Sky It is now expected that the STAB and Tablimited win and place pools will merge in February 2005 some two months later than expected. The resulting merger is a huge disadvantage to punters. Here are just a few examples.

In the first Adelaide race yesterday eight of the ten starters were at significantly different prices and tghe winners price was $10.00 on Tablimited and $6.30 on STAB. In a merged pool both would pay around $8.00.A smart punter would have taken the Tablimited price and made more money.

In the first Melbourne race the winner paid $3.20 and $3.00, another significant difference with the new dividend lkely to be about $3.07 but with rounding down this becomes $3.00. So why not a straight average between the two? One TAB has bigger pools than the other depending on where the race is held. The end dividend is therefore the combined pool divided by the combined bets.

In the first Sydney race the top weight was paying $4.20 on STAB but $3.30 on Tablimited. As the Tablimited pool was much bigger than the STAB pool the final dividend would have been closer to $3.30 than $4.20, probably about $3.50, so once again, an opportunity lost to the smart punter. In the end it was a deadheat which further reduced the likely new dividend and making the rounding down an even bigger percentage of the final payout reduction.

In this race seven of the nine starters were significantly different between the two pools.

Looking at last Saturday's Rosehill and Caulfield meetings we see that almost every race has significant differences for almost every runner. Smart
punters will no longer be able to take advantage of these differences which add up to about 7%. The only difference now will be the Unitab pool and
punters will not be able to take advantage of the differences that remain because Unitab will now represent a mere 20% or so of the National pool.

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING STATISTICS

The figures represent the combined dividends of all race meetings held on those days. The STAB and Tablimited combined figures will reduce
significantly. This means that the figures for IAS, which is a corporate bookmaking service, will now be significantly higher but the punter will no
longer have as much of a comparative option. The Best TAB option, which has been offered by some corporate bookmakers will now be substantially less than it was which means that punters will have to be smarter to stay ahead of the game.

In effect, the TAB merger may provide greater efficiency and more profit for Tabcorp but it will also hasten the increasing turnover on the likes of
Betfair , IAS, Sportingbet and Austote (the Norfolk Island TAB where already dividends are significantly higher than any TAB)

All in all it is interesting times ahead. As I understand it, if you currently have an account with Tablimited that will remain and the same for STAB customers. Until later this year or early next, the exotic pools will coninue to be separate. If you don't bet exotics then there is no need afer the merger to retain accounts with both TABs as the dividends will always be the same.

I believe that it wont be too long after that that the Unitab pools will also merge even though Unitab itself will remain an independent company.