David Walsh 730 interview

thanks for the link wombleoz!

interesting interview, a wonder if he thinks charging someone to go his museum is a zero sum game?

might get a hold of his memoir

no worries Gatespeed - interesting he said it loses millions a year, i hope that turns around and it survives long term, haven't been yet but it looks facinating

memoir would be a good read

Interesting cause of discussions re gambling and probability etc in this article:


http://www.afr.com/f/free/blogs/christopher_joye/david_walsh_wisdom_beats_th...

noted 2 lines given to the excessive rebates given to their group.

Yes David we realize you could win without the rebates, of around 1.5 - 2.5% of turnover on the Australian pari mutuel systems (estimated turnover in Australia of 1 billion) but hey the 7% rebates and at one stage 12% through the Tassie TAB certainly helped the bottom line no end.

here's a MONA preview womble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wjT4x0lLlc

i was expecting jfc to be all over this thread ?


and spot on Loggy - this AFR link below has the group admitting to the massive rebates - massive in the US, massive in Tassie


“I invent a gambling system. Make a money mine. Turns out it ain’t so great getting rich using someone else’s idea. Particularly before he had it. What to do? Better build a museum; make myself famous. That will get the chicks,” he wrote.


http://www.afr.com/p/national/the_gambler_GwoSmf5IXaVFjmpyYXNu9J

very uninteresting.

I can't believe the art loving aesthetes adore a person that has made his money from gambling particularly from ridiculously high rebates.

Educational thread. I had no idea what an aesthete was until I read this thread and googled the word.

they asked for the rebates and got them, the Tabs could've said no - good luck to them I say

I'll check the other links out when i have a bit more time

so all of Walsh's moral high ground that he portrayed in the show the other night about giving something back because gambling is basically unethical and immoral comes crashing down around him.

MONA has applied for a casino license to cater to the high rollers

seriously?

Yep-seriously!!

http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/philanthropist-david-walsh-wants-to-build-casino-at-mona/story-fnj4f7k1-1227073315002

looks that way Henry - well sort of

http://news.artnet.com/in-brief/tasmanian-millionaire-wants-to-build-casino-in-his-museum-118253

Wash’s vision for Monaco is small, with only 12 gambling tables (and no poker machines) designed to appeal to wealthy art lovers like himself who are used to luxury settings.

Consider this precise quote from the transcript from the Leigh Sales junket:

DAVID WALSH: Well, I made my money gambling. It's a zero-sum game.

What rational person will buy that? Or say that!

It's damning evidence that something is not what it seems.

Perhaps Leigh can be excused for not stopping Walsh dead in his tracks then and there.

But what excuse is there for using that as a promo?

And then some days later when she had an opportunity to reflect, she concludes with:

LEIGH SALES: That was really fun.

There's ample material in Hansard, or the AFR Walkley winning articles and elsewhere to facilitate responsible journalism.

Instead she Leighs back and thinks of easy street when she can crack a spot on the pragmatic commercial channels.


http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4096979.htm

In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.

Oct 11, 2014 -- 9:25AM, henryluca wrote:

In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero.

Yes.

So are you oblivious to the fact that Totes have increasingly exorbitant Rakes?

Therefore making this caper a highly negative-sum game.

Frankly this concept is as basic as it gets.

And part of life itself.

No free rides.

No free lunches.

House always gets its cut.

Only certainties in Life are Death and Taxes.

Who needs to have this explained to them!

welcome back jfc .. couldn't imagine this one getting past your guard

and in relation to leigh

well the effete with cash on hand have always been lauded by the common press for some reason 

Boy this latest extract is long and tiresome to get through.

And so much of it is dead wrong.

At least it demonstrates that there is no excuse for her appalling interviewing, given that zero-sum gaffe appeared in the memoirs.

So why didn't Leigh prepare a question along the line of:

"You say gambling doesn't produce anything.

What does MONA produce?"

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/australian-multimillionaire-gambler-david-walsh-spending-his-winnings-to-bring-art-to-the-people/story-fni0cx2y-1227085027762

what price the joy of being inspired by piece of art???

good to see you JFC

.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2ZW_uTlhEQ

what price the joy of being inspired by piece of art???


