Wonderfull stories about your Dad and how they got that holiday in Jersey! Another betting exception as well as the 6/4.
We used to have 100/30 too, you'd never say 10/3 back then.
Although the online bookies do display it as 10/3 now. But I always say it as 100/30 in my head, I'd imagine only "youngster" would say it as 10/3?
Did you know any of the tic-tac stuff? Top of the head, 9/4, Double Carpet, 33/1 etc?
Use to love seeing the guys doing all that on the course.
Don't see it much nowadays, and with John Mccririck no longer on TV Racing, it seems to be quite forgotten and a thing of the past now.
Shame, it all added to the atmosphere.
Ahh yes, of course, 100/30 was the other exception. Being an awkward so & so, I used to mark that up as 10/3. Again, the punters complained, "but I took 100/30".
Fair enough mate......
Tic-tac? No, never really grasped it, though I knew the slang, double carpet, top of the head, wrist etc.
I agree, they livened things up. Always wore white gloves, so their hand signals could be seen more clearly.
My favourite jumper of all time was Desert Orchid and I really fell in love with him when he beat Elsworth's other horse Combs ditch who I had backed . Colin Brown and I both got it wrong that day and Dessie won at 16-1. As I missed that and didnt want to jinx him I made the terrible decision moneywise not to ever back him. See I was an idiot then G. He is my sons favourite racehorse and he has two 1 of 500 prints of Dessie. Funny I watched his gold cup win earlier today and nearly cried my eyes out again. What a horse.
Also a great fan of Guy Harwood and especially Dancing Brave, the best horse never to have won the Derby, Greville got it wrong that day. It must have been really galling for Greville to lose the ride to Pat Eddery as they had fell out badly over the treatment of To Agori Mou In the Irish 2000. Funny thing was To Agori Mou was another of my winners that day back in 1981 when he won the 2000 Guineas on the same day that Standaan won.
Never a great fan of Best Mate but he was a great horse.
Memories, memories, doubt if they will ever be bettered but then didnt see Frankel coming so you never know.
Desert Orchid was a great horse but I very rarely bet him , I was the same with Istabraq great horse but hardly ever bet it, I was always thinking "It cannae keep winning", what a dafty I was lol.
Some other horses that come flooding back are Sea pidgeon, Night Nurse and Monksfield, Am I right in thinking they used to race against each other a lot or am I just imagining that ?, ( I know I could look on google but I like to test my memory).
definitely all the same era. Late seventies /early eighties. Monksfield was a real battler, Sea pigeon and him hurdlers, Night Nurse dead heated with Monksfield in Templegate Hurdle at Aintree after Night Nurse had just beten Monksfield and Sea Pigeon in 1977 Champion hurdle.
Funny thing Night Nurse the highest rated of those over hurdles was the only one who went onto a Chase career as well. Winning 13 including some good uns.
definitely all the same era. Late seventies /early eighties. Monksfield was a real battler, Sea pigeon and him hurdlers, Night Nurse dead heated with Monksfield in Templegate Hurdle at Aintree after Night Nurse had just beten Monksfield and Sea Pigeon in 1977 Champion hurdle.
Funny thing Night Nurse the highest rated of those over hurdles was the only one who went onto a Chase career as well. Winning 13 including some good uns.
A Round Robin was a!ways my favourite bet at the bookies partly because of the added interest in never quite understanding how much you might be winning! I remember one small stakes one when Material Witness was a 33/1 first line winner, I got my second horse up at 12/1 and knew before the third went off I had won at least £200, but was looking at upwards of £1,000 if the last one came up. I learnt the harsh lesson about not changing your mind in that final race, my original choice romped home and the nag I ended up picking ran a stinker!!
Graham, you mentioned earlier you lived 4 miles from Ascot. Do you still live there?
I'm not far from Ascot, I'm halfway between Kempton Park & Sandown Park, both are 2 miles away but in opposite directions.
In fact I live on what is called Hurst Park Estate, which is built on what used to be Hurst Park Racecourse.
Amazing how many racecourses so close together - Kempton, Sandown, Ascot, Windsor, with Newbury & Lingfield not far either.
Hi TK.
