Just as I was posting.... thread gone

Morning magician. Its best you maintain your good relationship with BF as it benefits the rest of us anyway (at least someone is fighting our corner).

I think bf were just guilty of being a bit hasty with their defence - Dixon was shrewder by waiting 24h and giving a considered response.

Same with ATR great pr interview for harry but that was b4 the whole evidence was published.

noodles...

I think my time here is up.... you proably will not see me posting again

Disappointing. If its a personal decision hope you change your mind - if its a bf decision its an own goal because winners on here can encourage others to try harder with their own punting.

Best of luck in the future whatever you decide.

Strange. I think it quite legitimate to ask whether licenced bookmakers are allowed to take bets from warned off individuals.

Frog - Your other thread amazingly got overlooked by the powers that be last night. Any other thread was pulled within minutes. I think Magician is right. Several posters are about to get silenced. Personally i am quite miffed with BF on this. Their PR on friday basically makes me wonder if i can trust them to see things done fairly on here. I think posting on anything worth talking about on here is dead now and a waste of time really.

Frog - exactly. Big owners in yards must command some info not privvy to the public?

Not many wanting to wade in on this anymore.

Still can't understand anyone defending the accused. Someone of his stature in the game must have been aware of earlier rule changes due to owners laying to back or vice versa. And does he really think that using inside knowledge on riding orders is a fair way to trade a horse IR?

There should never be one rule for some and another for others. End of.

It seems to me that quite a few people posting on this topic over the last couple of days are so far up themselves that they have lost sight of the reason the rule exists. It was brought in to outlaw people profiting from stopping horses they own from winning.

Laying a horse you own and stopping it, laying a horse you own so that you'd profit if it loses (even if you haven't taken any steps to stop it), and placing lay bets on a horse but still being a net backer (so that you lose if the horse doesn't win) are three different things. They are all against the rules, but it's shameful to pretend that they're equally serious offences. It's very hard to have any respect for the opinions of anyone who refuses to distinguish between those three very distinct situations.

Clearly he is guilty of breaking the rules - the question is whether the punishment is appropriate. It does seem out of line with previous punishments to me, and you'd have to be born under a gooseberry bush if you didn't suspect that the relative severity of the punishment wasn't down to him continually singing Betfair's praises.

As for whether Betfair should continue to accept his bets while he's warned off, he's warned off by the BHA, and Betfair are licensed by the Gambling Commission. So I'd be very surprised if there was any rule preventing Betfair from accepting his bets. Betfair do have lawyers I think, and I doubt they'd have made any statement without the lawyers approval. If there was a rule, they lawyers wouldn't let them do it, would they?

That is the funniest bit about this whole debate for me. Either you believe that "rules is rules", and that they should be applied without discretion, or you think it's OK to temper the rules with good judgement. Surely if you're in the former camp and think "rules is rules", then you ought to support Betfair continuing to take his bets - they aren't breaking any rule by doing so. If you think Betfair should turn down his business even though they are allowed to, by applying discretion, then its double standards to claim that HF should be treated as severely as those who've laid their horses and stopped them.

And if you've got an opinion on whether owners should be able to take advantage of inside information then fine, but that's nothing to do with this story either: there's no offence of "insider trading" in horse racing. The previous BHA chairman (BHB as it was then IIRC) even testified to a parliamentary select committee that inside information was the "lifeblood" of the sport. It's a topic worthy of debate, but it's not this topic.

"
Clearly he is guilty of breaking the rules - the question is whether the punishment is appropriate. It does seem out of line with previous punishments to me, and you'd have to be born under a gooseberry bush if you didn't suspect that the relative severity of the punishment wasn't down to him continually singing Betfair's praises.
"

Yes out of line but they have changed the rules since those cases so consider this. If Ramsden had been warned off for any length of serious time do you think that would have made HF think twice about using the lay button on one of his as part of a trade?

I don't think i or some others have suggested H was stopping horses to lay them,he clearly wasn't. But he was breaking the rules use lay bets in his books concerning his horses. He used definite knowledge that his horse would make the running to execute an IR trade in one of those books. I don't think a gambler of his magnitude is that naive to think it wouldn't matter. Who in racing hadn't heard the outcome of the Mickmacmagoole affair? Come on.

birch, w/out attempting to rule definitively on what HF was trying to do:

1) laying your own horse to lose is a bad form of cheating. The horse might be a non-trier;

2) laying your horse in an attempt to manipulate the market and get a better price is another form of cheating. You can benefit e.g. from inside info. on the horse's tactics.

Owners can try to profit from inside info. by backing their own horses when they are fit and ready. One way of formlising this principle wd be to state clearly that owners can only back their own horses at any prices.

2) laying your horse in an attempt to manipulate the market and get a better price is another form of cheating. You can benefit e.g. from inside info. on the horse's tactics.

Even better, if the market doesn't move after you've tried it, you can stop the horse anyway.

Viva you have a very apt forum name for the current forum climate.

Ha Ha missed both my legs!

Ah when comedy on tv was funny. Happy days eh?

t