PLEA FOR TOTALISATOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 745, 19 August 1929, Page 12

PLEA FOR TOTALISATOR

NO BOOKMAKERS LEFT i As<?ot has left behind one regret m :my mind, writes "Tetrarch” in the • l-ondon “Sunday Graphic.” The sport i has been excellent, of course, the ; weather glorious, and I have finished | on the right side in my weekly duel | with my bookmaker. i But there is still one regret—that is the absence of the tote. If any one meeting needs a tote more j than another it is Ascot, and it is I needed more than ever just now. The ; Royal meeting is a bookmakers’ harvest, and this year a bigger harvest | than ever has come their way. Betting has never been on such a | scale as it has been in the past two I months. Even the hectic days immej <1 ia.tely after the war. when everybody seemed to have money to gamble with, have been eclipsed. , So that the ring cannot complain of ! cramped markets, but the betting public can still complain very much of cramped prices. Take a case in point—the race which Air. Jinks won. I saw some of the figures from the books of several big layers, and you can take it from me that if they had betted strictly to money, the price of Mr. Jinks would have been more than twice as good as it was. “There are no real bookmakers left in Tattersall’s, but there are a few in the Silver Ring still,” a friend of mine remarked to me, and he has had years of active experience among all grades. At Ascot we see the bookmakers at their worst. That is why I want the tote, which automatically gives the public a fair deal.