On the Rails
So here we are with almost the first 100 races of the season complete, turnover still booming come rain, hail or shine and the late price-stomping of favourites continues unabated.
No, that's not entirely correct - they haven't all been favourites, but runners well in the market, let's say. Turf Magic last week at Happy Valley was a prize example, the odds utterly trashed from 7-1 to less than 2-1 on the jump before his career-best effort.
And you might shrug and say, what's new? As long as there has been racing, horses have been heavily backed. They win, they lose, the dogs bark and the circus moves on.
And there are theories. One theory that found its way into print somewhere was the presence of a new computer team in Hong Kong this season - one that does not analyse form at all, merely sets its software on sniffing out runners being supported each race and chiming in at the last minute.
Not the God Of Lamp, just his apostles.
If that's the case, then good luck to them, but we aren't buying that.
There are as many ideas on how to win at racing as there are races but taking the last price about firmers, especially favoured runners in an all-tote environment, isn't one of them.
Because there are no odds fluctuations published here, it is not possible to back that up with figures, but studies of bookmaker odds in Australia, for example, show that more winning horses go out in the market than come in.
Another theory is that a new gang in town specialises in smashing favourites - horses like Turf Magic, King Al Akbar, etc. So they would be the God Of Lamp - the one providing the lead for the apostle team?
We aren't buying that either. Not buying it, borrowing it, test driving it around the corner. Hell, we don't even want to sit inside and get the new-car feel of it.
But what may be providing the impetus for the late smashes and bubbling turnover is the betting exchange, or a morphing of the traditional illegal bookmaker model into exchange betting.
It certainly has that ring to it, with the huge money arriving late for these runners many times a meeting and money that has no respect at all for whether the backed horse starts at HK$20 or HK$40. They have no price.
According to some in the betting world, illegal exchange betting on Hong Kong racing, through Singapore-financed sites and even some across the mainland border, has become significant.
The internet platform allows a very wide reach and this phenomenon might be the first hint of the power of mainland race betting, if it is unleashed.
It also would signify the change of attack from illegal bookies.
This is not Betfair, where players strike a deal at a set price. These exchanges pay off at HKJC odds, but there is a rebate built in to the way wagers are placed, just as traditional illegal bookies have always worked.
So the bookies line themselves up on the 'lay' side of the exchange, take bets on everything any punter wants to back for as much as they like and that will certainly involve the kinds of horses being slammed.
Then, as the race nears, the most heavily supported ones are hammered in Hong Kong's legal pools, slashing the amounts bookies have to pay out after the result, earning them their own 10 per cent rebates from the HKJC to pass on to their customers and leaving them with the same few per cent guaranteed profit anyway.
Now, we aren't saying this is definitely what is happening, but it does have a strong ring of the possible to it.
For one thing, there has been anything but an increase in the non-rebate betting pools in the past few seasons, despite the positive trends in win, place, quinella and quinella place. Cannibalism might explain that, but not entirely.
For years, we heard that the illegal market was about the same as the legal pool on Hong Kong races. If what is being suggested now is right, the reach of the internet may be boosting illegal betting beyond even the prospering HKJC pools.
