Integrity of the tote and GC

Hi,

I would've thought you were the appointed third party otherwise WTF are they, and other bookmakers, paying all those fees for? Is there somewhere I can complain about the so called gambling commission?

Feck



Dear Mr. Feck

Thank you for your email reagrding the tote scoop six.

It is not a requirement of the Tote to implement these changes but something they recognize will improve transparency and customer satisfaction. In regards to your correspondence with the Tote this is a matter you would be best advised to take up directly, with the Tote.  The processing of the Pools and dividends are subject to a number of external audits to ensure their integrity, from a regulatory point of view the Commission has seen no evidence to suggest there is any question of malpractice.


If you have concerns about the integrity of the pools you are advised to follow the complaints procedure shown below:

Complain, in writing, to the licence holder concerned providing as much detail as possible. You should keep a full record of the complaint. If you are not satisfied with the outcome, ask the licence holder to refer the dispute to their appointed independent third party for investigation. The independent third party should then contact you in the course of their investigation.


If there are any further queries then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Davy Cowie
Gambling Commission


Hi,

It's now the 2nd October. Today there was a massive scoop 6 rollover with 1 winning ticket. No running on tickets were shown for leg 1 OR LEG 3. After the 5th leg the running on tickets were shown as 8 on the winner and 5 on the favourite. As the winner was favourite that meant there should have been 13 tickets running on to the final leg but another 2 miraculously appeared from somewhere. The technology and software required to update the running on tickets for this pool would cost nothing more than a few hundred quid yet a government owned organisation finds it beyond them. Is it not about time the GC "ensured fairness in gambling"?

Regards

Feck

PS You can check the running on tickets here http://www.scoop6.co.uk/results/. In leg 5 there are 8 on the winner and 5 on the favourite but in the final leg there are 15 tickets.



Hi,

Check out this link http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ashforth+Pr... and this section in particular

In 1979, McCririck hit the jackpot with "Totegate". On July 4, at Carlisle, Shine On, at 11-1, and Tinas Gold, at 20-1, finished first and second in an 18-runner handicap. The dual forecast paid 45p to a 10p stake.

Persistence enabled McCririck to establish that the Tote had developed a practice of putting winning off-course bets into the racecourse pool after the race result was known.

Further persistence persuaded a reluctant Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, to set up an independent inquiry from which Woodrow Wyatt, the Tote chairman, was lucky to escape with his job.

While it was 31 years ago, it would be naive to think it couldn't happen in the era of rip-off Britain at a time when faith in the "professional" classes that carry out "external" audits is rock bottom. There's only one way to ensure it can't happen and that's to show the running on tickets for any pool, any leg ASAP. If my laptop can calculate the running on totals for the 6th leg of a million ticket pool using a brute force algorithm in less than a second then why can't the tote's processor? Why are they holding these back?

If you don't think that's worthy of consideration then what exactly is it the GC do?

Regards

Feck   



From: The Gambling Commission 
Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 3:37 PM
To: 'Feck'
Subject: RE: Integrity of the Tote


Dear Mr Feck



Thank you for your email regarding the Tote Scoop 6



We have discussed the matter you refer to and the new system is said to be a few weeks a way from launch. A timeframe for when this will be available to customers has been requested.



It is not a requirement of the Tote to implement these changes but something they recognize will improve transparency and customer satisfaction. In regards to your correspondence with the Tote this is a matter you would be best advised to take up directly, with the Tote.  The processing of the Pools and dividends are subject to a number of external audits to ensure their integrity, from a regulatory point of view the Commission has seen no evidence to suggest there is any question of malpractice and cannot comment on every “theoretical” possibility put to us.



Yours sincerely



Davy Cowie

Gambling Commission
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Feck [mailto:]
Sent: 06 August 2010 18:20
To: The Gambling Commission
Subject: Re: Integrity of the Tote



Hi,



In what way is it resolved? They told me they were installing a new system which would be up and running for the Derby (2 months ago) and they would then be able to update the totals quicker and show the running on tickets for the first leg. From what I can tell nothing has changed. No 1st leg totals were shown for yesterday's record jackpot which would theoretically give them the chance to stick in combos after the first race result was known. They also told me they would keep me up to date with what was happening but they haven't. You've not exactly scared the **** out of them.



Regards



Feck



From: The Gambling Commission

Sent: Friday, August 06, 2010 1:17 PM

To: 'Feck'

Subject: RE: Integrity of the Tote



Dear Mr Feck



Thank you for your email regarding the Tote Scoop 6



I can inform you that Gambling Commission compliance managers held a meeting with the Tote in which this matter was discussed. In relation to your complaint; the tote informed the Commission that they have responded to yourself directly and the matter is now resolved. The Commission is currently satisfied with the approach taken.





