Sports betting

“ Then another'd cry, "I've got you," and the betting had begun.
'Twas a match game at three cushions, fifty points up, for a stake,
'Tween the base-ball man and Carter, and it wan't an even break,
For the odds were all in money and the playing even up,
But the horse that packs the top weight does not always win the cup.
Odds in money cut no figure from a betting point of view,
As I've found in life quite often, and, I doubt not, so have you.
If a man can't win at evens then he cannot win at all,
Be the odds they bet against him very large or very small. ”

“ Why, in plain language, it is arranging “to win a race.” Listen! What think you? There are very many unfairly run horse-races. Take this statement as gospel from one who knows, but who cannot divulge the secrets of the Turf. Listen again. Betting is simply a speculative business, two parties to a bet. Each tries to win the other’s money, and each party adopts the best expedient to do so. ”

“ Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon mere hazard. The husbandman renders produce for his gains; the mechanic renders the product of labor and skill for his gains; the gambler renders for his gain the sleights of useless skill, or more often, downright cheating. Betting is gambling; there is no honest equivalent to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned are no better than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard. ”

“ If a person “plays,” he bets a number of counters and the others may equal this bet or raise it. Should no player meet the first bet, the bettor takes back his bet, leaving the pool intact, and receives two counters from the last player who refuses to play. When two or more bet the same number, they again draw cards and “pass” or “play” as before. If all “pass,” each pays a counter to the pool and a new deal ensues. The player betting more than the others call wins the pool. He then exposes his hand and is paid by each adversary according to its value. ”

“ The players look at the balls they have received, each one noting the number which has fallen to him, and coming in or declining to play accordingly, stake their bets. This being done, a second ball is dealt to each player, and the two balls thus received constitute his hand. The betting now proceeds as at poker, the rules being precisely the same, except that the balls rank according to their numerical value, and that the complications arising from 'pairs,' 'threes,' 'fours,' and 'flushes,' cannot arise. ”

“ Before pools were sold on games, it was only by a rough and unreliable estimate that any idea of the amount bet on a match could be ascertained, except in such cases of individual investments where a man would bet $1,000 or more in place of $25 or $50 on a match. But now the amount of money pending in a contest on which pools have been sold can be known to the interested few to a dollar, and hence the temptation to fraudulent arrangements for losing matches for betting purposes becomes so great as almost to be irresistible. ”

“ Gambling is still largely indulged in by the lower classes of London, but is attended with much inconvenience and risk owing to the vigilance of the police. Turf betting, however, in which all classes join, goes on unchecked. ”

“ You must admit that it is curious and suggestive that this incident should occur on the eve of this important match, and should involve the only man whose presence seems essential to the success of the side. It may, of course, be a coincidence, but it is interesting. Amateur sport is free from betting, but a good deal of outside betting goes on among the public, and it is possible that it might be worth someone's while to get at a player as the ruffians of the turf get at a race-horse. ”

“ CHAPTER XV Gambling on Race Courses—E.O. tables—Description of Race Courses—Evidence before the Committee—Description of the betting-rooms at Doncaster in 1846—Beginning of tipsters and betting-rooms.
This system of gambling on race courses began the previous century. In Canto I. of The Gambler’s, A Poem, Lon. 1777, we read:
“But, chief, we see a bricking, sharping sort,
Span farthing, Hustle Cap, their joy and sport;
The sport of infancy! ‘till riper age
Mature the man, and call him to the stage.
In each shoot forth the dawning seeds of vice,
The growing Jockey, or the man of Dice. ”

“ It is extremely beautiful to watch and is the fastest ball game in the world. All the while a tremendous lot of betting goes on, and the bookies in their red caps make a maddening din shouting the odds. ”

“ Of all the "fads" (the reader is asked to excuse this vulgarism) connected with gambling on the turf that have become prominent during recent years the denunciation of ready money betting is certainly the most extraordinary—the most abused of them all. Ready money betting has been declared illegal. But why should betting in ready money be wrong if betting on credit be right? If any kind of betting be proper it most assuredly should be betting for ready money, than which there ought to be no other kind of betting. ”

“ It is often safe to leave the white ball near the pyramid, provided that it has not been greatly disturbed; for, if the players are equal, neither should risk a smash, for it is, after all, even betting which player profits. ”

“ There is then a dead silence for a minute or so, whilst people are marking their cards, and next a perfect storm of "four to one, bar one!" or whatever the odds may be, rises from the ring, deafening and utterly bewildering the novice. This storm lasts, if it is not a heavy betting race, not only until the horses are at the post, but even as they are running, and some insane individuals actually offer to bet as to what horse has won after they have passed the post. ”

“ The odds against any number being thrown against another varies from two to one to six to five, and, consequently, keeps all the table engaged in betting. All bets are staked, and the noise occasioned by proposing and accepting wagers is most uproarious and deafening among the low players, each having one eye on the black spots marked on the dice as they land from the box, and the other on the stakes, ready to snatch it if successful. ”

“ Why should men who will never cease to bet so long as horse-racing goes on be driven to bet one with another, which is the worst form of speculation? Who can mention any more humiliating spectacle than that furnished by a "noble" sportsman "doing" his friend over the Derby, or some other race? In reality that is [Pg 203] the kind of betting pointed at by some of our turf big-wigs as being the best form of speculation of the kind; to these men the bookmaker is a disgust. ”

