HOW TELEGRAPHIC BETTING IS DONE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18939, 9 December 1929, Page 11

HOW TELEGRAPHIC BETTING IS DONE.

SPORTSMAN DESCRIBES USE OF SIMPLE CODE. The recent Post and Telegraph Departmental inquiry in Auckland has aroused general interest in betting by means of the telegraph. Although it is illegal to telegraph racing bets, most followers of the sport know how simply the law can be evaded by the use of a code, so that apparently harmless messages are really a disguised instruction to put so much money on such and such a horse in a certain race. Official circles are, as might be expected, reticent or professedly ignorant of telegraph betting in Christchurch, but a keen racing man informed a “ Star ” reporter to-day that it was common knowledge that the Post Office here, and practically everywhere else in the Dominion, was the unwitting agent of many a “ punter.” “Of course,” he said, “ there must be some pre-arrangement between the punter and the man who places the bets for him. Usually a simple code is agreed upon so that a key sentence sent over the wires may be understood and acted upon by the recipient. For instance, a telegram worded “ Meet me third tram / o’clock,” might be an instruction for a bet of £7 to be placed on a horse in the third race, the name of the horse being indicated by the words ‘ meet me/ Those words could be varied to indicate various horses. They might be altered to ‘ Will you meet me?’ ‘Please meet me,’ and so on. “ Another more obvious message commonly used is something as follow's: ‘Get me 50 Dunraven Tour,’ which meant put £SO on Dunraven. Sometimes an owner wishing to back his own horses will supply his agent with a list of key words indicating respectively the names of the horses. This code can. of course, be easily elaborated to indicate a horse in any race on the programme. “If necessary, there is nothing to prevent the sender of the telegram from also forwarding a money order telegram for the amount of the bet.”