No I live in Huntingdon now. However my parents still live in the house I grew up in, in Bracknell. (The other side of Ascot to you) Often go down to see them.
@IrishRose lives right by you then I guess? I met her at Kempton Racecourse, which she said was on her doorstep, to present her with the LADIES LAST LONGER trophy from the Charity Heads up Comp.
Had a great day at the races there with her, and her friend Colleen I think it was.
Gary was also there, not George, but @MONKEYGLB who won the main heads up trophy, and his mate.
Picked a few winners that day and Rose very kindly bought us all FISH AND CHIPS as we'd done the travelling. True Sky Poker spirit coupled with Irish hospitality! She said, "You're in my town now, it's the Irish way, so we'll get the food" or words to that effect.
Was great fun, if not a bit cold (February 2017)
Stood right by the finishing post! Watching our horses come home in some tight finishes. GET ON THE YAGER was one of them, finds plenty under pressure that horse. The first race winner CLENNI WELLS was a 10/1 shot too, that I had managed to tip up for the guys the night before in the video below: (Sound quality not great)
I think Colleen and I had the first three winners. She was chuffed to bits, but don't ask her to take photo's of the trophy presentation. All we got was a close up of her finger!
There's another, less common, price that isn't reduced to the smallest common denominator, 85/40 (we have 11/8, 13/8 and 15/8, so why not 17/8?), and the even less common (I don't think I've seen it for years) 95/40.
Memories of Provideo earlier in the thread, takes me back to my last few weeks of college. Our last assignment was to try and create a "Pro Video" on 1984 college equipment (yeah, right!) and three of us degenerates noticed Provideo running in the first race of the new flat season and, well, let's say we had a good last few weeks down the Halfway House in Connah's Quay on the back of the horse's win.
There's another, less common, price that isn't reduced to the smallest common denominator, 85/40 (we have 11/8, 13/8 and 15/8, so why not 17/8?), and the even less common (I don't think I've seen it for years) 95/40.
Memories of Provideo earlier in the thread, takes me back to my last few weeks of college. Our last assignment was to try and create a "Pro Video" on 1984 college equipment (yeah, right!) and three of us degenerates noticed Provideo running in the first race of the new flat season and, well, let's say we had a good last few weeks down the Halfway House in Connah's Quay on the back of the horse's win.
Such an interesting thread, so glad I stumbled upon this. I've not really known sports betting pre internet age so reminiscing for me is looking back to online in plays taking a few seconds too long to update and actually being settled as winners rather than palped. Nowhere near as romantic as some of these anecdotes.
Re: 6/4, 100/30 etc - Obvs the odds on versions of these apply too, for some reason 4/6 and 30/100 are both still a thing.
The consensus from having a quick Google seems to be that 100/30 is used instead of 10/3 so that it's not mistaken for a race start time (2:50), however that doesn't explain 6/4 instead of 3/2, neither of which is a likely race start time.
It also raises the question of why we'd still use 5/4 and 5/6 if that were the case.
If I had to guess, I would say it's probably a psychological thing to increase punters' stakes with 4/6 and 6/4 - If you put £4 or £6 on then you win a round tenner, but 2/3 and 3/2 they're maybe more likely to put a £2 or £3 bet on.
Decimal is better for pretty much everything besides EW though. Rather still get 5.35 or 5.20 for instance instead of the bookie cutting the price from 9/2 to 4/1 just for the sake of using commonly used fractions.
Plus for accas, there's none of this 3/1 and 4/1 being a 19/1 double stuff to worry about, it's just 4*5 = 20.
At least we didn't go with any of this +850 and -240 nonsense that you see in Vegas. Who decided that would ever be a good system?
@FCHD & The Evil One make good points about the few remaining fractional odds which make no sense, & I had clean forgotten 85/40.
For 100/30, I kind of get it. Back in the day, at the racetracks, a biggish punter would be offered 3/1 for his £30 & would haggle, "come on mate, make it £100 to £30 & we have a bet".
Same, I suppose, with 85/40, when a punter was offered £80 to £40 about a 2/1 shot & would ask for £90 to £40, & the bookie might split the difference, "OK, you've got £85 to £40".
I suppose the same logic could apply to 6/4, but somehow I don't think so.
In a way, I rather enjoy these oddities.
