Another rumor just starting to wind its way through the Jai-Alai underworld and perhaps a real whopper, or who knows, maybe a reality? Here it is: Installing a glass-panel back wall like Magic City Jai-Alai to shorten the court to 120’ which will allow an extra 50+ feet plus of room for adequate player social distancing behind the glass wall along with relocating the announcing area and video equipment.
Actually this rumor makes a lot of sense and could be a genuine cost-cutting measure that might perhaps extend the life of Dania Jai-Alai for years to come? Thinking about this one, the expense of the back wall change would be pretty minimal and could happen relatively quickly. Also, the higher ceiling height than Magic City could make for some pretty intensive short-court Jai-Alai action? If this rumor turns out to be reality, a short-court National Jai-Alai Championship could get really competitive and be a blast!
Haven’t heard much for details on this rumor, whether it’s for near term or a modification for last half of December or down the road. Source on this one has adamantly insisted that “mum is the word” which is the rumor mill standard, LOL. Only time will tell…..I have my doubts on this one. This would involve Magic City type balls and cestas too, but who knows, this whole rumored concept with a reduced roster size (attrition/visas being a factor I would imagine, some players would likely say “no” and play in Spain/Europe) would definitely be a cost saving measure. One thing for sure, Dania rumors are a dime a dozen right now…..
Maybe soon we will find out what is really going on? Let’s hope so!
Magic City Jai-alai has a new bet this year called the Mighty Ocho. The Mighty Ocho is a Jackpot type wager for $1 where one picks the winners of games 1 through 8. It has a guaranteed jackpot of $2,000 to a single winner. Currently, the jackpot is at $1,753.20 which is still under the $2,000 guarantee. Thus, if one picks all 8-winners now, they would get a $2,000 payoff. The Mighty Ocho works exactly like the “Jai-ly” popular Jai-5 wager which was introduced to Magic City Jai-alai customers after the start of the 2019 season. The breakdown is as follows: 20% takeout for the house, 40% goes to the bettor(s) with the most winners, the other 40% goes to the jackpot carryover pool.
Is the Mighty Ocho wager as bad as one of the oldest Jai-alai blog site says it is? Let’s explore the truth on this with some simple facts from the Mighty Ocho history. Granted the Mighty Ocho is not for everyone, but one thing for sure, the Mighty Ocho is more popular than betting on Win tickets, Place tickets or Show tickets at Magic City Jai-alai and even Dania Jai-alai. Therefore it’s certainly not in the bottom 3 least popular wagers in recent Jai-alai history for sure, so SayHiLi doesn’t understand what all the Mighty Ocho “whining” is all about. Is the Mighty Ocho wager impossible to hit? Apparently not at Magic City! Recently on August 22 at the 4-pm performance one talented bettor came very close by selecting 7 of the 8 winners. Now the Mighty Ocho gross pool was only $39 for that performance, and the consolation payoff is 40% of the pool, so the winner received $15.60 for their winning ticket (there was only one winning ticket with 7 of 8). Another time earlier this year, on the May 17 Sunday matinee performance, one bettor had the first 6-winners selected correctly, and had two numbers onto one number to complete their ticket. That must have been pretty exciting for that bettor with a cool $2,000 within their grasp. This tidbit of info was found out by SayHiLi with their numerous connections with Jai-alai bettors supporting Magic City Jai-alai. So, apparently, it’s not as difficult of a Pick 8 as the Pick 8’s in the past (i.e. Palm Beach Jai-alai had a guaranteed $50,000 Pick 8 in the 1992-93 era, see the referenced photo of a Palm Beach Jai-alai program cover touting the $50k Pick 8 wager).
