Monday, January 29, 2007

Horse Feathers

Uh, OK:
Colonial Downs, which offers betting on horse races at 10 sites across Virginia, is pushing for changes in state law so that it can offer a new form of gambling, called historical racing, on which people wager on horse races that have already taken place.
One more time for the world: "people wager on horse races that have already taken place." That's what I thought they said. Wha? Ah:
In historical gambling, which is also called instant gaming, customers would put as little as a nickel and as much as $5 into a video terminal that resembles a slot machine. The terminal randomly selects a race from an archive of at least 10,000 previous horses races from tracks around the country. Customers review a graphic showing the odds and statistics for each horse before deciding which one to bet on.

The race appears on the monitor. If the chosen horse wins, the patron will receive a payout based on the odds, how much was bet and that day's purse.
My guess is that anyone with a thorough and meticulous knowledge of the history of horse racing (and/or a concealed palmtop computer) could beat this, even if they left the horses' names off the screens.

Besides...wasn't this kind of the plot of The Sting?

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