For MY betting (weekday races, generally selections paying from $8 to $20) I have found that the TAB almost always pays higher than bookies. For example my two winners today were:

BR5 - 10 Singin N Dancin - paid $13.30 on Tabcorp, SP was $7.00
SR7 - 11 Padlock - $17.50 on NSWTAB, SP was $13.00

I don't have TF prices for these (is there a website that has this info???) but I doubt they were much higher than the SP so in both cases I was MUCH better off with the TAB (with the SP prices I would not have been betting).

It seems to me that bookies are generally better for short priced horses (say $5 and under), tote is generally better for longer priced horses ($8 and up) and about equal between these prices. Also bookies are probably more competitive for the Saturday metro meetings whilst for midweek racing they seem to bet a higher percentage so that moves the balance towards the tote on those races.

Other advantage of the TAB is that I can see the prices on-line and place bets without having to make telephone calls - it will be good if the bookies website gets going so that you can compare bookies to TAB and then place the bet with the one offering best price. (Of course you can do that at the moment with IAS but they dont offer each-way and their prices are not always competitive with what other bookies are offering).

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