OTB – Offtrack Betting on Horse Racing

Betting on horses is a luxury indulged in by many. Ask your friendly neighborhood bookie and he’ll tell you just how high the stakes go. The horses, the jockeys, the flaring gun shots, the galloping hoofs, the money; it is the stuff that glamour is made of. This glamour, however, is not reserved for the privileged few alone. You won’t find the crème de la crème of society sitting alone in their cabins at the tracks; smoking their pipes and sipping their wine. No, at a race track, you will find people from all walks of life; if they have some dough in their pockets and the right gambling spirit in their hearts, they are welcomed with open arms. Bets often start from very low amounts and reach for the sky from there on. However, for the enthusiasts it is not always a bed of roses. There are times when one just cannot make it to the race track, call however strongly the horses may. The reasons are for the enthusiasts alone; perhaps they don’t like crowds, perhaps they live too far from the track.

But the gods above have devised a plan to eliminate that problem. Alright, it wasn’t exactly gods that come up with the idea of off-track betting (OTB); it was our very own humble humans. But the idea itself is comparable to something not of this world. The idea is that one goes to a betting parlor away from the race track (according to the Interstate Horseracing Act, 1978, US, at least 60 miles away), gets information on the competing horses and then places bets as one would at the track itself. Live information is updated on the Totalizator (“Tote Board” in colloquial terms) and the winners collect their due from a window. For the bettor, this is all he or she has to do. A few legal problems have arisen however, relating to the sharing of revenues. Before the year 1970, only the state of Nevada allowed off-track betting. It was only after the state of New York legalized it in 1970 that it caught on and became popular. So popular was its inception that race tracks began to lose both attendance and revenue. Ultimately, a deal was stuck between the two camps that decreed the sharing of profits between the parlor owners, the tracks, the horse-owners and the state. In their bid to attract more enthusiasts, tracks have devised a few other betting options for extra money. There is, for example, a betting category known as Exacta. The bettor has to predict which horses will finish first and second, in the correct order. There is also the Trifecta, where the bettor has to predict which horses will finish first, second and third, in the right order again. So, a good, healthy system is now in place where everyone goes home happy. Well, if you are a bettor, you go home happy if you win; but that is the thrill of it all, isn’t it?