$20 adults, $15 with a Concession card   

Mona does bring a lot of tourists in.

excellent ... david will be happy to pay the taxes ... no deductions no kickbacks just all for good ol tassie

Oct 12, 2014 -- 3:27AM, wombleoz wrote:

what price the joy of being inspired by piece of art???good to see you JFC

I'm not against being inspired by art, but I've no reason to believe MONA has any that actually does that.

I also imagine that few art lovers go there, the ignorant tourists are just brain-washed by the incessant propaganda from media hacks who are just looking after their own interests.

By contrast, I get everlasting satisfaction once I finally learned how to properly gamble, or invest in shares.

I expect everyone in similar circumstances also experience similar elation.

Everyone has to gamble, and learning how to do that properly should be an essential life skill.

Oct 1, 2014 -- 11:07PM, wombleoz wrote:

they asked for the rebates and got them, the Tabs could've said no - good luck to them I sayI'll check the other links out when i have a bit more time

Broadly speaking there are 2 types of Gambling scenarios.

Player versus House.

And,

Player versus Player (with the obligatory House Cut).

In the former any kickbacks some high roller may negotiate at a Casino is immaterial to any other Player.

But in the latter, as in Tote systems, any Kickback or Edge to certain Players oppresses all other Players on an inferior deal.

So what on earth possesses you to wish the Kickback perps good luck!

Basically this is an insanity which might net some executive perps some short term gains through dumb Bonuses.

But will ultimately destroy the whole caper. For ever.

You want to offer them good luck!

Here we have a bone of contention.

Yes, but as he said, good luck to them for getting what they asked for.  I personally would love to get rebates to get me a solid non lose scenario, and I wouldn't give a siht what that meant for anybody else.

Oct 12, 2014 -- 9:37AM, BJT wrote:

Yes, but as he said, good luck to them for getting what they asked for.

Having fun censors?

2 of my posts have now conveniently vanished.

Honestly this beggars belief!

We can't win on a level playing field at these high Rakes.

So please give us a double-digit kickback.

Sure, good luck to you.

Hope that helps your Porn Museum morph into a full scale bordello.

Oct 12, 2014 -- 9:37AM, BJT wrote:

Yes, but as he said, good luck to them for getting what they asked for.

How about you Walsh well-wishers take the slightest effort to become informed?

Start with this direct quote from Kate Carnell recorded in Hansard:


The representation by VITAB that its purpose was to attract Asian punters, and the concealment of the involvement of Alan Tripp and the Zeljko-Walsh group, was the fraud which resulted in ACTTAB entering the VITAB agreement.

http://www.hansard.act.gov.au/hansard/1997/week14/4695.htm

JFC the main system I've been working on is currently losing a small percentage - a cut in the take would be enough to turn it into winning system so yes I understand the importance of the take out.  In saying that, if i was turning over hundreds of millions of dollars there's no way i'd be willing to pay the full price for doing so.

It's basically just economies of scale

I'm looking to getting to Mona early next year and checking it out, $20 (thanks Thebas ) a bargain price to see what is meant to be a very impressive collection based on feedback from people I know that have been

If Kickbacks and the tilted play field arrangements were abolished tomorrow then a lot of people would finally find themselves sustainable winners.

Turnover would surge because in this caper it's the quick or the dead.

And a number would start approaching Leviathan levels.

Unless they're completely irrational, they will have no qualms whatsoever about paying the full price.

Because they know that paying the full price is why they have finally become successful.

with you on this JFC
btw do you think ZR pays premium charge here?? surely his turnover and winnings here are astronomical?

Oct 13, 2014 -- 4:33AM, secong coming. wrote:

with you on this JFCbtw do you think ZR pays premium charge here?? surely his turnover and winnings here are astronomical?

I'm sure you can imagine how dangerous it is for me to get into material that's not on the public record so that's one reason I can't respond to such questions.

However most Punters should realise that Betfair is far less slanted against them than the Totes are.

I accidentally just stumbled on this which contains some worthwhile pertinent material.

Particularly around the 9th reference to Zel.

Don't know who Wyongi is.

