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Pick any race date at The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono and you’re likely to see Mike Kulikowich there, chatting with friends and hoping to pick a few winners. It’s been that way for 50 years.
“I liked it from the first day,” the 77-year-old retiree from Edwardsville said Tuesday night. And he means that literally – Kulikowich, 77, was in the 12,000-plus throng that welcomed the new Pocono Downs when it opened in July 1965.
At the time, Kulikowich was working in New Jersey, commuting home to Edwardsville on weekends. During the week, he would visit nearby tracks such as Monmouth Park. But when Pocono Downs opened, he changed his allegiance.
“I saved my money and came here,” he said.
Kulikowich recalls the early years being rough in many ways. “The horses couldn’t hold the turns” and some ran into the fence off the last turn, he said. Rumors of cheating were rampant, including one of a horseman whose son allegedly hid in the infield bushes and shot a BB gun at the flanks of horses he wanted to win.
Some of the horses, “were like mules,” Kulikowich mused.
All that has changed for the better with slots tax-driven race purses that can reach $30,000 compared to as little as a few hundred dollars decades ago. The average total purse on a race date is now $175,000, spread across 14 or 15 races, said Dale Rapson, vice president of racing operations at The Downs. Special races, like the Super Stakes coming on Aug. 22, can be much more lucrative. The purse that day will be $2.3 million.
The improved racing at The Downs and five other Pennsylvania racetracks has led to more betting, which also fuels purses. The total “live handle,” the amount wagered at the track, on the phone and by bettors watching on simulcast screens across the nation, was just under $600 million in 2006 – before casinos – and grew to nearly $808 million in 2013, then slipped to $765 million last year, said Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
Betting at the tracks, though, has been on a steady decline, from $41 million in 2006 to $33 million last year.
Kulikowich does his part to keep that number up, attending every race night he can during the 135-meet season. But he’s learned to limit his risk, helped by new wagering schemes that cost as little as a dime. That’s the minimum bet to pick a superfecta – the first four finishing horses in order, a true long shot.
But for $2.40, four horses can be “boxed,” winning a payoff no matter what order they finish. On Tuesday, Kulikowich won $64 that way on one race, and a week earlier, betting on a simulcast race at another track, the bet paid $1,800, he said.
Today, Kulikowich comes to the races for “the action and the thrill of watching (the horses),” and for companionship. He’s brought friends and made friends among the regulars, most of whom are older, but on Tuesday the crowd also was sprinkled with families and 20-somethings.
While he acknowledges both winning and losing big over the years, now, “I bet what I can afford,” Kulikowich said. He doesn’t study programs or tipsheets, instead relying on his knowledge of horses and drivers and readily acknowledging that “gambling is luck.”