Solvalla Racecourse – source of the complaint
The Sporting Post received an irate phone call from a dedicated lifetime punter on Sunday evening.
His beef was simple – but he was no meek lamb, and clearly had a bone to pick with the TAB on the late fluctuation of dividends.
“I play every day – most meetings, 364 days a year. In Solvalla race 2 tonight, the 2 horse – an outsider – was paying R9-60 at the jump and still after the race. The TABGOLD site still shows R9-60. But Saftote declared R4-60 in the final dividend. I understand late sweeps and all the other reasoning over the years. But what’s going on? How does it drop more than 50% in seconds?” he pleaded.
We contacted TAB, and they responded as follows:
Thank you for the query, which highlighted that the incorrect formula was deployed in the TAB betting system for calculating current Place payouts displays for the Solvalla race meeting 22 April. Official payouts are, of course, directly from ATG Sweden.
The TAB Place pool on a Swedish race is, in fact, the host’s Show pool and, as with the USA, payouts are not calculated in the same way as a Place pool in South Africa.
TAB Place payouts are calculated by dividing the net Place pool by the number of qualifying horses and then the number of winning tickets on each qualifier is divided into that qualifier’s portion of the net pool.
Show payouts in Sweden and the USA are calculated differently – the total number of winning tickets on the qualifying horses is first subtracted from the total net pool and the balance is divided equally among the qualifiers.
The actual payout is obtained by dividing the number of winning tickets into that qualifier’s portion of the net pool and then adding 1.
Using RACE 2 Solvalla 22 April as an example shows the difference in payouts obtained using the different formulae (whole numbers, no rounding, so approximate):
RESULT: 4-3-2
NET PLACE POOL = 46,995
No 4 winning tickets = 10,190
No 3 winning tickets = 16,617
No 2 winning tickets = 1,668
TOTAL winning Show/Place tickets = 28,474
The payout queried was that of No 2 Geisha Sisu, which dropped from 9.60 in the Place payout display at the off to an official 4.60.
The difference is in the formulae:
* SA Place pool formula = 46,995 divided by 3 = 15,665 divided by 1,668 = 9.40
* Swedish/USA Show pool formula = 46,995 minus 28,474 = R18,521 divided by 3 = 6,174 divided by 1,668 = 3.70 plus 1 = 4.70
For the record the Swedish/USA Show pool formula often results in lower current Place payouts being displayed than the actual dividends because the horses/qualifiers with the most tickets are used to calculate each horse’s current payout.
TAB apologises to customers for the display error.
Ed – they also referred to our earlier query regarding carryovers on commingled Jackpot/Quaddie pools on Australian race meetings. As is customary ALL carryover monies are retained by the host tote and deployed later.