“ It is earnestly to be hoped, if horse-racing is to endure, in which event there must be betting, that the bookmaker will be permitted to ply his pencil, as also that he will be licensed by the Jockey Club and be authorised to bet for ready money only. The writer of the article in The Edinburgh Review, already referred to, puts the case in favour of ready money in a forcible fashion: "If a man were compelled to deposit his stake every time he made a bet, he would be more cautious in betting. ”

“ A history of the rise and progress of betting would be full of interest. It takes two, and occasionally more than two, persons to make a bet, and, as has been indicated in a previous page, in the earlier days of horse-racing the amounts betted on both sides were usually deposited, or in racing argot the money in dispute was "staked," in the hands of a third party till the event betted upon could be decided. No data exists to show when the professional bookmaker as we know him came upon the scene ”

“ With the advent of credit betting began the reign of the "blacklegs," the nefarious frauds and swindles, the poisonings and pullings, the watering and watching of horses, with which men who interest themselves in the sport of kings are now so familiar. Judging from the tone of recent legislation, what our parliamentarians are wroth about is, that betting has become a business requiring the intervention of that middle man, the obnoxious "bookmaker," but it is really better that it should be so, if betting on horse-racing is to be allowed to be continued in any shape. ”

“ Gentlemen, in fact, who loved and enjoyed sport for its own sake, and for that part of it, ladies too, had voted betting 'low and unmanly,' and even degrading, and as Parliament had been repeatedly petitioned on the subject, a bill was almost unanimously passed in the dying year of the nineteenth century abolishing betting. ”

“ A large portion of the press battened upon the advertisements of prosperous betting men. Servants of the state in high legal positions, devotees of the race-course, and others of subordinate station, gave decisions as to the construction of the law so framed as to put no check upon the spread of professional betting; and horse-racing became a trade instead of a sport. The enormous money interests honeycombed it with dishonesty. Sometimes owners, and more often trainers, jockeys, touts, and betting men, arranged which horse should win, according to the exigencies of the betting market ”

“ In some states and countries, whether betting is legal or prohibited, it is by far the strongest sector of the economy. It takes very interesting forms, however. One is the direct bet: this horse, this player, this team. ”

“ The plan adopted is a very simple one, but ingenious in its simplicity. The betting office takes a great dislike in its own mind to a particular horse, the favourite of the betting men. It makes bets against that horse, which amounts, in the aggregate, to a fortune ”

“ Would you have a horse win against its owner’s interest? The thing being settled, the office, in order to ascertain the amount of its winnings, has only to deduct the price of the horse from its aggregate bets, and arrange the remainder in a line of, perhaps, five figures. Whereupon the betting men grow seedier and more seedy: some of the more mercurial go off in a fit of apoplectic amazement ”

“ But the betting-lists are the attraction—these are the dice of the betting-man: a section of one of the side-walls within the office is devoted to them. They consist of long strips of paper—each race having its own slip—on which are stated the odds against the horses. Hasty and anxious are the glances which the speculator casts at the betting-lists: he there sees which are the favourites ”

“ I do not know whether one should say that drink [Pg 184] or betting is the greatest menace to modern sport. The latter, at any rate, permeates it in an alarming degree.
Mealy generalities are of no use, and it is a mere derision to pretend that nearly every branch of sport is not imperilled and besmirched by betting.
Dumb protest is always going on, but sportsmen themselves hear very little of it. Papers devoted to sporting matters do not speak out, and the campaign against betting made by the layman only reaches the sportsman’s ears with a muffled sound—like a drum beaten under a blanket. ”

“ In Cup contests, for instance, the betting is in many cases nil, or at all events extremely limited, which renders such struggles distasteful to the betting division of our turfites. It is not so in the case of other races. ”

“ But these baneful institutions and the gambling clubs are fed by the life-blood of the people, whose hard-earned money flows by the thousand retail conduits of street and factory bookmakers to these gambling marts and clearing houses. It is not only where working men and women gather in numbers, but in the home, amongst domestic servants of both sexes, in the shop, the office, on the journey, in educational establishments, even in the Sunday school and the juvenile social club and class, that betting is discovered. ”

“ The tenth held out goes to the government and the club that stages the event, the club taking three fourths of the amount, and the government the rest. At the meets the horses are all on view for at least half an hour before each race. After a spectator has satisfied himself as to how he wants to place his bets, he goes to the betting machine, gives the number of the horse on which he wishes to invest, and purchases tickets stamped with that number. The lowest price for a betting slip is two dollars and a half, but tickets at ten times that amount may be had. ”

“ After what seemed like an hour, Paul turned around.
"Give me an itemised account of your obligations outside of your gambling expenses."
"I don't call it gambling to bet on the races," said Walter half defiantly.
"It make no difference what you call it," said Paul sternly. "What is all betting but trying to get something for nothing, and what is that but gambling? Every boy in Burrton who bet on the race is a gambler?" ”

“ In France very large sums of money were wagered on the game, especially at the end of the 16th century, the stakes being deposited under the cord or net, while in England, about 1750, there was so much betting and swindling, especially by professional players, that the game as played in the public courts fell into disrepute. ”

“ The person who lays the odds has the right to choose a horse or the field; when a person has chosen a horse, the field is what starts against him. If odds are laid without mentioning the horse before the race is over, the bet must be determined by the state of the odds at the time of making it.
9. Bets made after a race that the winner will be disqualified, stand, even if no objection be made. ”

“ When the drawing is all complete, the betting goes around in order, like the drawing, to the left. The ante man is the first to bet unless he has declined to play, and in that case the first bet is made by the player nearest to the dealer on his left. But the player entitled to bet first may withhold his wager until the others have bet round to him, which is called “holding the age,” and this being considered an advantage, is very frequently done. ”