I was looking forward to see what new incentives AusTOTE was foreshadowing a few days back.

Now I know.

In the best tradition of Mark Read's mediocre-Plus they are hiking the rake to a uniform 5% with no early-bird or high turnover kickbacks.

Betfair must be ecstatic at their now effective monopoly now that AusTOTE's opted out of the fight.

"however in the near future AusTOTE will be offering incentives and bonuses which will more than compensate for any special rates some customers might have enjoyed."

I won't be holding my breath.

Yup! read the blurb, sounds to me, like "let's have a flat tax because it's easier to administer" . What a load of baloney!!
Betfair, to me at least, is not the complete answer.
Good luck.

http://www.**********************.com.au/index.asp

The FREE 5-outfit live markets are very useful.

From today they show AusTOTE markets as ~109%.

A curious figure for an alleged uniform 5% rake.

Obviously AusTOTE now conveniently deducts 5% then even more conveniently rounds down that figure!

Before that change it was easy for early-birds to endure only a 3% rake. But now that has nearly TRIPLED!

I cannot believe that I'm the only one who's published anything about this bombshell.

For a 5% rake with NO round-downs the market should be 100/95 = 105.26%.

However after manually calculating Warwick Farm 1 yesterday the market comes out to 109.10%!

To note the impact of round-downs I added 5 cents to each dividend.

That market is 107.05%!!!!

What has happened!

AusTOTE no longer seem to publish markets any more which suggests they have now hiked the rate above 5% and forgot to tell anyone!

And they also forgot to mention that their claims about 43% best prices and 19% better return are unlikely to now apply.

I urge everyone to independently check my calculations then decide if there isn't better value elsewhere.

Hi All

Just a quick question - What (if any) betting sites, other than the TAB's ( e.g. Sportingbet etc.), provide exotic bets (i.e. exacta bets)?

If you don't want to incur the roth of Officialdom, please email me at stix17 @ dodo . com . au

Thanks in advance

__________________
Stix
.......Giddy Up..... !!

IAS do pretty good prices on Exacta and Quinella.

KV

Thanks KV

Much appreciated...

__________________
Stix
.......Giddy Up..... !!

With you there jfc. Was enjoying their competitive prices!

So what precisely is this mystery AusTOTE rake?

Rake _ Market
8.0% = 108.70%
7.5% = 108.11%
7.0% = 107.53%

Yesterday the lowest AusTOTE market was 108.3% so the rake should almost certainly be 7.5%.

Now that they have removed any disclosure as to their actual rake it will be very easy for them to keep hiking it without notice.

I'm amused that this important issue has finally made its way to another forum, although some still seem to believe that it's still a 5% rake just because AusTOTE hasn't bothered disclosing the 50% hike.

Reported elsewhere that Austote have advised that the take-out rate is 7.5% plus round-downs.