Santa Anita reduces the number of Daily Doubles on its card

Quoting from the article at Brisnet.com:

The Daily Double, first offered by Santa Anita in 1961, is a $2 minimum bet that requires players to select the winners of two consecutive races. Santa Anita, which runs through June 29, will offer three Daily Doubles on three separate occasions each day --races one and two; four and five; and on the final two races.

"After consulting with many of our best customers and the TOC, we felt it was time to make some 'player-friendly' adjustments to this iconic wager," said Tom Ludt, Santa Anita Senior Vice President, Racing and Gaming."...by offering three Doubles per day, we're confident we're going to see a significant increase in pool sizes and that is going to result in bigger payoffs -- which is why the vast majority of our customers come out to the races."

First things first: if you are one of the "best customers" of Santa Anita Park that suggested these changes to Tom Ludt, please allow me to:

1) Thank you for reading this blog;
2) Call you an idiot

Anyone who thinks that reducing the number of Daily Doubles available on a typical ten race card from nine down to three will result in an increased total Double handle, coupled with larger payouts, is delusional.  If you read the Hollywood Park results from last Sunday on this blog, you saw that the Double that paid $1,636 for a two dollar wager came out of a total pool of $19,974, while the Double pool with $103,189 produced a $7.40 payout.  So much for larger pools automatically equaling higher payouts.  And I may be proven wrong, but I don't see how three Double pools on the card will pull in more wagering dollars than nine Double pools.

And don't even get me started on the track's insistence on keeping the minimum wager at two dollars.  Santa Anita's refusal to lower its minimum bet makes sense only when you recall that these are the same people who for years clung to a $5 minimum wager on the Exacta in an effort to price small customers out of the game.  During that time Cliff Goodrich, then president of Santa Anita, was quoted as saying, "We're trying to save the customers from themselves."  Apparently, that philosophy still holds sway in Southern California.

Well, if their goal is to price this small customer out of playing their racetrack, this is certainly a step in the right direction.  Now if I could just figure out a way to get NYRA and Gulfstream Park to move their respective first race Post Times to three hours later in the afternoon.

Peace and Love,

Jimbo