Handicappers at Magic City Jai-alai are among some of the best and handicapping at Magic City Jai-alai isn’t as difficult as Jai-alai handicapping in the past since there is more disparity between player’s records at Magic City. Win records over 40% in singles for players like Douglas make wagers like the Mighty Ocho and the Jai-5 a lot more attractive and interesting that’s for sure. We’ve never seen win records like this before in our lifetime! Let’s take a look at the statistics on the Mighty Ocho for the first mandatory payout that occurred on the June 28 Sunday matinee performance. We understand the Mighty Ocho is up for grabs again very soon with another mandatory payout at the end of the Edgewater meet at Magic City. This is on Sunday, August 30. This is an important date for anyone wanting a shot at a BIG PAYOFF. Both the Jai-5 and the Mighty Ocho will be mandatory payouts at the end of the Edgewater meet on Sunday. The first Mighty Ocho mandatory had a jackpot carryover of $1,631.60 going into the Sunday matinee (Note: currently the Mighty Ocho jackpot is $122 higher than this). There was $4,293 wagered into the first mandatory payout. There were (2) winners that correctly selected 6 of the 8 winners and each winning ticket paid an impressive $2,533. That’s pretty damn good for a days work. Had only (1) person selected 6 of 8, they would have scored a payoff of a whopping $5,066! This next mandatory payout coming up could easily pay even more than $5,066. Keep that thought in your mind as these bets only cost $1.00 each. There have been 93-total Mighty Ocho opportunities this year. Let’s exclude the mandatory payout event and take a look at the results for the other 92-events (# of Winners Correct, How Many Times (of 92-events), Average $1.00 Payoff). The average Mighty Ocho betting pool for these 92-events was $92. What is usually seen when bettors hear about an upcoming mandatory payout is a drop in wagering activity as they are waiting for the mandatory payout to make their investment, and a larger investment too. Perhaps that is the part of the reason for the recent drop-off in the Mighty Ocho wagering activity? Here is the real scoop on Magic City’s Mighty Ocho statistics: x/8 Correct: # Winners & Average $1.00 Payoff 7/8: 1x $15.60 (pool was $39 for this one event) 6/8: 12x $56.90 5/8: 24x $21.50 4/8: 29x $21.80 3/8: 18x $6.40 2/8: 8x $3.20 So, is this “Mighty Ocho” really “mighty meager” as someone has been saying on one of the Jai-alai chat posts? Not exactly true that’s for sure, LOL. Get real and give Magic City and Scott Savin a break, enough of this BS and Magic City “bashing and trashing” at every chance and trying to tell Magic City how to run their business model. Good grief, Magic City Jai-alai has made a boatload of great decisions in every area and the short-court version of Jai-alai is rapidly growing in popularity! They are to be commended for what they have accomplished. Keep in mind, a $1.00 investment on a Mighty Ocho wager is for a sequence of 8-games, so effectively it’s costing 12.5-cents a game (pretty cheap entertainment). The Mighty Ocho can be a fun and challenging wager! It’s pretty amazing that Magic City has been able to provide Jai-alai sports fans with this great opportunity to watch and wager on Jai-alai games from the comfort of one’s home during this awful covid mess! They even offer a FREE Weekly Fantasy Jai-alai League and last week’s cash prize was $150 to the weekly winner. As previously stated, not all bets are for all customers. Casinos have Penny Slots all the way up to a High Limit Slot area, so why shouldn’t Jai-alai be able to offer an array of various options to try and satisfy more of their fan base? SayHiLi applauds Magic City Jai-alai for offering customers a wide variety of wagers on their wagering menu. Time to stick a fork in this “Mighty Ocho whining”……is the whining ever going to stop?……it’s getting pretty old and repetitive! Do you actually think that Magic City Jai-alai fans or management cares that it “really bothers you?” Have you even spent a $1.00 on the Mighty Ocho yourself? Like a famous Jai-alai fan we all know has often said “You know who you are.”
Owner and builder Art Silvester Sr. looking over plans for the for the jai-alai fronton in Newport in May, 1976. The fronton was open from 1976 till 2003.
By Steve “Straymar” Martin
I recently had the opportunity to reach out to a Jai-alai acquaintance from the past, Art Silvester Jr, on Tuesday morning on the 4th of August. Art Jr. was General Manager of Palm Beach Jai-Alai from the 1980’s until closing in 1994 and was also involved in the family’s Newport Jai-Alai as General Manager and Executive VP.
I had not yet met Art Jr. when I graduated college with a BSME degree and accepted a job at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in West Palm Beach in June of 1978. I was able to attend the original Palm Beach fronton about a half dozen times during the fall before the old fronton building burned down in December 1978. The building was rebuilt and opened again in January 1981. I was living in Lakeland, Florida at that time working as a project engineer in the Florida phosphate industry (at one of those many giant chemical complexes with the mountains of gypsum), but was able to visit the new Palm Beach fronton on a few occasions in the first few years after re-opening. I met Art Jr. for the first time in the mid-1980’s after the Florida phosphate industry downturn when I had returned to work again at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in West Palm Beach. I attended the Palm Beach fronton every chance I could after after moving back to the area and was a “systems player” mostly focused on trifectas and also on superfecta wagers when those began a few years later.
