TUCSON, Ariz. – Computerized account-wagering companies that pour billions of dollars a year into U.S. racing pools aren’t going away, but they may face guardrails on their play in the future, according to officials who spoke at the closing Tuesday session at the Global Symposium on Racing. The panel session was the third this year at racing conferences to examine the impact of CAWs on racing’s parimutuel pools, following the publication in the spring of a long-form piece in The Financial Times detailing CAW play. The author of that piece, Oliver Roeder, moderated the panel. While the previous sessions this year featured racing officials exclusively, the symposium panel included a CAW company owner, Don Johnson, one of the few CAW operators who has been willing to speak publicly, if rarely, about how the programs work. Johnson has run a successful CAW program for more than two decades, among other gambling endeavors. CAW play has been a source of irritation to many hardcore players because the programs are highly efficient, they are able to pour thousands of bets into the pools at the moment before the race starts, and many of the operators are given substantial rebates on their play. Many hardcore players have insisted that those advantages are unfair, and recent analyses of CAW play have suggested that the programs are leading to long-term declines in wagering activity among casual and long-term players that don’t enjoy the same advantages. None of the participants on the panel suggested that CAW play should be banned. But they also mused about a reckoning in which the play of the CAWs may be constrained in the future to protect the so-called “retail player” who is finding it harder and harder to win. Pat Cummings, who researched CAW play extensively at a think tank that has recently been disbanded, suggested that racetracks might consider placing upper limits on the amount of CAW money that can be bet into a pool. In France, this is already being done, with an upper limit of 10 percent to 12 percent in any specific pool, according to racing officials. A Scandinavian company, Cummings said, had recently decided to ban the programs entirely. :: Bet with the Best! Get FREE All-Access PPs and Weekly Cashback when you wager on DRF Bets. Representatives on the panel from the New York Racing Association and 1/ST Content, which are partners on a platform, Elite Gaming Services, that caters to CAW operations, said that certain guardrails on CAW play already exist. Scott Daruty, the 1/ST Content representative, said that the company modified the cost structure for CAWs betting on 1/ST tracks such as Santa Anita and Gulfstream Park last year so that the groups face higher costs the longer they wait to bet into the pools. The company put the policy in place in order to even out the stream of late money coming into the pools and reduce the amount of CAW participation, Daruty said after the panel. During his presentation, Daruty pushed back against perceptions among many handicappers that the groups are not being monitored and have access to pool data that other players cannot also access. “We hear all this stuff, ‘Oh, there are no guardrails. Nobody is paying attention. No one is minding the store,’ ” Daruty said. “Nothing is further from the truth. These operations are analyzed every day. . . . Some of the wild conspiracy theories out there are almost comical if not for the fact that some people are taking them seriously.” Joe Longo, general manager of NYRA’s Content Management Systems, discussed NYRA’s decision several years ago to block CAW betting in the win pool at three minutes to post and the creation of a pick five pool and a pick six pool that are closed to CAW bettors altogether. He said the decision had led to much higher play in the pools in which CAWs are banned, a recognition that the industry could create two options in the parimutuel system. “There’s nothing wrong with having a separate pool for retail players,” Longo said. “It’s like having poker games” with different table limits. Daruty said that 1/ST made the decision to buy the company because “we wanted to have visibility into what was going on, and we wanted to be able to influence what was going on.” 1/ST brought NYRA on as a partner when NYRA expressed the same goals, he said. Johnson, the owner of the CAW operation, said that there was a great deal of misinformation surrounding the operation of CAWs, and he stressed repeatedly that CAW designers were early adopters of technology available to anyone who was intent on building one of the programs. He also said that many of the CAW operators did not consistently win and that the programs have had to consistently evolve to remain efficient and profitable. “Technology cuts both ways, even for CAW players,” Johnson said. “They might have an advantage only because they were the first ones to find it. But someone finds a new one.” Despite his concerns about the impact that CAW play is having on retail players, Cummings said that the industry needs to prioritize making sophisticated tools available to more and more players, a strategy that would, in effect, create more players who have access to the same technologies and possibilities as the existing CAW cohort. “Let’s face it,” Cummings said. “We need more CAW players.” “And they’re coming,” Johnson said in response. “They’re coming.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.