Saturday Pool Betting Update

Give up with this shat. No one on ere uses tote

d.

Since May 2020, however, there has been a new player in the pools: the Tote itself. Faced with the problem of maintaining liquidity in a post-lockdown world with no racegoers, the Tote came up with a Pool Guarantee Service (PGS) which, according to its website, “seeds wagers into the pools … in order to provide robust pools into which all customers of the UK Tote can bet. By increasing the size of the overall pools, PGS helps to stabilise pricing within the pools so that the published ‘will-pay’ figures [the on-screen estimated dividends] reflect as closely as possible the final UK Tote dividend that is declared after the result.”

Only £6704 Trifecta rollover after those results yesterday??

Is that because there was f*ck all money bet into the pools this year? Or did the tote also magically land the fox hunters trifecta too???

Show me the punter who landed the fox hunters trifecta and I’ll give them the money myself. In years gone by that would have been won to a penny max, and the rest rolled over to midlands national. Same with Albert Bartlett.

The lack of transparency of how much genuine money is in these pools, and who is winning them is a DISGRACE.

Where the f*ck is the gambling commission on this???? What happened to FAIR & OPEN ?????

So the total trifecta pool size for fox hunters was £24k according to tote pool website.

The dividend declared was £24k.

Does that mean that nobody won it, the genuine money goes into the rollover ( which I’m guessing must be the 6k max? If that was the only race where it wasn’t won? Or even less if other races weren’t genuinely won either ? ) and the rest of the money was all the totes seeding, which doesn’t get rolled over?

Don’t see why all this seeding is necessary, it just muddies the waters. Especially at festival meetings. Punters have no chance of scooping the pool, as if they do manage to win, so does the tote, and their dividend gets slashed in half and more with the takeouts?????

Don’t expect you to explain westberks, but if someone from the tote could let us know how much genuine money is in the pools, and how the rollovers work, that would be great.

Whole thing is starting to stink IMO.

As they are making millions seeding they will do it as long as they are allowed to play  the pools.If insider trading is wrong in the city why is this allowed?

The fact nobody from the Tote is prepared to step forward  and speak on this matter is very worrying.

... So this idea to completely restructure the way the Tote should function was dreamt up during Lockdown to boost meagre pool sizes?  Why in that case would the already Massive Cheltenham pools need manipulating ? Scandalous and verging on illegal malpractice imo.

I see the tote places this week by in large were much lower than sp and that’s not including the extra places many online and betting shops we’re offering.

If only John McCririck was still around. Remembering the last Tote scandal in 1979 and exposed by the man.

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/THE+GREAT+TOTE+SWINDLE%3B+We+reveal+how+the+Tote+shortchanged+winning...-a0145710577

Sparrow

I have in front of me the sporting life dated December 4th 1980 tote credit general manager Bob cooper ,sacked for gross insubordination he was found declaring the wrong jackpot on more than one occasion.

I never knew that jimnast,  but it just shows what goes on with these people and yet we only seem to call out bookmakers.

Not to be confused with the Bob Cooper now famous for his placepot betting on Sky Racing Channel.

So yesterday, Gold Cup day, seeded pools. According to racing post placepot pool size approx 1.5 million, 45 winning units, dividend £23 k.

Champion hurdle day 2019, pre covid, pre seeding. Pool size 1.3 million, 10.5 winning units, dividend £ 91 k.

Similar set of results, arguably more favs placed yesterday, though also 2 boil overs. 96 runners and 2 races paying 4 places champion hurdle 2019 day, 104 runners, and only 1 race paying 4 places yesterday. So you could argue either way which was easiest to win.

Yet 91k vs 23k, for the non seeded vs seeded needs some explaining IMO.

How on earth is the seeding giving punters better value and not ripping them off?

Liquidity may well be down, though that is unsurprising with the amount of accounts that the Tote have either closed or heavily restricted.


Tote have a lot of explaining to do IMO. Why on earth are they seeding the festival pools?????

Well said Rooster, so are we now to assume EVERY Tote pool is now being manipulated one way or another. ?

   Totally against the ethos of the original Tote. RIP.

Betting into their own pools is clearing wrong and wide open for corruption.

Comparing 45 winning tickets yesterday to 10 a few years ago doesn’t seem the right comparison to me. If there were only 10 yesterday it would’ve paid over four times more.

....... Thats the problem Kenbo, if as you say there were only 10 winners yesterday there is nothing to say they could have all been the Totes own tickets. They are placing thousands of units into these pools with no TRANSPARENCY whatsoever. Shame.

Totally agree. Nobody even knows when they are placing their bets.

Can you imagine Camelot winning the National Lottery every week!

Surely it all about how and when they put money into the pool not just that they do bet into the pool.

If they are using "insider pool knowledge" of bets already placed then that is so wrong.

It's like a bloke coming up to the ticket table just before the off on one of those film race nights and asking how many tickets have been sold on each horse before placing his bet on the one with the lowest number of tickets sold.

Yes I agree, that was a poor comparison to make and clearly not like for like.

