Alan Woods may have been a name unknown outside professional gambling or Hong Kong racing's inner circles but his passing on the weekend saw the loss of a significant, if reclusive, influence on horse racing.
Woods knew little of horses. They were names at best and just numbers more likely. He wouldn't have known if he had backed a grey or a chestnut and the actual running of a race was of little interest until the numbers were posted - but he was the father of the computer betting syndicates, a front-line player in the development of computer analysis and wagering on horse racing.
And his operation contributed up to 2 per cent of the billions bet with the Jockey Club every season.
Even now, there is a section of the Jockey Club hierarchy which would believe that anyone winning the kind of money that made Woods a billionaire several times over had to be doing something crooked.
When the Jockey Club closed accounts for the final meeting of one season a decade ago when the Triple Trio jackpot had risen to an extraordinary HK$300 million, it was to sabotage the computer teams for that day for fear someone would undertake something corrupt to ensure a big win.
In what other business would an operator undermine the participation of its biggest customer? But it also showed a poor understanding of how the computer teams worked, as their predictive models rely on racing being run in a clean, uncorrupt fashion.