I'm prepared to accept that he was a commission room player when Zeljko started in 1985. (Another date that Walsh seemed to get wrong).

Public comments from such players are extremely rare, so it's worth checking that out.

Can't see anything from him that I'd disagree with.


http://www.perthturftalk.com.au/discussion/discussion/11724/an-incredible-story-about-rebates-etc/p1

How ex-wives’ club nailed David Walsh

Nine days after leaving her husband, Elizabeth Steicke contacted the Australian Federal Police........

....
Further, it’s been suggested that MONA itself might be at risk. Walsh has been talking to anyone who asks about the unfairness of it all and giving interviews around the clock. He’s trading on his philanthropic profile and the applause of the elite for his artistic triumph in an effort to underline the outrage of the ATO’s action.

Yet when he first drew public attention with his ambitious gallery, he came from nowhere with his millions. It emerged that his wealth was built on gambling systems but not a word more would he say about the subject.

It is only now that the public has a glimpse down that well.

Meanwhile, he has been rustling up support from Tasmanian politicians such as independent Andrew Wilkie and former Greens leader Bob Brown, and there is a Facebook campaign.

Yet Walsh may find it hard to beat off the ATO, which has a history of aggressive litigation.

That said, there is talk a settlement may be on the cards and that the Tax Office is trying to strengthen its negotiating position.

Walsh told the Weekend Financial Review  he was fighting the tax assessments, which added nearly $18 million to his tax bill for the years 2004-06, on moral as well as legal grounds. He believes the imposition of retrospective taxation is unfair, as does the Parliament of the European Union, he says.

He is now spending countless dollars on lawyers, an experience familiar to Steicke.

What is quite different, however, is that her battle has been to wrestle some of the gambling millions from her former husband’s winnings.

For although she has had a starring role with the ATO, Steicke has yet to see the money she wants.

Like the man she married, 50-year-old Steicke played a high-stakes game by going to the authorities. In offering up her former husband, she bet they would find any offshore assets, thereby allowing her to make a claim against them – after the ATO took its share.

But so far, it has not turned out that way. Evidence of vast offshore riches is yet to materialise, even though David Steicke had a 15 per cent stake in the Punters Club which should have delivered him more than $10 million each year. He is thought to no longer be a member of the cliquey syndicate.

The club maintains there are no “shares”, only a percentage of the betting floats, but Elizabeth Steicke is said to be convinced otherwise.

She believes the moving of money overseas could mean, on top of yearly winnings, the club could be worth more than $1 billion.

Steicke is thought to want half her former husband’s share. And that’s on top of properties scattered around the world.

The result has been an emotionally charged battle.

In taking the fight to each other, the Steickes have become famous in legal circles for conducting what is said to be the most expensive divorce in Australian history.

Bitter does not even go close to describing it.

In 2010, Robert Lunn, South Australia’s Supreme Court master and a District Court judge, said Elizabeth Steicke had spent a staggering $10.5 million on “various lawyers, investigators and forensic accountants”.

“She understands her husband has incurred costs of about $26 million,” Lunn said. He was presiding over a case Steicke had brought against her former lawyers.

And those figures are now two years old.

Steicke spent millions on forensic accountants in an attempt to track down her husband’s assets and hired private investigators to tail him in Hong Kong.

But little has come of her efforts, it seems, other than a record-breaking legal bill.

It appears she is still yet to uncover any hidden assets. But she didn’t miss out entirely.

If Steicke wants half the asset pool of $200-odd million, the couple will need to split seven houses in southern Europe, one in Switzerland, a truffle company, and Steicke’s mansion at Happy Valley in Hong Kong.

Since the divorce, Elizabeth looks to have concentrated on caring for her children, including the pair’s disabled child, while her former husband remarried and soon after had another baby.

Elizabeth Steicke refused to comment, but did tell a photographer her husband had left her with the kids eight years ago.

The spending from both sides is evidence of the vast riches contained within the club, which started out above an inner-city pub in Hobart.

Steicke, with all his impressive wealth, held only a 15 per cent share in the club, which these days resembles a multinational corporation.

