In one click Art Collector's odds drifted for Preakness 2020
It took far more effort to raise eyebrows over Art Collector being an odds-on favorite Friday for the Preakness Stakes than it required to actually make him such a big underlay.
By 10 a.m. ET Saturday things were back to whatever passes for normal nowadays. In one click at that hour, Art Collector went from even money to a 7-2 second choice behind Authentic at 6-5. And it had nothing to do with computer players or batch betting.
The Maryland Jockey Club had not provided a reply Saturday morning about how this happened. But if past years are any indication, not all the money had been counted before that 10 a.m. click. The full explanation appears to involve an established, old procedure meeting the new pandemic.
The odds for the Preakness are annually posted on an in-house TV channel and displayed on Pimlico monitors starting Friday, when advance betting for the race opens. Those prices have not routinely been made available online aside from occasional flashes between races on the track’s video feed.
Those odds normally reflect only on-track betting until Saturday morning, when they are co-mingled with all other worldwide pari-mutuel sources at 10 a.m. This was discovered years ago when it appeared that a big bet came in on one horse before it was later explained that off-track wagers had not been counted before that hour.
Small as the on-track betting pool is in a normal year, it is downright miniscule now, because the coronavirus led to the banning of spectators at Pimlico. That leaves only “authorized personnel” – employees, connections, vendors, media, etc. – to place bets at a precious few terminals and windows at the track.
It was no wonder, then, that Art Collector could be 3-1 at 3 p.m. Friday before being shown at odds of 1-2 at 4:30 p.m.
The Maryland Jockey Club did not say how small the handle was Friday night when it sent a news release reporting what were then the current odds. Art Collector was the 4-5 favorite, and that made for widespread headlines.
In truth it was likely a single big bet moved Art Collector to such short odds in a pool that reflected only a few thousand dollars before all sources were combined.