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Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) - Types of Bet on any Single Race
Posted Aug 10, 2002
In Hong Kong, all gambling on horse-racing is administered by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. There are no (legal) bookmakers or fixed-odds bets. All wagers are transferred to a single pari-mutuel pool and dividends are calculated by the totalised starting-price in the usual fashion, by first removing the 'house cut', and then distributing the balance to punters holding winning tickets.
The minimum stake is HK$10 and the minimum winning payout is HK$10.50. [This would be '20/1 on' in English gambling parlance, and would indicate that a horse could well win the race with its hooves tied behind its back. Thus, notably, only in the extraordinarily unlikely circumstance where a winning horse is more than twenty times further subscribed than the aggregate wagers on all other horses in the race would the HKJC lose money.]
Types of Bets available on a single race are as follows:
1. Win
This is the simplest bet. A bet on a horse to win will collect only if the chosen horse is the first across the finish line.
2. Place
The place bet is essentially a hedged bet. Typically, dividends are dramatically reduced as the chances of collecting any dividend are greatly increased.
The place bet will pay for 1st, 2nd or 3rd in a race with seven or more declared starters and 1st or 2nd in a race with between four and six declared starters.
Placing two bets, one for a win and one for a place is essentially the same as an English each-way bet.
3. Quinella
A quinella bet is the selection of two horses to finish first and second in either order in a given race. In English racing, this is known as a reverse forecast.
4. Quinella Place (QP)
The QP is a punt on any two of the first three placed horses in any finishing order. Although one bet covers two horses, six winning scenarios (1st and 2nd, 2nd and 1st, 1st and 3rd, 3rd and 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 3rd and 2nd) are covered and dividends drop accordingly.
5. Tierce
A winning Tierce bet requires the correct selection of three horses to come 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the correct order in the race. Dividends paid out on this type of bet are typically high
6. Trio
The Trio is in effect a ‘hedged’ Tierce. Whereas the Tierce is one single bet, the trio covers all permutations of the three selected horses to finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the race and is thus six bets under one stake. Thus, in theory, Trio dividends should be roughly one sixth those paid to winning Trio ticket holders.
Other Bets
Other bets (Double Trio, Triple Trio, Double Treble, Six Up) are available, which require selection of horses to perform over two or more races. These are to be dealt with separately.
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Latest reply: Aug 10, 2002
How To Play Fantasy Football
Posted Aug 9, 2002
In the beginning, insofar as a fantasy is the result of an unrestricted creative imagination Fantasy Football is inappropriately named. Fantasy Sauna, for example, would enable the Sauna Manager to assemble in a steam room an unrestrained eye-feast of beauties, all in tip-top jello-on-springs peak bicycle-racing condition. Thus, notwithstanding the inherently oxymoronic real Fantasy Football team might consist of a line-up as follows (in 4-4-2 formation):
Anne Nicole Smith
Gina Lollobrigida Elle MacPherson Cindy Crawford Lara Croft
Isabelle Adjani Jayne Russell Marilyn Monroe Audrey Hepburn
Venus Williams Serena Williams
But Fantasy Football has rules and restrictions, the first being that you team selections are limited to footballers.
Say
Yashin
Maldini Beckenbauer Moore Alberto
Garrincha Pele Cruyff Best
Van Basten Puskas
More on these later.
Dr Montague Trout
9 august 2002
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Latest reply: Aug 9, 2002
Pets I
Posted Aug 9, 2002
Extract from my letter to Gulf Daily News (7 June 2002, published therein on 10 June 2002)
Pet-ownership ought to be added to the list of irksome activities that blight humanity. What, after all, apart from a useless parasite on human existence, is a pet?
In the first instance pets are the embodiment of a failure to connect with other members of humanity, whose emotional and intellectual complexity is rejected for the mindless servility and obedience of animals. Spurned by their own kind, pet-owners retreat to the sanctity of their own territory to cuddle and smooch with a deferential pet held hostage as an obedient surrogate for friends, lovers, spouses and children.
Thus, secondly, pets are an outlet for an unharnessed human need to nurture. Care-giving is a natural instinct for which many possess neither the emotional stability nor the circumstantial ability to afford to another human. Frustrated by an inability to fulfill these desires, human benevolence is all-too-easily unleashed on wet-nosed, fluffy-tailed demi-gods who strut and preen, dictating attention and nutrition in return respectively for fair-weathered affection and blind obedience.
Finally, then, pets are no more than resource-consumptive 'eye-candy', pristine examples of the selfishness and vanity of humanity. As fatuous adornments and objets d'art, pets are moving, respirating, eating, excreting 'possessions' inhabiting in an entirely humanised ecosystem that is dedicated to preserving the homunculistic lives of these singularly anomalous life-forms.
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Latest reply: Aug 9, 2002
How To Play Fantasy Football
Posted Aug 9, 2002
In the beginning, insofar as a fantasy is the result of an unrestricted creative imagination Fantasy Football is inappropriately named. Fantasy Sauna, for example, would enable the Sauna Manager to assemble in a steam room an unrestrained eye-feast of beauties, all in tip-top jello-on-springs fat-bottomed bicycle-racing peak condition. Thus, notwithstanding the real Fantasy Football might consist of a line-up as follows (in 4-4-2 formation):
Anne Nicole Smith
Gina Lollobrigida Elle MacPherson Cindy Crawford Lara Croft
Isabelle Adjani Jayne Russell Marilyn Monroe Audrey Hepburn
Venus Williams Serena Williams
Dr Montague Trout
9 August 2002
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Latest reply: Aug 9, 2002
The Bore-Bridge Egg-Shell Theory
Posted Aug 8, 2002
This will be a paper on how to find your perfect mate. "Fundamentally flawed" (Wendy, Bowling Green, c. 1990) though it may be, it has never been disproven.
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Latest reply: Aug 8, 2002
Trout Montague
Researcher U188966
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