Indirectly, the club employs hundreds of people, mainly in Sydney, and has betting operations in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe and the United States.

The ATO has identified three service providers which employ about 250 people, but there are thought to be another 20 plus service providers scattered across the globe.

The club’s main game is horse racing, but football, basketball, Keno, poker machines and possibly online poker have attracted its attention over the years. Although gambling is its business, when betting on horses, it’s more like a hedge fund that relies on high-frequency trading for its success.

To the surprise of many, it actually makes most of its money from losing bets.

In Walsh’s appeal statement filed in the Federal Court, he talks of a staggering 95 per cent of losing bets.

The group manages to offset the losses, he says, because “it would win both regular bets and a number of ‘exotic’ bets”.

The club’s reclusive boss, Zeljko Ranogajec, who also goes by the name John Wilson, explained this strategy to a Sydney court in 2008.

“You bet to lose, so that you actually turn over more money and the win comes from the rebates,” he told the Federal Magistrates Court during a dispute with a former business partner. “If you bet $100 and lost $5, but you get a 10 per cent rebate, you still make 5 per cent.”

It sounds simple but in practice, the club relies on a series of complex algorithms and high-speed computers to place thousands of bets on a single race.

The idea is that over time, the syndicate will come out roughly even from wagering, but will be well ahead when the rebates, which can be as much as 10 per cent of turnover, are paid.

That means it’s more about maths than gambling and all about turnover.

In this area, the syndicate has shown impressive growth.

Court documents tendered by the ATO show that turnover increased from $555 million in 2004 to $2.453 billion in 2006.

Since that time, the club has regularly bet more than $2 billion a year.

According to the ATO, the club received a profit of $66 million in 2005 and the operation has continued to grow.

It’s unclear if this figure comprises just the Australia operations or includes the club’s overseas activities.

What is clear is that the club has found itself uncomfortably exposed to the ATO’s gaze.

Absolute confirmation of there being a mole within took seven years after Elizabeth Steicke made contact with the AFP.

In May this year the club knew for sure it had been played.

And it was only due to a mistake from the ATO. By accident, the tax authorities disclosed they had documents containing legal advice on the club and the intricacies of how it operated.

While the material had been in its possession since 2005, the ATO had kept its secret weapon hidden until this year when the slip-up occurred.

The scope of what the ATO knows is unclear and it has hotly contested any further disclosure.

.....

To this day, the ATO has still not revealed where the information came from, referring only to a confidential source.

It is by piecing the puzzle together that suspicions emerge about a disgruntled ex-wife, although there is now thought to be a question mark over how useful Steicke’s testimony is.

With the explosive documents in hand, the ATO has thrown around accusations that secret board meetings were designed to deliberately avoid a paper trail and to conceal effective control of the club’s international operations through service providers.

This fits with what the Federal Magistrates Court heard about how Ranogajec operated according to his former business partner Karl O’Farrell.

“We like to keep our dealings secretive. Nothing in writing,” Ranogajec told O’Farrell, according to his written evidence. By mid-2007, it appears David Steicke and possibly other members of the club may have feared something wasn’t quite right.

Recently, they discovered Elizabeth Steicke’s lawyers had written a number of letters to the AFP and the ATO beginning in February 2005.

Even before the ATO had received the letters, its serious non-compliance section was investigating the group.

Curiously, not long after Steicke contacted the ATO, the matter was bounced to Michael Monaghan from serious non-compliance, who later became involved in Project Wickenby, the multi-agency tax evasion inquiry.

It is now clear the club was not investigated by this operation.

But they wanted Zeljko Ranogajec in for an interview.

It was not until two years later, in 2007, four years after the audit began and after prodding from the group’s lawyer, that the ATO told them the “review may have to take much more time than previously envisaged”.

But by this point, the blow had been delivered. The authorities knew how much the club was turning over each year, how it conducted business and that it employed sophisticated encryption software to ensure privacy.

Most crucially, however, the ATO believed it had evidence showing the Punters Club was not just a collection of mates, but a highly organised business which, in its opinion, should be paying tax.

From this point on, it was about damage control.

And so when another potentially volatile situation came about in June 2009, the club looks to have managed it far better than the Steickes did.