Yours sincerely



Davy Cowie

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Feck [mailto:]
Sent: 04 August 2010 10:03
To: The Gambling Commission
Subject: Re: Integrity of the Tote



Hi,



Did anything ever come of this?



Regards



Feck



From: The Gambling Commission

Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 3:27 PM

To: ''

Subject: RE: Integrity of the Tote



Dear Mr Feck



Thank you for your correspondence dated 23 May 2010 about a problem with the Tote and scoop 6.  The Commission will consider the issues that you raise in order to decide what, if any, further action is necessary.



The Commission will consider further investigation of the questions you raise if we consider they relate to a breach of our Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) or provide wider concerns relating to the three licensing objectives. These are to keep crime out of gambling, to ensure gambling remains fair and open and to protect children and vulnerable people from being harmed or exploited by gambling.



As I am sure you will understand it won’t normally be possible to provide you with specific feedback on any action taken.  Thank you for taking the time to contact us about your concerns.



Yours sincerely



Davy Cowie

Gambling Commission

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Feck [mailto:]
Sent: 23 May 2010 13:25
To: The Gambling Commission
Subject: Integrity of the Tote



Hi,



8 days ago (15th May 2010) I placed a scoop 6 combination and as I had several place lines running I was keeping an eye on the scoop 6 running totals which can be viewed on the day at http://club.totesport.com/totepoolLiveInf... The relative page at that site tells you how many tickets remain in the pool and how many of those are running on to each horse. On the day in question I was viewing the place totals for the last leg (leg 6) as the result came in. I calculated the total number of tickets on the three placed horses as 228 which should have meant a place dividend of over £800. Fifteen minutes later the page stated there had been 322 winning tickets and that the dividend would be £555.20 yet the running totals still suggested there were only 228 winning tickets. At that point I started a thread on the betfair forum (view at http://community.betfair.com/horse_racing/go/thread/view/94102/24057381/Scoop_6_place_dividend_looks_wrong

- there's also an article in the guardian that contains a summary of the affair http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010... Around 20 minutes after that thread appeared the totals suddenly changed so that the total number of tickets on the 3 placed horses totaled 322.



I wrote to the tote (twice) asking them to explain these discrepancies but have so far heard nothing. If you go to the following page http://www.scoop6.co.uk/results/15052010.htm you can view these discrepancies for yourself. Click on the 'Show how tickets ran' link for leg 5 and you'll notice the following - there are 944 winning tickets on the placed horses (note that the favourite was placed so the 134 tickets on the Fav are counted) but the 'Tickets remaining after this race' shows only 725. If you now click on 'Show how tickets ran' for the last leg you'll notice that the total number of tickets on all horses is 725 and the total number of tickets on the 3 placed horses is 228. That's exactly what was showing on the tote's own screen after the race was finished prior to the 'update' when 219 tickets were spread over the runners to make the totals agree with the tote's 322 winners. Of the original 725 tickets that were showing 31% (228) were winners, of the 219 that were added later 43% (94) were winners. Am I the only one that finds the differences in those percentages to be "statistically significant"?     



The tote told the guardian "the error came about when the ticket details were transmitted incorrectly after the fifth leg with some bets not being included through human error". While the totals in leg 5 suggest a mistake was made I just can't fathom how it could've occurred. I had previously complained to the tote before about their failure to show the totals for leg 1 until after the result was known as this cast doubts on the integrity of the bet (how are we to know that combinations that include the first winner aren't being inserted after the first winner is known?). The same applies to legs where there's a stewards enquiry as they don't update the total till after the weigh-in which sometimes means no updates for the following leg (why can't they show the figures 'subject to weigh-in'). Their reply to that particular complaint was that the bets came from various sources and there was sometimes a delay in receiving them. Does this mean they are still receiving bets after the result is known. If not, why can't they show the first leg totals after leg one. Consider the following.



Suppose a million lines have been placed on the scoop 6 and that (ridiculously) they've all been placed as single lines. The bet id, the unit stake and the numbers of the 6 selections for one line could be stored in 11 bytes. The entire one million lines could therefore be stored in 11 million bytes which is less than 11 MB. An 8 mbps home internet connection  could download all of that information in around 10 seconds. Using my £400 laptop I set up a test which used a MySQL table containing 1 million rows each of which had a bet id column, a unit stake column and 6 integer columns to store the numbers of the 6 selections (which I assigned randomly). I then ran a query that counted the number of running on tickets for the last leg based on 3 randomly selected places for each of the first 5 legs. The query took 0.8 secs to come up with the totals. When you consider in reality we're talking about very much less than 1 million lines (many lines placed as a combo can be stored in much less memory and be checked far quicker) and that once a combo or line is beat there's no need to check it again it's hard to see where the tote's problem lies. Put it this way, if they transmitted the few seconds worth of data to me, I could display the running on totals on a website for the first leg within seconds of receipt and for subsequent legs (subject to weigh in) within seconds of the previous leg's result. Once the data's received, all that's required is to input results correctly and a few seconds of processing power to cover all 6 leg updates.



