We have a narration stating that people can lower the odds of the races which somehow pays out not in the bookie's favour? I'm so confused as to what she was doing. She bets $5000 and then $2000 at two separate suspicious cashiers and lowers the odds and doesn't stay to watch the race but is then seen later picking up used tickets!?
Blanchett / Bullock / Exarchopoulos / Thompson / Winslet
I completely agree. I had no idea what was going on. I found a lot of this movie very confusing. Just saw it last night.
share[deleted]
Horse racing uses parimutuel betting. The odds are not fixed but determined after betting has closed by how all the bets were placed. Increasing the percentage of bets placed on a horse will shorten (lower) the odds for that horse; conversely the less bets placed on a horse will lengthen the odds.
The bookies paid off at odds determined at the track where race was run. For example, if the odds are 70:1, the bookie has to pay 70 dollars for every dollar bet on the horse if it wins. If they manage to lower the odds to 20:1 they have substantially decreased their payout. Obviously it's in the bookie's interest to have the lowest odds possible if they are seeing a lot of action on the horse.
Lily’s job was to go the track and place bets on horses with long odds in hopes of lowering them, thereby decreasing the payout should the horse win.
As expected she slowly placed bets, watching the board showing the current odds. Once the odds seemed low enough she stopped betting. She placed the bets slowly in order to minimize the amount of money spent since other bettors could help lower the odds. Her employers expected her to do this and for her to submit a bunch of receipts for races she was betting on. When necessary she would step up at the last minute to place a large bet to hopefully lower the odds.
There were times where other bettors placed enough money on the horse she spent less than the “expected” amount. After the race she scooped up discarded receipts so she could use them to show she bet more money than she had. Her employer would reimburse her for the higher amount and she would pocket the difference.
There was no guarantee that she actually would shorten the odds because at the last minute a surge of betting on other horses could lengthen the odds on “her” horse(s). None-the-less even if the odds remained long you would still see fluctuations in the horse's odds as she tried to lower them.
She got caught when submitting 10k worth of receipts for the race she missed at La Jolla. Her boss knew she was lying not by the fact the odds remained long, but because someone at the track told him the odds on the board never fluctuated.
Wow thanks for explaining that. I figured it was something along those lines, but was never really sure how it worked.
shareI think another factor that's confusing is that Lily isn't playing the horses to win. At first I thought there was a gap in the system because her employer is throwing money away without assurance of collecting on that $7,000 Lily spent (?) We don't see her collect any winnings.
But if I'm correct, the $7,000 is merely insurance against the bookie having to make huge payouts later, if those two horses won and the bookie had clients betting on them. The $7,000 isn't being bet in the traditional way we're used to.
(Of course, the bookie would have to have a big operation with enough bets being processed for that race to make it worth it. I wonder how much Lily's employer makes on a race like that, and what the percentage usually is on what they have to spend to level the odds.)
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there is a real plot flaw in this incident.
1. most bet stubbs on thee floor wwill be for very small amounts, like did she really find 1000 x $10 stubbs on the floor and submit them for the 10k renumeration ?, [or like 2 x $5000 stubbs ? most unlikey]
2. also picking up those stubbs would quickly arouuse security suspicion leading to her getting evicted, which the mob would find out about
not fatal to the movie at aall, but still a flaw in the diamond
i rate it 9* myself,
~ i loved it b.i.t.day
Do you really think security would care about somebody picking up losing tickets from the ground?
shareHoly *beep* BoBo?! Is that you? ;)
~~~"Who do you think you're dealing with? Guess again."~~~