Down in the Half Moon back bar tonight the conversation turned to horse race betting.
After a while the Oldest Regular gave a quiet cough, and the bar fell silent in anticipation.
“I’ll never forget”, he says, “One Grand National day in the Plough. Old Bill was there and he pipes up ‘I’m goin to pick the winner o’ this race.’
There was a stranger there as didn’t know Bill, and ‘e says, a bit scornful like, ‘If you can pick the winner I’ll buy your beer all the rest of the day.’
‘You’re on’, Bill says, sucking his teeth in a thoughtful way. A few minutes later he excused himself. We assumed he’d gone to the Gents, although he seemed to take even longer than usual. When he returned he sat very quietly at the back of the room while we all watched the race on the pub TV.
When the winner was declared Bill came forward with his winning ticket and claimed his free beers.
As he explained to us the next day, ‘I went out the back door, sprinted down the lane to the bookies and put 2p to win on every horse, so obviously I had the winner among ‘em. I feel a bit ashamed of mysel really, takin advantage of ‘im like that.’”
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Cleverly done.
Say there are seven races on at the course, another such stunt is to claim I can name the winners of six of the seven races. Before each race, I'll write down the name of the horse I think will win, based on the weather, the conditions and what happened in the previous race. At the end of the day, I'll have got no more than one of them wrong.
Before the first race, I look at the form and write the name of the horse I think will win at the top of a piece of paper. I then fold over the top of the paper.
Before the second race, I write down the name of the horse that I think will win that race below the name of the first horse, then fold it over again.
And so on until the final race when I write down the name of the seventh expected winner.
At the end of the day, I unfold the piece of paper and, every time, I'll have the names of at least six of the winning horses.
Yet I know bugger all about horse racing. How's it done?
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Think I've got it.
In order to write your guess for the next race *below* the winner of the previous one, you'll have had to write the winner down after folding the paper over (and therefore allowably after the result of the race is known). My head hurts trying to work out what's on each side of the paper by the end of the day, but I think it might get nearly there at least.
Another scam I heard of was for someone to promise guaranteed tips from the stables, and you didn't even have to pay in advance. You received a tip for a race, and you just had to promise that if you found the tip to be a winner, you would forward the winnings from a half-crown (12.5p for you youngsters) bet which you'd placed aongside your own. After this, you were told the winner of the next race, when the same rule applied (or maybe double, since by then bona fides had been established).
Of course, the person starting the scheme had no idea of horseflesh; if he had 100 takers not committing any money, he just took a race with e.g. 10 horses and sent the name of each horse to 10 punters. 90 of his original customers diasappeared, having lost, but hopefully the remaining 10 sent him some money in return for an equally speculative tip, from which one might even win. When there was no one left, he'd start again...
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Before the first race, pretend to write on the paper, but write nothing and fold the paper over.
After the first race, and before the second, write the name of the first race winner and fold the paper over.
After the second race, and before the third, write the name of the second race winner and fold the paper over.
…
After the sixth race, and before the seventh, write the name of the sixth winner and any horse from the seventh race and fold the paper over.