So what's the tote's problem? The data arrives to them in dribs and drabs over a lengthy time period but, once it's there, we should only be talking about a few MB of data. Certainly they've got the jackpot, the placepots and individual race pools to look after and transmit at the same time but it's still not a lot of information. Why would their system not deal with a section of the information in the last leg of the scoop 6 in question. Why would "human error" result in a subgroup of lines not being available to the server? Have they got 6 Sinclair spectrum's that require manual input sharing the workload? If betfair had the tote hardware and software, would it crash because a volleyball game was being shown live? It all sounds dodgy to me. Are they allowing bets to be transmitted after results are known. Can bets withheld due to "human error" be altered? The only way the tote can know for sure is if they've got the few megabytes of data that make up all the lines in a pool in their possession when the first leg is only a few seconds old. If that's the case, how could the error under discussion possibly happen?



Make no mistake, this needs investigating because "human error" just doesn't do it for me. Personally I think the entire block of data that covers a pool should be available for download as soon as is possible and certainly before the first leg result is known. That way there would be no possibility of manipulation after the event.

Regards

Feck

Feck

The GC are a waste of time. I was in a long discussion (in writing on email) with them about laying owners, specifically a owner caught laying his own horse sagains my back bet.

asking then to void or anul the bet - as betfair had refused to do so.

They finally worte to me and confirmed that as far as they are concerned it is perfectly acceptable  and legal for registered owners to lay thier own horses in britain, and they would accept no further corresponce with me on that issue.

you almost could not make it up.....




you coudl not make it up

I was aware I'd get no joy from them magician. I only updated the position on this in the hope the Guardian would take up the case again and cause them both a bit of embarrassment. It's now almost 5 months since the tote told the GC they were about to introduce new updating software. If the tote have all the combos at the off of the first leg (as they claim) it should be possible to update the first leg in seconds and subsequent legs (subject to weigh-in) as soon as the result of the previous leg is known. The coding required is micky mouse.

Incidentally, the GC tell me if I wish to complain about the GC I should contact the GC.

Do you think the police might get them to confess Banks? Maybe they could arrest the entire financial sector while they're at it.

It wouldn`t be difficult to prove if you wanted to investigate it.

Wouldn't it? You think the tote, who are seemingly reluctant to let people know what their pool bets running on totals are, will give me access to their computer code?

FFS Banks. I wrote to an organisation that charges bookmakers thousands of pounds in fees supposedly in return for "ensuring fairness in gambling" asking them to ensure fairness in gambling and you seemingly have a problem with this?

You're the one that sounds touchy. You actually sound like one of those cap doffers who thinks the powers that be are above reproach. Are you against the tote showing accurate running on totals?

The mistake I made (and pointed out myself) doesn't invalidate anything else I wrote.

8 days ago (15th May 2010) I placed a scoop 6 combination and as I had several place lines running I was keeping an eye on the scoop 6 running totals which can be viewed on the day at http://club.totesport.com/totepoolLiveInfo... The relative page at that site tells you how many tickets remain in the pool and how many of those are running on to each horse. On the day in question I was viewing the place totals for the last leg (leg 6) as the result came in. I calculated the total number of tickets on the three placed horses as 228 which should have meant a place dividend of over £800. Fifteen minutes later the page stated there had been 322 winning tickets and that the dividend would be £555.20 yet the running totals still suggested there were only 228 winning tickets.

Does adding winning tickets after the result constitute fraudulent activity? I don't know? It may have been an error but their explanation raised more questions than it answered. The Guardian obviously felt the same as they did an article on it after the original thread.

As Banks has said do you actually have any evidence of fraudulent activity or is the sum total of your argument that their is a suggestion that there may be something going on.

If you followed that reasoning through who is to say the 15 winning tickets rolling on are all genuine entries. Presumably all your going on is the information supplied by the organization you are accusing of malpractice. If you expect the GC/Police or whoever to jump into action every time someone dreams up a possible fraud in relation to gambling, the regulatory burden on companies would stifle business and close firms.

On a seperate point it seems distasteful how happy you are to simply cut and paste GC staff details while you hide behind your username. I assume and hope the GC haven't been wasting fee payers money on engaging with an individual addressing himself only as Mr Feck! Perhaps any further correspondence they send you should adopt a tone more fitting with the contempt you hold them, as you state your intention is merely to embarrass the Tote or GC not to actually resolve a genuine problem.