Decimal odds? Well The Evil One suggests they are easier, & I guess he's correct, but I would imagine most senior punters - senior as in, err, elderly - still prefer fractional odds.
As to the system they use in the USA, jeez, I've never been comfortable with that, but I suppose they have grown up with that system & find our fractional & decimal odds equally baffling.
Yes,some interesting stuff on this thread. I thought I would share a few of my reminiscences from my time as a betting shop manager. I worked for Hills for over 35 years. During the mid 70's one of the first shops I managed was in Selly Oak in Birmingham. As this was quite close to the BBC studios at Pebble Mill (now demolished with a dental hospital built on the site) we occasionally got some well known faces coming in. One was the actor Maurice Colbourne . He was in a show called "Gangsters" which was set in Birmingham and produced at Pebble Mill and ran from 1975 to 1978. He liked a small bet and would come in during breaks in filming.He was always friendly and would tell us what he had been doing. Here he is in a short clip from Gangsters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvY4uy3louc
In the 80's we saw him again as he had the part of Tom Howard in the sailing soap "Howard's Way" which again was produced at Pebble Mill. Unfortunately in 1989 he died from a heart attack aged only 49. He was a genuinely nice man.
We also had Peter Vaughan come in a few times.He kept himself to himself . He was in a lot of shows.Here he is playing Wolfie's girlfriend's father in Citizen Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00qg3T6we60
As Pot Black was also filmed at Pebble Mill we had several snooker players come in the shop. On one occasion we had Silvino Francisco ,Willie Thorne and Cliff Thorburn all in at the same time.As you can imagine this caused quite a stir amongst our regular punters. They had what I assume were their managers with them and they were the ones with the big wads of cash. On another occasion Willie Thorne was in on his own and placed several multiple bets with combinations of 3 or 4 well fancied favs running at the main meetings. All the bets included a 10/1 shot running in a 20 runner seller at Ludlow - nothing suspicious there then! I did my job and notified the office about the bets. Needless to say all the favs won and of course the 10/1 shot in the seller romped home. Not having enough cash in the shop to pay him meant I had to go across the road and get some from the bank. After paying him out he gave the 3 of us working in the shop a very nice tip. Willie Thorne has had a very eventful life and in the end gambling has led to some hard times: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/snooker-legend-willie-thorne-going-5709450
In later years after Pot Black had finished we still saw some snooker players. At that time some of the guys from UB40 owned a snooker hall in Selly Oak and one of them came in with Jimmy White . On another occasion Alex Higgins was in and out of the shop all afternoon a bit the worse for wear. He told us he was in the pub across the road and that people would not stop buying him drinks! He also told us he was flying to Ireland the next day as he had to present the prize for a race at Leopardstown races named after him. Alex Higgins story is another sad one. This is a fascinating article from the Belfast Telegraph about the boxer Eamonn Magee and his friendship with Alex Higgins. Well worth reading :
Great stuff @bearace , thread continues to deliver.
I vaguely knew most of those snooker players you mention, & yes, fair to say, let's be polite, they liked a bet. The bookies liked them to have a bet, too.....
Tikay, Im glad I started it and what a thread its turned into with some great posts. Not all on odds but who cares.
Lovely story from bearace, you meet the best people in betting shops LOL.
As to decimal odds like you I much prefer what I grew up with and decimal odds definitely take the fun out of trying to get the best price. Remember the days when in the bookies, waiting to time your bet so you thought you could get best price, dont think you would bother so much between 5.3 or 5.4 to one but the joy in the old days of thinking this horse is going out from 4-1 to 9-2 and timing the bet just as it happens. LOL then moaning when it goes out to 5,s.
And the characters, the regulars you became friends with and the the odd person who you had never seen before who came in with a big bet and regulars trying to find out what they had done so they could follow them.
yes great thread i dont do horses, the one i do remember was in the 80s i stuck a skin diver on little polviere in the national at 28/1 but changed my bet to five £1 bets instead, sick, you could actually see the imprint of the previous bet i had on my winning bet
Comments
Fair enough mate......
Tic-tac? No, never really grasped it, though I knew the slang, double carpet, top of the head, wrist etc.
I agree, they livened things up. Always wore white gloves, so their hand signals could be seen more clearly.