I had previously mailed Art Jr. a list of my questions and he was most gracious in calling me to set up a phone interview and agreed to answer my questions. My wife and I have both been very interested in the restaurant at Palm Beach Jai-Alai, having dined there dozens of times. It was our favorite restaurant in town and we especially loved the Teriyaki Marinated Chicken Breast and the Key Lime Ice Cream Pie and still talk about it to this day. We always made sure to take any family members there for dinner when they visited from out-of-town.
Art Jr. was an exceptional host and one of my favorite memories was when Palm Beach had opened for Sunday matinees and offered a Sunday Brunch in the restaurant. Art Jr. had stopped by our table and asked me if I had ever had eggs Benedict. I said no, and he then offered to have his chef make one up special for me. Ever since that Sunday brunch, I always think of Art Jr. when I hear mention of eggs Benedict. The restaurant at Palm Beach was fine dining for sure and Art’s answers to my questions will shed some more light on that topic among others related to the fronton, its history and operation.
Art’s early adulthood:
Art Jr. was born in 1946 and is currently 74 years old. Many people probably don’t know this, but Art Jr. was in the service from age 19 to 23 and was stationed in Okinawa during the Vietnam War. Okinawa was a vital island for the Pentagon to support US forces in the Vietnam War. While in the service for four years, he served in the Air Force and the Armed Force Police and left the service in December 1969.
Here are the Questions and Answers from the phone interview:
Q: Can you tell me how you learned the trade and perhaps some history on that?
A: I worked in all areas of the fronton operation, doing everything except in the foodservice area. That work even included security and maintenance.
Q: Who were some of the famous visitors to the Palm Beach and Newport frontons?
A: In the early days, in the 1960’s, the King of England and his wife visited the Palm Beach fronton. There were so many, Errol Flynn, Joe DiMaggio to name a few. Betty Hutton worked as a greeter for us at Newport. She was a 1940’s and 50’s star and appeared in The Greatest Show on Earth and Annie Get Your Gun.
Q: What was the largest attendance you remember?
A: It was the last day of the 86/87 season when there was a million dollar Pick 6 jackpot mandatory payout on a Saturday night. Palm Beach had seating for 6,000. The following Monday when attendance figures were tallied, there were 10,000 people. The place was packed. The computer system even failed that night.
Note: for comparison purposes, Newport had seating for 3,200.
Q: I remember you for being such a great Jai-Alai host, standing inside the doors and greeting customers as they entered, being all around the building, very involved in ensuring the place ran like a “well-oiled machine.” It looked like you loved your job. Can you expand on that and what did you like the most about your job?
A: I always had good managers which was a big help. I felt I needed to spend at least half the night at the front door greeting customers and buying regulars a drink at the bar. I enjoyed talking to the customers.
Q: I know managing a business like Palm Beach Jai-Alai had to be difficult as it was such a complex business with all the regulations, the restaurant/food options/bars, mutuel clerks, money room, security, players, union, support staff, and much more. Roughly how many people were on the payroll at the height of the business?
A: Before the recession and the player strike we had around 800 employees. Two thirds of those were part time or seasonal and the other one third traveled back and forth between Newport and Palm Beach, supporting both operations.
Note that when the word “strike” came up, Art Jr. was quick to mention that they did not have the police support at Newport like they did at Palm Beach. He mentioned how some striking players at Newport were pounding on the cars crossing the picket lines and that shouldn’t have happened. Art said the police in Newport should’ve been impartial. “We didn’t have that problem at Palm Beach,” Art said.
Q: I’ve always been fascinated with the restaurant at Palm Beach. I always got the impression you were quite the restaurateur and highly involved in running it. How were you able to operate such a successful restaurant? Great managers, chefs? Did you have a favorite chef?
A: The first restaurant opened in 1971, the “Sala-del-Toro” restaurant which was located in the basement of the old fronton. We found it best to go back at least 20-years on references with people that we hired, we wanted highly experienced chefs.
We picked up a lot of restaurant ideas when traveling. There was a famous high-end restaurant in Tampa where we got the idea for shrimp on ice and we began offering that on the menu. We had two kinds of sauce with our shrimp cocktail; the traditional cocktail sauce and a mustard sauce which was very popular. In 1977-78 during the shrimp shortage, most restaurants cut back on the number of shrimp offered, but we kept ours at six.
One of my favorite chefs was Roger Brown who started in 1977-78 and worked at both Palm Beach and Newport. Art did say the restaurant at Newport was a different type of restaurant but used the same head chef.
