FL racinos get video blackjack nod
 

With Hialeah opening for a quarter horses meet and people about to lose millions on these crimnal machines perhaps it is time to buy a few Quarters that will be running for 60k? LOL

do the video dealers draw perfect cards and screw you just like the human dealers?

Does Hialeah have QH dates yet?

Hey the way the world is set up, someone wins and someone loses. Might as well be on the winners side.

Someone wins, Someone loses and Someone collects the vig regardless. That's the job you want.

More welfare for horsemen.

The trend sweeping across the country. You are just pissed you dont get pace figure welfare but hey maybe you can get something in the next stimulus package.

Seriously Chuck it is all falling and falling fast.. Horrendous horses are running for 30k why?

Why not?

Fools Gold and you know it. Bacon is awesome but it isnt as rare as white truffles that is why!

Well, I guess you took this personally, but I don't need any welfare. I can play that game too. Win more than a race a month and you might not either.

Seriously though, the product sucks right now and these purse enhancements do nothing to make it better. Nobody is betting much, check all the handle stats. I guess you guys can go the steeplechase route eventually.

LOL. So its ok for you to always take shots at horseman but when I make a little dig at you you want to get personal? Get a grip.
Do you really think I care that much about what you think or say?

If the product sucks and the sport is finished then why don't you find something else to spend your time on? Think everything will be great when your grand vision of only a few track surviving comes true? The purse enhancements may not drive handle but it does help keep owners in business. Not to mention that horseman are getting roughly 10% of the revenue. The tracks are the ones who clean up.

You clearly made it personal first, but that is fine.

I don't claim to have all the answers. I know for sure what we are doing now isn't working, and slots are a band aid that won't last forever. Anybody that thinks they will is living in dream land.

I made a tongue in cheek reference to stimulus packages. Sorry if you are humorless.

It isnt about having answers. However you always take potshots at horseman over slots as if we shouldnt be proactive over our future. I'm sure that you are in favor of something being given back to the gambler. Why would the horsemans desire be any different? Simply wanting the opportunity to have a better chance at keeping your head above water in a very difficult venture?

If you had a better idea of how to do things that takes into consideration the reality of political considerations, i would love to hear it.

You made a tongue and cheek reference to my business.

Slots money isn't going to be there forever, of that I am sure. In the mean time, customers are leaving in droves. It is already happening at some places. What happens when that money is gone and the customers are gone, too?

Of course it is the tracks more than horsemen, I'll concede that point. I should have said welfare for tracks, of which horsemen are a part. Slots keep places in business that really don't belong in business. The effect is we have too many tracks with not enough horses, and crappy races to bet. Thus, people don't bet. That wouldn't be so bad if tied into the slots money were takeout cuts, but I haven't seen that happen, ever. When it does maybe my mind will change.

I have never said I want only a few tracks, but it wouldn't hurt to cut 25-30% of them. Hell, just in infrastructure alone the game could save millions. Do we really need Aqueduct and Belmont? Monmouth and the Meadowlands? Santa Anita and Hollywood? Pimlico and Laurel? Of course we don't.

That only tackles tracks in the same state in close proximity to each other. I could go on a with things like Philly and Delaware Park, Penn National and Charles Town, Turfway and River Downs, and so on. These tracks could work together and make things better for all with less dates.

In the end, the name of the game is handle. Without some of the changes I mention, it will continue to shrink. Just the fact that on a summer Saturday there are about 50 win pools to bet in makes the game very hard to play. The pools are diluted and unbettable at most places for all but the casual fan.

As for the political considerations, of course it is hard. But, is anybody even trying to change anything?

Finally, thanks for your take it or leave it statement. That is typical of a horsemen and a big part of why I think the way I do about things.

orioles - are slots not wokrking at a venue like yonkers?

here was a place on death's door a few years ago , now places is packed , purses are up , better racing , cards on the way , possible hotel on the way , more jobs for ny'ers on the way.....what is bad about this? , am i missing something here , is the rooney family missing something here?