Typical Guardian reader.

Are all their overseas bets placed directly on to the same server or do they manually add these into the UK pool?

They claim all combinations for all legs are relayed to them such that they have all bets shortly after leg 1.

No idea then.

Why don`t you put in a bid to buy the Tote and then you will be allowed to see more financial details about them before deciding whether to put in a bid.

You could have question 1 as "are there any fiddles that I should know about that need to be maintained to avoid the finger of suspicion falling on the previous owners once my bid is successful and I am running the operation?"

Failing that you will have to make do with quietly seething in a corner I`m afraid.

As Banks has said do you actually have any evidence of fraudulent activity or is the sum total of your argument that their is a suggestion that there may be something going on.

My point is that if they wish to protect their integrity they should show the running on tickets before each leg (shortly after the start in the case of leg 1).


If you followed that reasoning through who is to say the 15 winning tickets rolling on are all genuine entries.

You've obviously not read the thread but anyway, if previous leg totals were shown correctly we would know 15 tickets should be running on which is my whole point.


Presumably all your going on is the information supplied by the organization you are accusing of malpractice. If you expect the GC/Police or whoever to jump into action every time someone dreams up a possible fraud in relation to gambling, the regulatory burden on companies would stifle business and close firms.

As I said earlier, I don't expect anything. Read the thread.


On a seperate point it seems distasteful how happy you are to simply cut and paste GC staff details while you hide behind your username. I assume and hope the GC haven't been wasting fee payers money on engaging with an individual addressing himself only as Mr Feck!

They are not MI5. If you mean he may be embarrassed that he's been publicly outed as a GC employee then I take your point.



Perhaps any further correspondence they send you should adopt a tone more fitting with the contempt you hold them

I thought they were already doing that.


, as you state your intention is merely to embarrass the Tote or GC not to actually resolve a genuine problem.

My hope was the embarrassment might induce them to resolve the problem.



Typical Guardian reader.

I don't buy newspapers.

Typical clive.

I'm sure the response you've received includes the fact that the tote pools are audited independently. Presumably the organization conducting the audit are also involved in this elaborate cover up??

I'm still not entirely sure whether you are saying

a) There's a genuine fraudulent offence taking place (agree very serious but believe such accusations should be based on evidence not opinion)

b) You accept there isn't a problem but are worried that the tote do everything to stop such scurrilous accusations being taken seriously (doesn't appear to be an immediate danger judging by the quite straight forward response you've recieved from the regulatory body and lack of activity from the tote)

c) You are on some fairly dull and meekly supported crusade aimed at those you feel are worthy of your wrath today. As i say it would be far more preferable for those having to fund the GC, that they just ignore such correspondence and spend their time on more meaningful things. At least that way they've met the expectations of the magical feck alliance! (who i don't suppose contribute anything to their running costs.)

Perhaps you and Clive should write in to the tote hierarchy letting them know you fully support their system of misinformation and start a campaign for its retainment. As you BHA guys often say "it's tradition".

Clive82 that is an eloquent "**** off Feck" response!

I wonder what sort of wage these two clowns are on

Let me guess, the recession's the fault of the unemployed and the immigrants and absolutely nothing to do with wholesale fraud in the financial sector. You sound like the sort of cnut that gets on in this country.

I wonder what sort of wage these two clowns are on LaughLaugh

What on earth has that got to do with anything?

Your victim traits are shining through brightly. Jealousy is not an endearing quality in fact it looks a little pathetic if I`m honest.

Enjoy your evening, i'm off to look at tommorrows scoop 6 races.

Which legs are you guaranteed the winners of tomorrow clive?

The pools totals are very often wrong when the payout is likely to be considerable. This does not have to be a Scoop 6 or run-on Jackpot pool.

On Leger day at Doncaster many peole would have singled Rewilding in the placepot, which was thereby inflated and returned three-figure odds. The amount actually paid out was about four times less than illustrated on the toat site.

You just have to cross your fingers and hope if you place a value toat multiple. Or lay off your stake and place your faith in your original selections.

I think it's got everything to do with it. If a persons IQ was proportionate to their wage we wouldn't have a tote run by clowns incapable of implementing a simple computer or a BHA being shafted rotten by bookmakers.

Do you realise how stupid you sound?

Typical Labour supporting keyboard warrior who is frustrated by their lack of influence in society.

If you spent as much time trying to do something constructive you might actually enjoy life.

Clive is no buddy of mine but whatever I do next can`t make me look as ridiculous as you on your high horse always looking for somebody or something to moan about.

Some gainful employment (if you can find anyone crazy enough to employ you) might help although I doubt it would last too long with your attitude. You would probably end up trying to sue them for infringing your human rights over some victim type issue.