Q: What are you doing these days to keep occupied? Has the covid situation been a big impact to your retired lifestyle?
A: A little golf, stay around the house, and doctor visits…… Art mentioned it’s pretty shocking when you hear the doctor say the “cancer” word. Art has been struggling with leukemia which is a form of cancer.
I appreciated this unique opportunity to visit with Art Jr. over the phone. I had last spoken with him about 20-years ago when our paths crossed at the University of Arizona’s Global Race Track Industry Symposium held at the Rio in Las Vegas. That was probably the only year that annual convention wasn’t held in Tucson.
Art Jr. still lives in Florida, but not in the Palm Beach area, and I wish him the best in his retirement and health struggles.
Back in the fall of 2018 I presented my programmer with several challenges, one of which was creating an automated database for Dania Jai-alai results in Excel. I knew he was an Excel whiz but never dreamed I would end up with such a powerful tool with amazing capabilities! I had worked with this programmer for a number of years and was well aware of his Excel abilities as he had been called upon by the company where we both worked to perform some monumental Excel tasks and he always came out shining in the end and was known as the Excel guru. He was the superstar of Excel, the rising star and definitely going places.
The task took a lot of upfront work, which also included familiarizing my programmer friend with the basics of Jai-alai, all while he was working his full-time engineering job, along with putting in all that unpaid overtime every week that’s expected of engineering professionals, yes FREE overtime, imagine that! Having been an engineer myself for many years, I was well aware of that concept at several companies where I worked, LOL, and understood the challenges and that this special project request certainly wasn’t going to happen overnight.
One of the major concerns in this project was how to deal with scratches, and that’s was fairly quickly resolved, being the one area where the automated data base required some manual updating after up-loading the entries. Also, to ensure data quality, since the rule of thumb on data is “Garbage in Garbage out” I had to maintain the integrity of the data by keeping on top of not only the early scratches, but also any late changes that can occur during a performance.
Now understand, that when I went to college nobody had a personal computer, there was no such thing. In fact when I was a senior in high school, calculators first came out and were costing around $100 each. That was a helluva lot of dough considering this teenager was getting paid about $2.00 an hour for minimum wage jobs or $3 for mowing someone’s yard. Yes, imagine that, teenagers actually mowing lawns, that’s something one rarely sees anymore, sad but true.
On my college campus there was one computer, a very big computer. Sure, we had a programming class my freshman year where we learned to program in Fortran. We would write our programs, then had to go to a computer lab room near the campus’s only computer where there were a group of terminals where one would create a punch card for each line of code in our computer program. That resulting stack of punch cards, all in order for the sequence of the code for the computer program, would then be handed to a person at the door of the computer room , and your computer program job would be put into a que. This meant you had to come back the next day to pick-up the wide computer paper output, and your stack of punch cards, hoping you hadn’t made a single mistake in creating your punch cards, not a single typo or programming code error. A mistaken comma for a period would mean you have to repunch that card, replace it in the correct location in your stack of punch-cards, and re-submit your job to be picked up the following morning. Amazing how far we’ve come since those days! Now, my programming friend is a lot younger than me, in fact, I’m more than old enough to be his father, so he was well versed in the newer methods and programming techniques, especially from a top engineering school. Plus I had remembered from days of working nearby his desk at work where he once mentioned that he loves a programming challenge. So when I had initially contacted my friend and former co-worker on this project, I first mentioned “I’ve got a programming challenge for you.” Sure enough, that one statement was taken as a challenge and he never looked back after that.
Fortunately I had kept good records for scratches for all performances, so when we went back in history to capture all of the Dania fall statistics back to September 15, 2018, I knew my data was pretty accurate. I would always print-out the Dania entries sheet and kept a record of scratches, including other hard to get info such as final pool sizes for some betting pools. Pool sizes have always been important to me since the late 1970’s, especially if you want to test a new system, that’s another topic I won’t expand on at this time.
The end product was a pretty amazing database and using Pivot Tables in Excel with this database is a really powerful tool. It allows one to put the data in a useful format to make comparisons and you can find interesting trends and sort data quickly in many ways. I had lots of experience with Excel and Pivot Tables but no experience with the behind-the-scenes Visual Basic programming. Now understand my personal database does not collect payoff information; that was never my intention from the start. I didn’t want the programmer to waste precious time on payoff history with all the refunds and consolation payoffs that come into play with Jai-alai these days. The intention was to use the database to assess and compare player’s abilities for use in a Jai-alai game computer simulation.
