read the codes, match it to the bet that was made, and reject the ticket. Altered tickets are worthless. Unless you are an Autotote employee who is bent on larceny and working with a Catskill telephone account. Bets can be altered before they are batched and transmitted to the host track. You are the virtual mythical guy in the bathroom at Aqueduct who is printing tickets after the race. You are invincible. You exist.
Chris Harn's strategy was sound. Have an accomplice, in this case a friend Derrick Davis, establish a Catskill phone account. An easy process. Stuff it with money, and be ready for action.
Since a Pick 6 bet stretches over six races, the winner, or the prospect of a winner, is not known until at least 5 races are run. You of source can't create a Pick 6 ticket after the first race in the leg has been run. But, with the knowledge and system access Chris Harn had, he in effect could.
Fraud detection is a science and an art. You can have system algorithms search for oddities, or you can try and spot them on your own. The algorithms are created based on programmed instructions, so in effect the system is looking rapidly for what you already know might be suspicious. And when six tickets in one account are the only ones to have the Pick 6 result, and four of the first legs are 'singles,' and two of the winners are longshots, then eyebrows go up.
In order for what turned out to a trio of twenty-somethings to succeed, they of course needed the winners of the last two races. Well, every race has a winner, even two sometimes if there is a dead heat. Betting 'ALL' is such a tactic that there is an ALL button on the betting machine's screen. Pick every horse in a race and you have to win. You may not of course win money, since generally a winner's payout will not exceed $2 times the number of horses in the race, but you might get lucky.
But when you are working with a Pick 6 pool on racing's biggest day, you can be sure there will be a sizable pool accumulated, and there will be several people who will have the winning combination, but not too many, splitting the pot. So why not just use your talents and be one of the several who will win, take your split, and blend off into the sunset?
And how do you win even if you're changing the result of the first four races on the electronic "ticket"? Why, just bet ALL on the last two legs, and you
have to produce the winning ticket. It is math. But won't this cost you more money than the bet will return? Not with the size of this pool.
Thus, single the first four legs, which is 1 multiplied 4 times, equaling 1, bet ALL in the last two races, which have 12 horses and 8 horses, which translates to 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 12 x 8, for 96 combinations, at $2 a combination, and you have a Pick 6 ticket costing you a somewhat reasonable $192, but most importantly, one that
cannot lose. The four singles are four aces up your sleeve. You've cornered the market.
Tracks
love exotic wagers. There is an
abundance of Pick 3, 4, 5, and 6 designated races on the card. There are rolling Pick 3s, there are multiple Pick 5s, early and late, as if you are betting in the daytime and the nighttime. There is however only one Pick 6, since generally a card is never more than 10 races. The takeout of these bets is hefty, but who cares when a life-altering payout can be hit? What are taxes if you're still rich?
Cornering the market is exactly what the trio did, trying their tactic out first on some races where they could in effect past-post their exotic wagers bets. Balmoral harness track proved to be one, and in a rehearsal, the trio gained $100,000.
Having worked in fraud detection for a major health insurance company, there is a saying that goes the fraudster never works their way
down from stealing a million. Meaning, whatever their first score, they are going back for more. And the trio, former fraternity brothers from Drexel University certainly did, appearing on the stage for the biggest betting day in the nation with a way guaranteed to win.
Like any good heist movie, something goes wrong. And what went wrong in this case was P.G. Johnson's horse Valponi, a 43-1 prospect entered in the Breeders' Cup Classic, the marquee race on the card, the mile and a quarter test that can influence who is named Horse of the Year. Win this puppy, and you've won the boldest of the black type races. Breeding rights beckon.
There are strange things done in the Breeders' Cup sun
By the men who make bets of a fashion.
The horsey trails have their secret tales
That would turn your faces ashen.
The tote board lights have seen queer sights
But the queerest produced no baloney,
When a single ticket held the winner
Because of a horse named Valponi.
Alarms went of in the counting room of the racetracks. Supposedly NYRA officials alerted the Arlington Park people, where the Breeders' Cup was being held that year, that there was a funny looking "ticket" emanating from the Catskill OTB that was due to be paid $3.1 because it correctly picked six, and then some, and did it in a somewhat suspicious way.
Money is now frozen. Another fraud indicator is an employee who never takes a vacation. They are always there to make sure no one spots their fraudulent transactions. They might work late, they might work early. They just might always be at work.
When Autotote started their investigation they found that Mr. Hain, the inside guy, wasn't supposed to be at work on Breeders' Cup Saturday. Aside from the enormously lucky ticket that picked
no losers in the first four races, the inside guy wasn't even supposed to be there that day. Oops. Confessions and jail time all around.
And
that's what
I think of when I think of P.G. Johnson.
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