WHEN is a gamble not a gamble? Well, a lot more often than you’d think, it seems. When four horses with a connection to Barney Curley were combined in multiples on a quiet January day two years ago, there was no denying the modus operandi on show, and all four won to net someone a hefty profit.

The other intriguing aspect of that coup was how quickly bookmaking firms slashed prices on the quartet, meaning that the liabilities faced were much less than would have been the case in the pre-internet age. Since that day, there have been cases which have echoed the method if not the results of that successful plunge, with the most notable being an apparent gamble on four horses trained by Sheena West and running in the colours of former handler Daniel Steele.

Despite the fact that those names have never struck fear in the heart of bookmakers, it didn’t take long for one reputable firm to offer odds of even money against all of the horses, despite all of them looking to have little chance on paper. In reality, they all ran even worse than the early market expected, and general reportage was that this was a gamble which had gone astray. That seems to be too simple an explanation, however.

The advent of a “cash-out” facility with many on-line firms has changed the way multiple bets work, and while it was once confined to football accumulators, enabling those who stood to win big for a small stake to take insurance on their bets, it has now become part of the racing landscape.

In football terms, cash out is fairly simple, as demonstrated by the story of a Leicester City fan who staked £5 on his side winning the Premier League in the summer at odds of 5000/1. He stands to win £25,000 if Leicester continue their remarkable run of form, but in real terms his bet has a notional value of around £8,000 based on Leicester’s true odds of winning the league from their current position.

The punter in question has been offered £6,500 to cash out his bet, which is less than the true value, but much more attractive than the prospect of ending up with a losing docket.

VALUABLE BET

In this case, the bet is clearly much more valuable than it was originally, but with a racing multiple things are a little different. If you have a £10 accumulator on a series of 20/1 shots, that bet is worth £10 to you, but its notional value to the bookmaker is less than that since it factors in the firm’s theoretical profit margin, multiplied through each leg, meaning the notional value of such a bet is probably less than £4.

What if the odds appeared to be in the punters favour, though? If the 20/1 shots suddenly became 6/4 shots, then the bet would be worth many times what it appeared to be when struck. Imagine then if you were able to back a series of no-hopers in such a bet, but through the power of social media and the risk-averse nature of modern bookmaking firms, made it appear as if those horses were actually very live runners, to the extent that one firm offered only 15/1 about all of them winning, when you’d actually gained odds of several hundred thousand to one initially.

Why, the firm you struck that bet with might be willing to pay you 30 or 40 times your stake to cash that bet out, and you then wouldn’t care how any of those horses fared, as your bet was effectively one on how the market would move. Those who you convinced to follow you in at shorter odds, and those who did likewise after hearing media coverage of this spectacular gamble merely made that market manipulation possible for you.

You’ve made your profit before the race meetings have even started, but the others can only dream of an unlikely series of results which will give them the payout they crave. Still, they can get excited until the first one crashes and burns, so they have that to brighten their day.

Wednesday’s “Shane Kelly gamble” probably had nothing to do with Shane Kelly, other than providing some common link between four horses who were heavily backed and heavily touted overnight and through the morning. That the first of them was withdrawn at the start has caused some furor but is almost certainly of no significance either. If this was a “cash-out gamble” then the deal would have been done before Feeltherhythm arrived at post at Southwell.

CONSPIRATORS

The only scenario in which that might change is if conspirators were backing her in singles to keep her price short, and therefore maintaining momentum behind the other bets, but that’s not especially likely.

Pat Cooney of Bet365, who are pioneers of the cash-out facility, poured water on the notion that this was the mechanism behind the plunge, but his assertion that the dramatic shortening of prices overnight made it impossible to orchestrate such a coup flies in the face of logic. It’s exactly such a shortening of prices which makes this coup a possibility, but in order to balance the books, a lot of gullible punters need to be taken along for the ride, and that fact is not taken account of in media coverage.

The notion that a gamble is either successful (hooray!) or goes busto (chortle, chortle) is far too simplistic, and there needs to be an appreciation of the collateral damage done through such antics. This is not a fun caper or a victimless crime, and if certain big players are deliberately and systematically manipulating markets, then they need to be called out.