If a wager contains no risk it’s
no longer gambling. The search for a “sure thing” in Horseracing grew into an
industry in Victorian England. Horse grooms, self-professed experts, mathematicians,
fortunetellers, breeders, and charlatans all lined their pockets informing
gamblers which horses to back for a price. Attentive customers eager for the
name of a winner surround touts and tipsters at every racetrack and betting
parlor in England. Enterprising touts purchase space in racing periodicals to advertise
their tip mailing lists. Gamblers generally pay between 6 pence to 1 shilling
for a tip, although prices rise for the biggest races (such as the Derby). An
annual subscription by mail cost about 2 shillings, however, scam artists run
most tip-by-mail operations.
Unfortunately, very few racing
tipsters and touts have any better idea of what horse will win than their
customers. If their information turns out to be useful through sheer luck,
their customers return. If the horse loses, the customer already paid and touts
never give refunds for faulty insights. They rely on patter, jargon,
accomplices pretending to be satisfied customers, and plausible-sounding
sources of inside information. Muddying the water further even touts with
genuine information rely on these theatrics to bring in the customers.
Most tipsters lure in customers
with promises of being “in the swim”, armed with genuine inside information.
These touts seem like regular
working men and women with sharp ears and eyes, often claiming a connection to
racing. The source of their information may be a friend working as a groom in
the racing stable, an overheard conversation in a barbershop between members of
a criminal syndicate, or a few hours spent perched in a tree outside the track.
Their little known horses boast incredible practice lap times far outpacing the
favorite. These “certainties” come with much longer odds and much higher
potential payouts.
Some educated tipsters claim to
possess an infallible system for predicting winning horses. Whether by advanced
math, numerology, keen knowledge of horse anatomy, or just letting their
5-year-old child pick a horse, their customers follow the method all the way to
the bookmaker. Tipsters alleging secret methods often act worldly-wise, honest,
generous, mathematically gifted, or grandfatherly. Some might even assert their
system earns thousands of pounds over the course of a racing season. The
tipster merely charges a token fee to keep out the riffraff.
A few tipsters even profess to
possess occult powers. They use their incredible gifts to pluck the names of
winning horses out of the air. Such “Turf Prophets” appeal to superstitious
gamblers with chants, nonsensical rituals, and esoteric auguries. They dress in
exotic costumes or ritual robes. Many are foreign or try to appear foreign. Fortunetelling
tricks, cold reading, and the occasional correct prediction keep the fakes
employed, while genuine seers must be desperate for money to degrade their
magical abilities.
Finally, the most genuine of tipsters
are the lower-class men and women loitering around the track selling race
cards. Once purchased, race cards furnish their owners with the horse’s names,
weights, and coloration, along with key facts about their riders and saddlery. These
key statistics arm their customers to make educated guesses for their wagers.
Many card sellers leave their jobs as newspaper peddlers in the streets of
London for a racing weekend. At 6 pence a card, they can easily make up to 10
shillings a weekend. Some card sellers earn extra money by working as a
bookmaker. Others offer other more illicit products for sale.
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