The 2009 incident was not pretty and had all the makings of an explosive tabloid story – booze, a fast car, a younger woman and the Las Vegas strip before dawn.

The club member involved was Peter Bowen.

Despite having only a small stake in the syndicate, Bowen, his wife Megan and five children lived in a grand historical house on 5500 square metres of land at Wahroonga in Sydney.

In a previous life, Bowen had compiled data and rated horses for AAP’s racing service. It was the early days of computerised form guides and using sophisticated data to predict the performance of horses.

That made him a natural fit for what Walsh and Ranogajec were trying to achieve at the Punters Club and he is thought to have joined them in the early 1990s.

If his Wahroonga house, with its putting green, tennis court and pool house was any guide, the years had been good to Bowen.

The family lived a prosperous but private life – the only mention in the media was a $20,000 reward offered for the return of a stolen laptop in 2007.

Some time in 2009, Bowen’s wife, Megan, left him.

Brokenhearted, the usually conservative Bowen headed to Las Vegas to compete in a poker tournament.

He never came home.

According to police, Bowen was a passenger in a high-powered Pontiac that went through a stop sign and was involved in a head-on collision just before dawn on the Las Vegas strip.

“The pick-up truck hit right in the passenger seat where Peter Bowen was sitting,” detective Sean Lethbridge from the Las Vegas police told the local media.

The driver was a young woman, 30 years Bowen’s junior, who was eventually charged with drink driving.

Lethbridge said he was “unsure” how the pair knew each other.

Bowen died from his injuries four days later, after Megan and her sister Susan flew from Australia and instructed doctors to switch off his life support.

It was an ugly end to a lavish weekend gone wrong, but such hedonistic tendencies were not uncommon, according to a source familiar with members of the club.

Some, according to the source, became dysfunctional via a combination of too much money and a belief that the rules didn’t apply to them.

“They thought they were untouchable,” said the source.

When probate was granted over Bowen’s estate, there were few signs of his apparent wealth.

Bowen listed his occupation as “sports journalist” and he left just a second-hand Mercedes, a modest share portfolio and a few thousand dollars in cash.

But there was clearly some money elsewhere, as his widow was granted a complicated private tax ruling by the ATO.

She sold the house on Lucinda Avenue for about $4 million last year but it had been on the market and vacant for two years after she bought an equally impressive house in a nearby suburb.

It appears Megan Bowen did not inherit her late husband’s stake in the operation, as no one technically has “shares”. But she has been looked after and is still understood to have some role with the club.

It is thought members wanted to make sure she was not in financial trouble. Put another way, the club didn’t want another aggrieved wife talking to the authorities.

By this point, it was already too late for that.

It was not long until the ATO, through its small to medium enterprise section, would make its move. Revised assessments of up to $40 million in income, for a three- year period, were issued to club members, including Walsh and Ranogajec.

By this time, the reclusive Ranogajec was living in London, at One Hyde Park, said to be the most expensive apartment building in the world.

Walsh claims he should not have to pay the backdated tax and the ATO’s backflip should only apply for future years.

That is an argument that may not succeed unless it can be shown that a decision about the group being a business was deliberately concealed.

It is not enough to show the ATO was not clear, or one section made a decision overruled by another. The support of politicians and a Facebook campaign won’t do much either.

According to government policy, politicians have no power to waive a tax debt.

Walsh maintains he will fight hard, and does not have the money to cough up millions for inflated assessments for the past seven years.

His argument about retrospective action, according to one legal expert, could face hurdles although another more technical argument that the ATO took too long to audit Walsh and others could succeed.

First will come an argument about the legal privilege attached to the stolen documents and when it’s all finished, Elizabeth Steicke’s legal fees may seem modest.

The Australian Financial Review

http://www.afr.com/p/national/how_ex_wives_club_nailed_david_walsh_DjMG12faGOxlyMZHjBzVSP

Now, consider the consequences of the current Kickback situation.

Firstly, no new blood can progress to generate significant Turnover. You cannot suffer a near double-digit Edge that favours the biggest Syndicates or Dynasties that happen to have nearly everything stitched up.

