Betfair had originally voided all “in-play” bets on a Leoprdstown race after an investigation found that a technical error had seen the winning horse, Voler La Vedette, matched at 29 to 1 when the betting market was suspended.

Now Betfair are reported to have agreed to make ex gratia payments to a number of their customers that were affected.

Read more here Betfair to make some payments over voided bets .

I finally succumbed and bought a copy of CX Wong’s book “Precision: Statistical and Mathematical Methods in Horse Racing” from Amazon.

The book is available both as a paper book or as an eBook for the Kindle. I opted for the Kindle version for two main reasons. The paper book book has an estimated delivery time of 1 – 4 weeks and it is about twice the price of the Kindle version. Of course, if you don’t own a Kindle it is possible to either download a Kindle app for your smartphone, or use Amazon’s browser based eBook reader for free.

I had seen Wong’s book for sale a number of weeks ago, but only decided to buy it after getting a recommendation from an economics professor based in Israel, who had already examined the book.I have only just started reading the book – but one good thing are the freely downloadable Excel spreadsheets that accompany the text. This book was originally written and published in Chinese, and the English translation is a bit quirky in its use of the language. However, I can understand how some of this has come about – and the issue is not greatly distracting. So far I am enjoying the book – and if anyone has any interest in further details about this book, I will post more information when I have finished reading it.

This story was run in The Australian newspaper a few days ago, just before Christmas. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) is to investigate Zeljko Ranogajec. Ranogajec is one of the worlds biggest and most reclusive punters and is reputed to bet over $1billion Australian dollars a year. He reportedly accounts for 6-8% of Australian bookmaker TabCorp’s $10 billion annual revenue

Taxman targets the king of punters Zeljko Ranogajec | The Australian.

This news story is about the police attempting to crack-down on the activities of betting syndicates and attempts at fixing events. However, today’s sports betting, where betting on events within events takes place, introduces some novel challenges. How would you detect attempted rigging of events where the bets are placed on the number of short corners in a hockey match, for instance?

I would assume that statistical analysis of a good number of top flight sports events will be used to help detect unusual activity. If the number of short corners averages 4.92 with a standard deviation of 1.66 (or whatever the actual figures are) then a match that has 20 short corners would be highly unusual. Of course, detecting unusual activity doesn’t prove fraud is taking place – but it can be a helpful indication.

Read more on this story at: London 2012: Dedicated police unit to target fixers and betting syndicates | Metro.co.uk.

The Betfair saga continues to rumble on, with punters obviously unhappy at having their wagers cancelled – possibly because someone made a bad gamble. Betfair did put out an announcement to explain that it was due to technical problem – however this explanation has not satisfied those affected. Confidence in Betfair has been dented – will your winning bets be cancelled if someone else has made a bad gamble? Will you have to pay out if you lose? Could this be the end for Betfair?

Betfair loses £40m on Leopardstown after ‘technical glitch’ – Telegraph.

Nick Mordin has written a number of books on horse racing (e.g. Betting for a Living; Mordin on Time) and has a regular column in The Weekender, which I buy every week. Nick is held in very high regard on the racing circuit, any book and his thinking on horse racing, speed figures, tracks and punting are a must for any racing enthusiast.

Reading Nick Mordin’s column in The Weekender, he makes some very valid points about hard facts being in short supply in horse racing – particularly in Britain and Ireland. Facts that are taken for granted in other countries such as the USA, include sectional times, horse’s body weights and medical records, full details of the the equipment they carry and official gallop reports. Even some of the so-called facts that are available to UK punters can be wildly inaccurate. Official race distances can be out by 50 yards or more.

Gathering real hard facts takes some effort but can lead to profit. In this week’s column Nick’s observations about horses that sweat in the their early starts would appear to be profitable – returning £28.31 to a level £1 stake.