Fair,

IMHO:
You are being a bit hard on the Keeneland shot callers. They amended a previous bad decision to appease their biggest players to return to the pools.

You are one million percent correct about the wine & cheese crowd, most don’t even know what takeout is. While in essence they are giving you and I virtually nothing, A 2.5% drop on exacta & 1.5 % in the win pool takeout is huge to the 2 groups that make up the lions share of their handle.

BOTS account for about 20% of the handle at the majors, no clue percentage wise what the daily rebate grinders account for. Their approach is not about a strict win/loss tally that most of us use to keep score. They can wager enough to get 5-12% rebates and hope to be around par or a few strokes over. Totally different ball game with most houses willing to negotiate with big enough players for their business.

The exacta pool is the largest pool everywhere with occasional exception to multi race carry overs. The first paragraph states 57% of their handle is WPS & EX. The win & exacta pools are the most visible along with DD’s for probables. When a horse loads the gate at 4/1 & blinks to 5/2 at the 1/4 pole it ain’t carrying wine and cheese? 1.5% is a huge amount to a daily 6 figure player and how many more combinations can be added with an additional 2.5% margin of error in the exacta pool?

Excluding KY Downs 5 day meet the new Keeneland takeout structure is not only in line, it’s advantageous to most of it’s major competition.

Far from perfect but I see it as a step in the correct direction!

Good luck,

Frank D.