HKJC Hoping to Fix Tote Tech Issues Quickly

As the major driver of increasingly popular World Pool racing, the Hong Kong Jockey Club is moving quickly to address issues that arose on Sunday's Group 1 meeting at Sha Tin, reports scmp.com. Technical issues with commingling pools wreaked havoc with the big raceday, forcing lengthy delays to the final two races and playing a big role in an estimated HK$350 million hit to turnover.  Jockey Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges said intermittent problems with a database used to take overseas bets was the cause of the delays, prompting all commingling bets to be refunded and odds for race nine to be recalculated. The issue arose five minutes before the start of race nine and multiple delays to the following race, which was eventually run 37 minutes late, left punters frustrated. Engelbrecht-Bresges said "probably around two-thirds of our commingling partners were effected", with correct weight for race nine not declared until over an hour after the race. "When we looked at the issue, we decided we will not approve any commingling bets in the pool of race nine because we were not 100 per cent sure if all the bets were in the system or not," he said. "It's very clear there was a connectivity issue and it was intermittent and then we cannot take the risk. So that's when we decided to zero-out – pay all the overseas bets refunded and keep only the local bets and calculate the local odds, to make sure there is no issue. Turnover's down a little bit – probably around HK$350 million loss of overseas turnover. This was race nine, 10 and 11, so that had a significant impact on the turnover. Engelbrecht-Bresges revealed, "The issue is you not only pay back the turnover, it has an impact on the local turnover, too, because the pool size isn't there and people don't bet as much. Our team have great confidence this will be resolved for Wednesday."