Graham, you mentioned earlier you lived 4 miles from Ascot. Do you still live there?
I'm not far from Ascot, I'm halfway between Kempton Park & Sandown Park, both are 2 miles away but in opposite directions.
In fact I live on what is called Hurst Park Estate, which is built on what used to be Hurst Park Racecourse.
Amazing how many racecourses so close together - Kempton, Sandown, Ascot, Windsor, with Newbury & Lingfield not far either.
I cant go back as far as Tikay but also remember no screens and the blower.Seemed to make it more exciting
Lovely story about your dad Tikay. Time to go to your link on George Duffield, very enjoyable.
Late seventies /early eighties. Monksfield was a real battler, Sea pigeon and him hurdlers, Night Nurse dead heated with Monksfield in Templegate Hurdle at Aintree after Night Nurse had just beten Monksfield and Sea Pigeon in 1977 Champion hurdle.
Funny thing Night Nurse the highest rated of those over hurdles was the only one who went onto a Chase career as well. Winning 13 including some good uns.
I learnt the harsh lesson about not changing your mind in that final race, my original choice romped home and the nag I ended up picking ran a stinker!!
No I live in Huntingdon now. However my parents still live in the house I grew up in, in Bracknell.
(The other side of Ascot to you) Often go down to see them.
@IrishRose lives right by you then I guess? I met her at Kempton Racecourse, which she said was on her doorstep, to present her with the LADIES LAST LONGER trophy from the Charity Heads up Comp.
Had a great day at the races there with her, and her friend Colleen I think it was.
Gary was also there, not George, but @MONKEYGLB who won the main heads up trophy, and his mate.
Picked a few winners that day and Rose very kindly bought us all FISH AND CHIPS as we'd done the travelling. True Sky Poker spirit coupled with Irish hospitality! She said, "You're in my town now, it's the Irish way, so we'll get the food" or words to that effect.
Was great fun, if not a bit cold (February 2017)
Stood right by the finishing post! Watching our horses come home in some tight finishes. GET ON THE YAGER was one of them, finds plenty under pressure that horse. The first race winner CLENNI WELLS was a 10/1 shot too, that I had managed to tip up for the guys the night before in the video below: (Sound quality not great)
Results below: (Select Kempton)
https://www.racingpost.com/results/2017-02-10
I think Colleen and I had the first three winners. She was chuffed to bits, but don't ask her to take photo's of the trophy presentation. All we got was a close up of her finger!
Memories of Provideo earlier in the thread, takes me back to my last few weeks of college. Our last assignment was to try and create a "Pro Video" on 1984 college equipment (yeah, right!) and three of us degenerates noticed Provideo running in the first race of the new flat season and, well, let's say we had a good last few weeks down the Halfway House in Connah's Quay on the back of the horse's win.
The consensus from having a quick Google seems to be that 100/30 is used instead of 10/3 so that it's not mistaken for a race start time (2:50), however that doesn't explain 6/4 instead of 3/2, neither of which is a likely race start time.
It also raises the question of why we'd still use 5/4 and 5/6 if that were the case.
If I had to guess, I would say it's probably a psychological thing to increase punters' stakes with 4/6 and 6/4 - If you put £4 or £6 on then you win a round tenner, but 2/3 and 3/2 they're maybe more likely to put a £2 or £3 bet on.
Decimal is better for pretty much everything besides EW though. Rather still get 5.35 or 5.20 for instance instead of the bookie cutting the price from 9/2 to 4/1 just for the sake of using commonly used fractions.
Plus for accas, there's none of this 3/1 and 4/1 being a 19/1 double stuff to worry about, it's just 4*5 = 20.
At least we didn't go with any of this +850 and -240 nonsense that you see in Vegas. Who decided that would ever be a good system?
@FCHD & The Evil One make good points about the few remaining fractional odds which make no sense, & I had clean forgotten 85/40.
For 100/30, I kind of get it. Back in the day, at the racetracks, a biggish punter would be offered 3/1 for his £30 & would haggle, "come on mate, make it £100 to £30 & we have a bet".
Same, I suppose, with 85/40, when a punter was offered £80 to £40 about a 2/1 shot & would ask for £90 to £40, & the bookie might split the difference, "OK, you've got £85 to £40".