Next consider the few rare individuals who've managed to achieve financial independence (honestly) as Tote Punters.

The moment they find themselves retracing they will be smart enough to stop and never ever come back.

The Turnover mathematics might read.

10+ years learning the ropes on very modest Turnover.
5 years of significant Turnover to finally make it.
20 years Lost Future Turnover once they exit.

In other words the Totes have thrown away 80% of extremely valuable Turnover that they would have once had.

What a business model!

i'm not so sure we'd be better off with rebated bets out of the market rather than in it - the pools would be slashed and people would rather bet into larger pools imo

womble, I'm receiving rebates through one of the totes. Most of my betting is on the trifectas, quinellas, exactas, trebles etc, on Harness Racing in one state. In the 18 months, I have been getting the rebate, my turnover has increased 125%. I'm betting into small pools most of the time and I consider it a win win for all concerned.

Everybody gets a rebate with NSW.  SFA but a good bonus if you cash it in once a year.

If you shop around no reason you can't get up to a 10% rebate for most horses up to 24% rebate on tote prices, but betting outside of the tote.  Why bet on the tote when you can get huge rebates to not bet on it?

http://www.markread.com.au/help/Oddsservice.aspx

Are rebates any different to casino comp's or programs ...like a loyalty program

Dont know ?

Castiron,

Your join date here is enough to show that there is very little resemblance between you and the new blood I was referring to.

Now, I believe no Tote Punter now makes it up to the Tote Kickback grade.

Instead they avail themselves of Tote Aggregators (some legal, others to avoid at all costs) to allow betting into all Totes, and a much better Kickback deal with lower hurdles.

One more crazy situation where going through middlemen who don't forget to take their cut, is better than going direct!

When you have a 17% buffer, middlemen were bound to happen regardless of anything as there is huge room for a better deal where everybody is on a better wicket.

Most of the Exotic Rakes are far in excess of 17%.

And there is still absolutely no need for middlemen. The Totes have millions of customers. What possible sanity is there in refusing to offer competitive deals to a 100 or so High Value Clients, thus forcing them through middlemen or unlicensed outfits?

There is a similar insanity with with Totes failing to provide adequate Pool data to most of their customers, instead selling off that data to middlemen who surprise, surprise charge!

And returning to a key point of this thread:

Take away those huge Kickbacks and other Edges that massively advantage Walsh and a few, and seriously disadvantage the overwhelming majority, and see how long that privileged lot last at their current levels.

No middleman, my bets go straight into my own Tab Acct.

I wan't accusing you of going through a middleman, and I don't care if anyone does, since for most that's the best option.

What I was politely trying to raise is that something seems to be missing from your story.

For example if you've now managed to reach the Premium Level, it's weird that you were previously paying the Full Rake, when you could have done massively better through middlemen.

So it looks like you are leaving some key information out. And perhaps that may be your right.

But I can't see how you can justify your claim Kickbacks are Win Win for all, when your personal situation seems to be highly atypical.

Some people know far less about this game than they think they do.

jfc

I'm restricted by a confidentiality agreement in giving full details, but I'm a mile off being at the Premium Level.

I strongly believe that both myself and the party that I'm dealing with, benefits from our agreement.

My situation is not unique as there are two other forum members that I know of, that receive a similar deal.

Yeah those confidentially agreements are really fun. Hard to utter a syllable on the Internet without breaching something.

Just for the record there is a Premium Punter publicly defined by the NSW minister.

That's a minimum $3 million per year.

The trouble that's NSW only so I'll leave you to imagine what that gets to with Tabcorp who also has Victoria.

That's clearly beyond the wildest dreams of any new blood.

And the scene gets even weirder with Supertab.

If you can't qualify with Tabcorp you can then try getting Kickbacks through the minnow Supertab members.

Lower hurdles. But quotas! And very east to get the bulk of Kickback allocation stitched up by 1 guy.

What a dog's dinner.

And scant resemblance to actual Punting.

I was platinum with NSW and got the fcuk off.  Would love for them to give me rebates, but they won't even take my bets for the most part.

That Platinum is a real sick joke.