I don't follow harness racing, so I don't know the specifics of the situation. The biggest problem with slots is that the money isn't coming from the sport, so it can be taken away...then what?

taken away by what? yonkers is expanding , what worked at yonkers s/b able to work at the big a or belmont

now i'll give you that 8/10 customers may not be able to read the form or know the difference between a claiming race or a stakes race , but , something is working , does the rooney family miss the big picture here?

Taken away by the people that gave them slots, politicians.

Let me ask this, how are the pools at Yonkers? Do people bet?

Because at the thoroughbred tracks, the pools with slots are pretty much a joke. They do nothing but siphon horses away from other tracks where people actually bet, helping create crap races.

Also, I think looking at a city with 10 million people in it might be a bit extreme as well.

purses are up at yonkers , i don't think the pools are that bad either , nothing like what nyra has , as for the ny metro area , yes , i agree with you that you can do things there that may not work in other cities across the country

Of courses purses are up...from the slots. I don't think the pools are much at all, but I could be wrong.

the pools are probably up less in % terms than the purses , no question about that , but the higher purses have helped various barns that cannot be disputed

as i said , my guess is that of 10 people that go to yonkers , there are proabably about 3 out of 10 that go there for horses , 6 go for the slots and 1 goes for the food ... the couple that go for the food most likely throw small bets into the pools , bery meaningless , of the 6 slot players , my guess is that maybe 1 or 2 of those will play numbers in the races , again small amount into the pool .... the vast majority of the pool will come from players not at the facility (no counting barn $$$$)

I think you are vastly overestimating the amount of slots players that bet horses. The average is probably a fraction of a percent. That is my experience at places like Delaware, Evangeline, and Charles Town.

could very well be , but , the main things are that $$$ that they have that is getting into the purses which is good for horsemen at YR

Well, no sh!t. My whole point is the slots dollars have a lot of negative impact as well, especially for bettors.

what is the negative impact , how is it any different than people that lose at the track

the slots payoff at a certain rate , there are winners and mostly losers , no different than most horse players , the majority donate to the windows and a small few walk out ahead.....horse racing has found a new source of revenue in slots .....people will always take a shot at the slots because they think their pull will be their pay day or more.....

So it is ok to speak about my business but yours if off limits? Hey I may be a peon in the horse racing business but I am a face with a name. Why the sensitivity?

As for your take on closing tracks, it would be a great idea for track operators but I fail to see how racing Aqueducts meet at Belmont or Santa Anita's at Hollywood makes a difference in the quality of the product. Same crappy product, just now the same location. What you really want is the business forced to make drastic changes to itself and you believe that taking away slot money would make that happen. While that may play out in theory there are simply too many different variables to ever make that possible. Not that there arent isolated changes that have occurred or occasions where money will be taken away. But you are thinking globally here and racing is a local game.

The name of the game is handle. But slot money going to tracks doesnt chase players away any faster than if the tracks didnt have slots and some private operator right down the road did. It is a fallacious argument.

The ironic part is the vast majority of horseman support the bettors and their issues. A lot of them contribute tons of money themselves towards handle. But very rarely do we ever get any support from your side of the table. Not that it matters because the tracks and regulators dont really care, they have their own agendas.

But is the handle "coming from the sport"? It has been taken away has it not?

If you closed tracks you cut into fixed overhead. You sell off the land and hopefully reinvest it into the other property. Also you never get that until you take the bottle away from the baby it can learn to eat food.

This entitlement BS is holding the industry back. There are WAY TO MANY RACES

Ok so you make some improvements to the existing track. But isnt handle being shifted more and more off track?