I suppose the same logic could apply to 6/4, but somehow I don't think so.
In a way, I rather enjoy these oddities.
Decimal odds? Well The Evil One suggests they are easier, & I guess he's correct, but I would imagine most senior punters - senior as in, err, elderly - still prefer fractional odds.
As to the system they use in the USA, jeez, I've never been comfortable with that, but I suppose they have grown up with that system & find our fractional & decimal odds equally baffling.
By he bye, what a great thread this is.
If there were a prize for TotW (Thread of the Week), this wins it hands down, so well done @Vaigret
I worked for Hills for over 35 years. During the mid 70's one of the first shops I managed was in Selly Oak in Birmingham. As this was quite close to the BBC studios at Pebble Mill (now demolished with a dental hospital built on the site) we occasionally got some well known faces coming in.
One was the actor Maurice Colbourne . He was in a show called "Gangsters" which was set in Birmingham and produced at Pebble Mill and ran from 1975 to 1978. He liked a small bet and would come in during breaks in filming.He was always friendly and would tell us what he had been doing. Here he is in a short clip from Gangsters:
In the 80's we saw him again as he had the part of Tom Howard in the sailing soap "Howard's Way" which again was produced at Pebble Mill. Unfortunately in 1989 he died from a heart attack aged only 49. He was a genuinely nice man.
We also had Peter Vaughan come in a few times.He kept himself to himself . He was in a lot of shows.Here he is playing Wolfie's girlfriend's father in Citizen Smith:
As Pot Black was also filmed at Pebble Mill we had several snooker players come in the shop. On one occasion we had Silvino Francisco ,Willie Thorne and Cliff Thorburn all in at the same time.As you can imagine this caused quite a stir amongst our regular punters. They had what I assume were their managers with them and they were the ones with the big wads of cash.
On another occasion Willie Thorne was in on his own and placed several multiple bets with combinations of 3 or 4 well fancied favs running at the main meetings. All the bets included a 10/1 shot running in a 20 runner seller at Ludlow - nothing suspicious there then! I did my job and notified the office about the bets.
Needless to say all the favs won and of course the 10/1 shot in the seller romped home. Not having enough cash in the shop to pay him meant I had to go across the road and get some from the bank. After paying him out he gave the 3 of us working in the shop a very nice tip.
Willie Thorne has had a very eventful life and in the end gambling has led to some hard times:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/snooker-legend-willie-thorne-going-5709450
In later years after Pot Black had finished we still saw some snooker players. At that time some of the guys from UB40 owned a snooker hall in Selly Oak and one of them came in with Jimmy White . On another occasion Alex Higgins was in and out of the shop all afternoon a bit the worse for wear. He told us he was in the pub across the road and that people would not stop buying him drinks! He also told us he was flying to Ireland the next day as he had to present the prize for a race at Leopardstown races named after him.
Alex Higgins story is another sad one. This is a fascinating article from the Belfast Telegraph about the boxer Eamonn Magee and his friendship with Alex Higgins. Well worth reading :
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/eamonn-magee-gambled-away-1m-and-went-shoplifting-with-alex-higgins-36840038.html
^^^^^
Great stuff @bearace , thread continues to deliver.
I vaguely knew most of those snooker players you mention, & yes, fair to say, let's be polite, they liked a bet. The bookies liked them to have a bet, too.....
Lovely story from bearace, you meet the best people in betting shops LOL.
As to decimal odds like you I much prefer what I grew up with and decimal odds definitely take the fun out of trying to get the best price. Remember the days when in the bookies, waiting to time your bet so you thought you could get best price, dont think you would bother so much between 5.3 or 5.4 to one but the joy in the old days of thinking this horse is going out from 4-1 to 9-2 and timing the bet just as it happens. LOL then moaning when it goes out to 5,s.
And the characters, the regulars you became friends with and the the odd person who you had never seen before who came in with a big bet and regulars trying to find out what they had done so they could follow them.
V
i dont do horses, the one i do remember was in the 80s i stuck a skin diver on little polviere in the national at 28/1 but changed my bet to five £1 bets instead, sick,
you could actually see the imprint of the previous bet i had on my winning bet