The same database methodology was employed in the first half of 2019 to create a database for Magic City, however, data for at least the first half of the 2018 inaugural season was not included as players were new to Jai-alai let alone competitive Jai-alai games in front of fans. They were however, highly trained athletes in other sports, but not exposed to Jai-alai since childhood like the typical Jai-alai players at Dania. The famous Joey Cornblit is a different story though and quite fascinating since he started playing at age 12 and turned pro at age 16. The Magic City Jai-alai experiment involved taking athletes unfamiliar with the game and training them to play the game over a short time period, a very interesting experiment indeed, and it turned out quite successful too. Players at Magic City all progressed differently on the learning curve, with some learning much faster than others, and that shouldn’t be any surprise. So to include data from early in the 2018 season would have corrupted data quality for generating accurate player assessments to use at the beginning of the 2019 Magic City meet in July.
Here is some data you’ve never before seen from the two databases for the top singles players from Dania and Magic City Jai-alai:
Erik at Dania – for all 7-point singles games from 9/15/2018 through 3/15/2020:
GP-W-P-S record was 438-115-79-61 for 26.3% wins and 58.2% ITM
Erik – same data group but only the difficult posts 5/6/7
GP-Wins is 177-35 for 19.9% wins, was 48.6% ITM from those posts
Now when Erik had the 8-post for 48 games of the 438 games, he had 15 wins and 0 places, yes 0, and had 7-shows. Sounds like another story to be told there about post 8 and running the game out, and if stopping at 5-points, that 5-points is not good enough for a place in many instances, just thinking off the top of my head. It would be interesting to know what percent of occurrences Erik won game point for a perfect game from post 8. I would imagine it’s a very high percent?
Douglas at Magic City – for all 7-point singles games for his entire career to date from 7/24/2019 through 5/31/2020, note they were all late-game singles:
GP-W-P-S record was 344-132-47-41 for 38.4% wins and 64.0% ITM
Douglas won 3 of 4 games the first performance of his competitive career and won his first two games played. It’s fascinating that he picked up a cesta for the very first time in the first quarter of 2018, initially just for physical therapy from shoulder surgery in December of 2017. This Magic City phenom is only 20 years old and turns 21 later this month. As Stu has stated, Douglas is a natural in two areas; court positioning and catching.
Douglas – same data group but only the difficult posts 5/6/7
GP-Wins is 182-66 for 36.3% wins, was 61.0% ITM from those posts
Note that Erik had full benefit of random post draw for all of his games while Douglas did not. Erik played 40.4% of his games from posts 567 while Douglas had those difficult posts 52.7% of his games.
Now the full story at Magic City is that Douglas was so dominating in singles games, the random-post-draw ended for Douglas for a brief period from 8/28 through 10/6/2019. Note that Magic City Jai-alai took a week off during the Magic City casino 10-year anniversary celebration and when Jai-alai returned on Oct-16, new players Ikeda and RonRon were on the roster and started playing. During 8/28 to 10/6/2019 Douglas was not placed in posts 1 or 2, and only received the 3-post once (won that game).
Here are the Douglas 7-point singles game statistics during that period where random-post-draw wasn’t used for assigning his player posts:
Post-GP-W-P-S
3-1-1-0-0
4-22-10-0-4
5-51-16-5-5
6-44-20-4-5
7-41-15-4-4
8-12-6-1-1
Overall during this period, Win percent for Douglas was an astonishing 39.8%, even better than his overall career average of 38.4%. Apparently the post changes did not deter Douglas. His lowest win percent during this period was 31.4% from post 5 and best was 50.0% from post 8 not counting the 1-start with 1-win from post 3.
Jai-alai databases can be very useful tools but require time to maintain them. I find them to be both interesting and informative. Anyone tackling a project like this would employ their own techniques in their own way I’m sure, but the bottom line on Jai-alai is “It’s all in the Stats.” The stats show the facts and the facts paint a picture and there are many pictures to be seen if you have the right tools and know how to use them. These snapshots of Jai-alai stats presented here are just a tiny fraction of the wealth of information to be gleaned from the data.
I’m sure that Jeff “Laca” Conway’s new website will be a refreshing change and outlook on the exciting sport of professional and amateur Jai-alai today and I wish Jeff the best of luck with this new website (pelotapress.com). I’m honored to be asked to contribute and also be sure to check on the other new website named “SayHiLi.com” for more information on interesting statistics, those important early scratches and scratch/injury history, where I also contribute regularly.