Like it or not the horseman are partners with the tracks. Always have been. We provide the product. The tracks wants to expand their menu? Fine but as their partner we get a piece of the action. Why is this hard to understand?

not hard to understand , it's the american way chuck

Then tell me why people act so indignant that horseman get a slice of slot money?

i don't know why freddy mo and orioles and others don't like seeing horsemen surive because of a different revenue stream


to me it's similar to not wanting to see companies in this county seek out new revenues in order to grow and create jobs , one of the most successful co's in this country was in a dying business in the late 60's and was on death row until the new owner showed up and decided that things had to change and new revenues had to be found , today that co has the highest equity of any company in the US and it's called Bershire Hathaway

i hope slot continues to fund your businesss chuck so that you and many others can surive

I don't care that you spoke about my business, I really don't. It is doing just fine and you suggesting it needs help is silly. For all I know you are doing just fine too, I hope you are.

Now, back to the topic. Of course it is shifting away from the tracks, so stop paying ridiculous amounts of money to run plants that are too big and/or unnecessary. Stop trying to get people to bet on **** races and then complaining you need slots to survive. As Fred says, way too many tracks, way too many races, not enough horses. As evidenced by the racing at places like EvD and Mnr and FL, there is a line where people are simply not going to bet much on bad horses.

I agreed with you it is mostly the tracks (your partner) selling their soul to the devil. Slots do hurt handle. First, there are people that bet horses that move to slots, not the other way around. Second, keeping these tracks open creates a worse product at other tracks. I can't believe you can't see that. Look at the quality of racing in New York compared to 10 years ago. There is pretty much no hard knocking claimers left, the former bread and butter of racing. They are spread among Philly, Delaware, Monmouth, etc.

If you don't see my point, that is fine, I'm sure I'm missing some of yours. I'm sure short term slots are great, but long term, I'm sure they are not. Rather than beg for welfare, racing should be fixing the product. If they don't, states will realize they didn't need racing in the first place to suck away people's money via slots.

Racing needs to close tracks lose date and pair its races by at least a third.. NOBODY is betting...Making more racino tracks is insane. Slots make breeding more horses an option, slots give ridiculous horses(like my pig) an opportunity to earn.. He is a slug that needs a good home. BUT because slots are in at Penn Nat I have the pleasure of campaigning such a Giant.. If slots werent at Penn Nat he would be at a farm instead of a ridiculous track. Now IF people were betting on the comical races as they had in the past when there wasn't a lottery, slots, gaming table, poker EVERYWHERE..Then handle would justify his sore ankle life. BUT since the gambling dollar is not being used on such vermin races then the ciontinued development of the industry around such false pretense MUST STOP.

I tend to agree. Even at NYRA tracks. No more than 4 days a week, 9 races a day, and for god's sake cut the time in between races by 10 minutes. Move post time to noon. Get us in and out of there by 3pm.

While you make many valid points, the bigger issue in the deterioration of the quality of day to day cards especially in NY is the rise of statebred races. As a horseman without megamoney owners, there would be very little reason not to focus on statebreds if I were to relocate to NY. It is like having two separate circuits at the same track. NY has also harmed its racing program by allowing a handful of trainers to operate huge stables on NYRA grounds via Saratoga being open for training 7 months of the year. It allows these guys to hoard horses and never forces them to make a choice. They just keep expanding which further drives the other, less fortunate horseman more towards statebreds which can run for the same money in most cases except for only the very best horses. While there surely is a better caliber horse found at Delaware and Monmouth when compared to days gone by, the effect of statebred races in NY has imo been more of a detriment than slots especially when you consider that a large amount of the quality horses running at those places are trained by big trainers who have similar horses already running in NY.

The proliferation of statebred races are a problem, but I'm not sure we aren't talking chicken and egg here. Statebreds are used to fill racecards because there aren't any other horses left. If you aren't a top horse that can run in stakes and allowances, there is no incentive to keep your horse in NY unless it is a statebred.

These races have taken off with the loss of the claimers. It is the same with the turf sprints, a previously unheard of race in New York. By far the worst are statebred turf sprints, though Linda Rice might beg to differ.