THE PARI-MUTUEL

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1929, Page 5

THE PARI-MUTUEL

LONDON BETTING POOL. WORKED IN SECRET. There is a business office near Ludgate Circus in which men and women are locked from the moment they come on duty until they leave at night. Their meals are cooked in a restaurant on the premises. No one is allowed to communicate with them. They are forbidden to communicate with the outside world. Should a member of the staff become the father of twins in office hours he is not informed of his happiness; should a determined lover attempt to break down the secrecy, and send a message of eternal devotion, he or she exposes the beloved one to instant dismissal. Such is life in a pari-mutuel, or betting “pool.” I walked through these guarded doors recently to see how a pari-mutuel works, writes a Daily Express representative. Any one with betting friends knows, now that the season for losing money has started in real earnest, that much of the conversation is:— “How much did you get on such-and-such a horse from a bookmaker? Only ten to one? I got fifteen to one in the pari-mutuel!”

Sometimes, of course, it works the other way, for the betting pool is as skittish and uncertain as a woman.

Now the pool works in an atmosphere as remote and mathematical as that of a bank. There are at the moment about 2000 clients, each one with a number. These clients send in their bets by telephone, letter, and telegram. The imprisoned staff receives them. Captive maidens in neat white overalls take them down all day at green baize telephone desks. Commissionaries sundered from their kind, and unable, like other commissionaires, to slip out and have a drink with a friend who fought at Kandahar, come secretly with the mail bags and the telegrams. The bets are entered on large “pool sheets” by a staff of confidential clerks who are supervised all day by a chartered accountant and a special staff. At any moment of the day you can go to these tables and say:— “How goes the pool for the 3.15?” prompt comes the reply:— “Three hundred pounds five shillings .... ”or whatever it is. PRIVATE WIRE BETS. • Then minutes before the race the chartered accountant bangs an official stamp on the “pool sheets,” which are then posted up in the hall, which is open not to the public, because it is not a large hall, but to the Press. Bets can now come in only over the private wires until the start of the race.

The way the pool sheets grow is a curious indication of public fancy. A bookmaker’s office is always rather a mystery to the uninitafed, but here everything is plain and simple. For instance, on the day I was there about 1200 people placed bets on the City and Surburban. The exact directions in which their hopes lay could be seen at a

glance. A bookmaker risks his capital and gives certain definite odds; the “pool” is simply the division of losers’ stakes among the winners, and you never know how much is in the balance until the last moment.

Just before the City and Suburban was run the pool sheets showed something like £6OO to win and £5OO place money. There was some excitement because if the racecourse favourite Fohanaun had won, pari-mutuel bakers -would have received 22| to 1 instead of the 5 to 1 offered by the bookies. The pool loves to pay out these high stakes. Nothing delights a pari-mutuel more than informing its clients that a horse which the bookmakers quoted at 2 to 1 has brought them 33 to 1, because the pool’s profit is not the losers’ money but a flat rate of 10 per cent, on all transactions. Therefore in the “G.P.M.” a big race is not the bookmaker’s flushed, nail-bit-ing, whisky-gulping ordeal at the tape machine, but an aloof mathematical amusement, tempered by kindly thoughts for absent friends! “CITY AND SUB.” WINNER. The tape machine clicked out the winner of the City and Suburban with that skittish stutter so familiar to the impatient gambler. The • bookmakers had won. They offered Parwiz at 16 to 1. The “pool” could give only 8 to 1. Wait a bit'! Second Caballero! The “pool”, could share out 3 to 1, and the bookmakers only about £2 15s. Bookmakers and “pool” were about even with Elton, at ■' £1 Us 6d. “You see,” explained a director, “we

can’t pull it off every time. But if Fohanaun had won!”