While many readers may have thought, "silly b*gger!" when they read about the betting agency operator who plunged $50,100 on a panlicker at the Ballarat greyhounds on Wednesday night, a few very fortunate punters are thanking their lucky stars.
Race 4 on the Ballarat greys' program was nothing out of the ordinary. It was The Lion Quality Products Stakes over 650 metres for 4th and gth graders.
A strange chain of events started when a mug punter bet $100 with a corporate bookie on Sweet Keeping which was starting from box 3. Rather than carry the bet, the bookie decided to "invest" it on the tote with UNiTAB where the dog was paying a very attractive $9.80 for the win. But, rather than punch in $50 and then replace it with $100, the bookie found himself holding a ticket that said "$51000 for the Win on Dog Number 3".
You don't need to be told the punch line, but here it is anyway. The dog ran second ... that's right, second ... it didn't get the chocolates.
Prior to the bookie's foray into the race's betting UNiTAB was holding about $2000 in its win pool. When the dogs started the pool had swollen to a miraculous $53216. The winner of the race, Rocks Back, paid $44 on UNiTAB. The lucky few punters who dabbled on the winner are still smiling.To put things into perspective, the winner paid $2.30 on the TAB in NSW and $2.80 in Victoria.
But, the story doesn't end there. IF, and that's a mighty big IF, Sweet Keeping had won the race winning punters on UNiTAB would have queued up and received their money back. Punters betting with the TAB in NSW stood to collect $3.80, while in Victoria they would have collected $6.
UNiTAB has a policy of paying only $1 (money back) when a runner is very heavily supported and is carrying most of the pool money.
That's not right! Punters stood to lose (and they did) but they didn't have any prospects of getting anything more than their money back if they had won.
There should be a law against this!
How's this for a suggestion?
When punters don't stand a chance of getting anything more than their money back if their selection should win, then they ought to have it refunded irrespective of whether it wins or runs stone-motherless-last.