But all people want to know is if the tote were not playing their own pools yesterday (like in 2019) , what would the total pool have been, and how many winning units would there have been. Then we can compare, and decide if the seeding is in the punters favour, or in the totes.

All the other questions of when they are playing, how they are playing, what information edge they have over normal punters, and why they are closing and restricting so many accounts obviously need answering too.

Wont play it again until they take their dirty mitts out.

Yeah same here, tote is dead to me now.

I was actually really encouraged when they first took over, but unfortunately everything they were saying turned out to be lies.

Anybody who bets in notes rather than coins gets their accounts locked and closed almost straight away, and you are then put up in front of their kangaroo court to try and prove your wealth.

They don’t give a single sh1t though how much money you have or earn, you have to agree to shill for them to get an account. You see it all the time on Twitter, people moaning about their accounts being shut, or ridiculously low deposit limits. Then a few weeks later, the same people magically have their accounts open and are posting tote screenshots or photos of themselves holding a wining placepot ticket. You could be on the dole and you’d still get an account there if you’ve got over 500 Twitter followers and agree to sell them your soul. I imagine that’s why HF is constantly doing advertorials for them. Must be invested with them in that new greyhound track, either that or they’ve got some dodgy photos of him.

That and all the seeding and lack of transparency on the actual pool sizes and winning tickets and what happens with rollovers etc is enough to put me off. The win ‘pools’ are basically just the equivalent of betting at SP only, and who the f*ck wants to do that? You’d have to be an absolute moron to bet win and place on the tote compared to what you could get on the exchange. Even the world pool, a lot of the dividends are total sh1te.

I used to love the big festivals on the tote, though they have completely killed it.

RIP Tote.

Why is The Tote's take out so bloody much?.....10 per cent would be a lot fairer.

I had my last ever Placepot at Cheltenham on Friday and i wont be changing my mind unless the Tote start making some major changes.

OP still on this one

Pool Guarantee Service (PGS)

As part of our commitment to provide bigger and more compelling pools for all customers to bet into, the UK Tote operates the Pool Guarantee Service (PGS), which provides seeding to the pools operated by UK Tote.

PGS seeds the single leg pools by adding consistent layers of early liquidity to make the pools deeper and more robust. Seeding commences up to two hours in advance of the scheduled off time, depending on the pool type, and is programmed to be delivered in equal waves. This reduces the price variation between the guide prices, as the pools build before the races, and the dividends that are ultimately declared after the result and leads to greater predictability for customers about what the pools will pay on any winning bet.

PGS also seeds some multileg pools such as the Placepot, to make the pool sizes consistently larger and more attractive to bet into. We may increase the PGS values where we guarantee a significant value of any of our multileg products. PGS does not seed any pools that can build by customer bets routinely rolling over, such as the Jackpot and Scoop6.

PGS is a pre-set automated system that seeds the pools in line with prevailing market prices by placing actual bets into the pools. It is not part of the pool betting system and is entirely ring fenced from it which means it has no visibility to any other individual bets placed in the pools. In its operation, PGS relies entirely upon data that is publicly available and has no information advantage over any other customer. Once the automated system has been set, PGS operates independently from the internal Tote teams, and no member of the Tote team sees any of the bets placed by PGS while pools are building.

PGS makes a loss on its seeding bets across all products. Separately, as with all customer bets, the Tote retains a fixed percentage take-out on all bets placed by PGS. The proportion of the take out ultimately retained by the Tote after the costs of operating the pools covers the betting losses of PGS and typically leaves a surplus.  The Tote reinvests any surplus in Tote products such as Tote Guarantee and Tote+, contributing to enhanced dividend payouts to all customers. As a result, PGS helps to stabilise pool dividends and also allows the Tote to improve its returns to customers.

For context, the vast majority of pools (and exchanges) around the world are seeded.
Information on PGS can be found in our press release of 29th May 2020 which can be viewed here. In addition, on 4th March 2022 we also recorded a short podcast about our plans for the 2022 Cheltenham Festival which included a further explanation of PGS – you can listen to it here.
The operation of PGS is referred to in the Tote Terms and Conditions (14.8) available here.

So the tote PGS makes a loss, because it pays the same high take outs as normal punters in the pool.

But because it pays those take outs to itself, it actually covers all those losses and leaves a surplus ( even after costs).

So it’s actually profitable? Is that correct?? I can’t make much sense of that tbh.


Who had the winning unit for the fox hunters and Albert Bartlett trifecta pools? Was it a normal punter, or did PGS cop the lot? Is there any way of knowing???  Does PGS play in the exacta and trifecta pools, are they counted as single leg pools?  Fair play if it was a normal punter, mystic Meg died the other week, so it couldn’t have been her.

I take the tote seeding trying to reduce the price variation means the freak dividends most us hope for when placing a tote bet are unlikely.Tote most win dividends are very close to the SP now.
If you wanted greater predictability you would use a bookie as you can have 100% predictability with them.
  The Tote should not be stabilising the pools it should be weight of punters money that decides the dividends in my view.

I suppose by reducing the price variation on the win pools they reduce the chances of having to top up the dividend to SP ?