Many Premium Punters would have a hard time suppressing mirth and derision, when comparing their own Kickbacks with the piddly Platinum ones.

I've just gone to the trouble of checking that Pool sizes are dropping every year, probably since Kickbacks came in, making it very hard to argue that Kickbacks keep Pool big.

Furthermore so much big money now goes on extremely late - and appears in the Pools after jump. So before jump, the pools appear even smaller. Again defeating this argument.

While decreasing Pools are due largely to a migration to other segments like Fixed, some of the biggest players are not in a position to go there. So the real decline in small punters is even more marked.

And once enough of the small punters vanish, whom are the Kickback beneficiaries then going to exploit?

Again, the Kickbacks that bestowed so much undeserved wealth on Walsh and others, have also managed to run Tote punting into the ground.

Yet some of you actually wish Walsh good luck for this fiasco!

If it wasn't them, it would have been somebody else.  It is the betting companies on the whole who are running everything into the ground. 

At the end of the day, they are trying to take our money, we are trying to take theirs.  Guarantee you if they offered me a 10% rebate, I wouldn't knock it back because other people weren't getting the same deal.

No I am not happy with the state of betting in Australia, but I blame those that say yes, not those that ask.

Do I blame the profitable punters for corporates closing everybodies accounts?  No.  I blame the corporates.  I get a siht deal because of the betting companies, not because of the people that turned it to their favour.

I can't force anyone to check out that earlier link I gave to VITAB.

But anyone who does and checks some more to become informed, should be left with little doubt how the idiotic Kickbacks infested the caper.

It beggars belief that at the time when every Punter knew Kickbacks were illegal, that some executive suddenly went round to a few offering them 10%.

The askers didn't actually ask for the Kickback.

Instead they misrepresented themselves as a conduit for Asian money, when the vast proportion of that money was from Zeljko-Walsh Australian money.

This is in a number of Hansards.

Crispin Hull wrote a series of newspaper articles.

The Burbridge Report was comprehensive.

Fossen has written a number of books about it.

This material is not hard to find.

But you don't want read any of that.

Instead you want to insult everyone's intelligence by suggesting Walsh deserves good luck for his role.

I think Castiron is right - especially with the smaller pools, the guys getting rebates are propping up the pools and attracting more money, i'd hate to think what would be in them if they weren't there.

I think Castiron is right - especially with the smaller pools, the guys getting rebates are propping up the pools and attracting more money, i'd hate to think what would be in them if they weren't there.



After I go to the trouble of pointing out that decreasing Pools are a fact, and that a smaller proportion than ever of that money is visible before jump, how on earth can anyone claim that small Pools would somehow improve?

In fact the smaller the Pool the closer it is to zero at jump.

So who on earth, small or big, would bother betting into them? Let alone prop them up!

you have to make allowances for womble jfc...he thinks a tax will change the weather ffs, surely he cant comprehend what you are saying if he thinks that

Secong

would you knock back a rebate if you were offered one JFC?

If I was actually advocating for Kickbacks then perhaps people might consider themselves entitled to ask such questions.

But as nothing could be further from the truth, neither you nor anyone else have any reason to pry into my personal circumstances.

Why on earth would anyone need to have that actually spelled out for them!

relax champ - it was just a question.  i'd suggest 99% of people here, that don't already get them, would if they could

It's hard enough to cope with the endless stream of morons like Philip Adams and the whole of the ABC who can't figure out how Walsh really lucked out.

But to have presumed Punters here incapable of figuring how bad others' Kickbacks are for them just raises the hurdles for my coping mechanism.

Anyway permit me to offer my idea what would happen to any of those 99% who suddenly found themselves on the Kickback train.

A significant proportion of them would ruin their lives.

None of them would end up better off.

What is it that's so hard to grasp!

Can anyone here seriously believe that those who go to unimaginable lengths to stitch up those absurd Kickbacks haven't taken the appropriate steps to ensure to no one else gets a look in!

Walsh should get one of Abbott's knighthoods for giving us MONA. imo.

What exactly is the difference between MONA and Stillettos?

recognising that the kickback folk don't have to always get it right surely we're all better off when the don't - swings and roundabouts imo