Discover Tabcorp Day

To give a little pretext, I moved into Sydney to work for Tabcorp as a web developer. Tabcorp is basically a wagering operator, if you are wondering what that is, just assume it as a medium through which you to can bet on races and sports. It’s was my second week in Sydney and with Tabcorp, that is when i was invited to the awesome discover Tabcorp day, where they collect all the new employees who joined in the past 3 months and give us a tour to various Tabcorp teams and business outlets, of course with an awesome lunch and some live betting.

It was 8:45am, when they started off giving a brief presentation on the day’s itinerary. We where 18 new employees and 2 from the HR department to coordinate the day. We first went to various teams at George St CBD, first the bookmakers team floor, then the marketing team floor and then the digital team floor, where each of the team owners presented us there broader scope of there teams responsibilities are. By the end of it, it was 10 am and then we where off to the French Forest to meet the Skyrace team which broadcasts the races and sports, yes you read it right they run 4 separate tv channels and a radio station which primarily broadcasts the live racing, so you can see the races live from your tv and bet them online or via app, cool right :). It was very exciting, we even went into the studio which was not live and sat at the show anchors chair, pretending to read news and taking some selfies. They even showed us there control rooms though which they operate, which resembled me of NASA’s control room with lots of televisions and every thing changing continuously. It was my first time in a tv studio, it was really exciting. I have an experience of working with startup companies of around 10 employee’s, it made me question the discipline, hard work and time it might have taken them to actually setup such a huge network with end to end services and teams working together. Skyrace team also provides the internet live broadcasting service as well for web & apps.

That was quite an experience at Skyrace and then we where taken to Bankstown, to checkout the retail side of the business. It took us about 45 min to reach i.e., around 12:45 pm. Mean while during the bus journey the hosts(HR) kept us occupied with interesting trivia, friendly introductions and a game of bingo which they intelligently choreographed to give information about Tabcorp. By the the time we reached Bankstown a nice gentle man, who has been working with Tabcorp as business development manager(BDM) for over 10 years explained us the various places in Bankstown you can bet using Tab’s betting machines. They gave us two 3 dollars gift vouchers so that we get a live experience of betting. We went to this Tab owned retail outlet which was filled with televisions, running various live sports and races. We had to choose a race or sport and go to the betting machine and give our bet then it gives back a bet slip, which if you win you can cash out at any retail outlet, which includes Pubs, clubs and many other places which you have TAB written outside there store. Since it was almost lunch, we had only 15 min to bet and I read on the voucher that its valid for 12 months so I just skipped placing a bet. But most of the others with me placed the bet and I think even won.

Next we went to the Bankstown Sports club, which was huge and fancy. We had our lunch there at Greenfield restaurant. Then one of the manger from the club showed us around and took us to the lounge with all televisions and TAB betting machines. One thing I noticed in all these retail outlets were old people betting, not sure why. Then we where offered to play a game of Keno, which is like bingo but a bit different. So you have some random numbers which come up for each game and you need to guess some set of number which you thing that would come up. For example I guessed 4 numbers from 1 to 80 and placed bet for 2 dollars, if I get the 4 numbers correctly I would have won 1 million, but obviously I didn’t. If you look at the probability its 1/80P3, which is around 1 in 10 million, but apparently at least one person wins a million every day.

Then from there we went to Royal Randwick, a race course. It was a lovely sunny day and one of the managers from the venue was assisting us and sharing few of the crazy stories about people wining millions. There was a race which was about to start, on which we were to bet our second 3$ gift voucher. There where 11 horses running and they first presented all the horses near the entrance to every one in the racecourse, so that we have a little idea of current state of the horse. Then we entered a huge stand which resembled of an airport terminal with betting machines and people sitting behind desks to accept bets. Now in the past week at Tabcorp they introduced me to the types of bets in racing and gave a few costumer support links to get a better understanding. I had taken down the notes in the google docs which helped me then.

The way I did the bet here was by checking the odds for each horse. Horse 8 had the least odds around 3.8 for win, so if it were to wins you get 3.8 times your bet amount and highest odds i guess was for horse 7 with around 30 something. Next to horse 8 where horses 1, 2 and 3 with almost same odds, around 5.50 . So it was obvious from the board that horses 1,2,3,8 had high probability of getting in the top 3 positions. Most of them whom I came with chose to go with a Quinella bet on horses 1, 8., may be because horse 1 was looking a bit healthy in the presentation. Quinella bet is basically you guess the horses which would come at first and second positions in any order. Suppose if horse 1 came first and horse 8 second or if horse 8 came first and horse 1 second, in both the cases you would win a Quinella bet on horses 1 & 8. Obviously the odds for such combination bets would be high than just Win bet on horse 8.

I had an extra 3$ voucher with me, remember I did not bet in the retail outlet. So I could do 2 bets. Quickly I checked the google doc for my notes for the suitable bet for this situation and found a bet called Duet bet, which is if I guess any two of the first 3 positions correctly, you win. It had less odds than quinella but a bit high probability. I went with duet bet on Horse 1 and horse 8, but when I checked the horse presentation before race found that horse 8 was acting weird so tried my luck with horses 1 and 3 for a Quinella bet(went a bit greedy) as my second bet. I had two bets of 3$ each, one duet bet on horses 1 and 8 and one Quinella on horses 1 and 3.

Then we ventured out to the other side of the stand and it was lovely race track. With the huge board showing off the odds and a live streaming of the race, with the a count down to start. The race started at zero minutes and every one in the race course where really excited hoping to win. It was a really close match for horse 2 and horse 8 for second position but horse 2 won the second position and horse 1 won the first position. It was horse 1,2&8 who won in that order. The duet bet worked for me, for the 3$ it returned me around 8.4$ for the first bet and I didn’t win on the second quinella bet.

Finally we returned back to George St and called it a day.