Cross-Country pick-5 foulup causes 90-minute delay, but bigger payout

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Wagering on Saturday’s Cross-Country pick-5 was not stopped until after the first leg of the wager had been run.

The error resulted in a 90-minute delay of calculating the payoffs. But it was worth the wait for bettors who successfully selected all five winners as they received more bang for their buck after the pool was supplemented by $50,000 by the New York Racing Association and AmTote.

The winning payout was $769.25, whereas under normal circumstances it would have returned $564.76. The original pool - before the $50,000 was added - was $138,110 which included approximately $2,600 of wagers after the first leg of the pick-5, the seventh race from Ellis Park, went off and before wagering was stopped, according to Pat McKenna, who is NYRA’s vice president/communications.

On Sunday, Am-Tote, the company that processes wagers for NYRA, in a release admitted that, due to human error, wagering on the Cross-Country pick-5 closed 1 minute, 46 seconds late. It took 1:41.16 to run the seventh from Ellis. The winner of that race was the favorite, Anglophile ($7).

As a result of that situation, there was a delay in posting the payout of the pick-5, which ended with Saratoga’s 10th race, which went postward at 6:16 p.m. The payout wasn’t calculated until 7:52 p.m.

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In a statement released Sunday by Mike Jordan, Chief Operating Officer – 1/ST Technology, the $50,000 was added to the pool “to mitigate the ongoing delay in the price calculation while performing a detailed review of any late bets throughout the entire network during that timeframe, and in the full spirit of compensating the wagering public and successful winning bettors for this error and inconvenience.”

Unlike all other wagers at NYRA, where the stop-betting function is automated, the stop-wagering function on the Cross-Country pick-5 is done manually by an off-site AmTote employee, according to McKenna.

McKenna said that NYRA and AmTote are going to try determine a way to automate the stop-wagering function on the Cross-Country pick-5. Toward that end, that wager will cease for an indefinite period following next Saturday’s Cross-Country pick-5, McKenna said.

In a statement, Jordan said AmTote will collaborate with NYRA management “in a detailed review of the entire sequence and associated processes with special pool closures in an effort to prevent any future occurrences.”