When is a bet a Bet

[cubone]

Purwell firstly the £500 EW was equivilant to 20 times  so it was £15,000 now so to get that amount on in a ring like Salisbury it would get back and therefore shorten the price.

If they had tried to get that amount on at the track it would have averaged less than 10/1 so by backing it at Starting Price they could place it in small amounts around the country without anyone sussing it was a plot.

Cubone

[Purwell]

I see that, but in those days when betting was all on credit, I think WH probably did well to get the monkey on E/W. After all his various runners would want some. <br>Sorry to digress over technicalities, but to get back to your original post, bloody good luck to them; if I had a 2yo like that I’d do the same. The public aren’t being ripped off, only the layers.

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highways

[wit]

hi cubone,

As regards the slander side:

The judge said that Scobie as plaintiff had simply not satisfied him that the words of which he complained were spoken.  

Hill denied even knowing what a bushranger was, but did admit to calling Scobie a ponce (which he defined as a parasite and a sponger).    Scobie denied that Hill had called him a ponce, but maintained he had called him a bushranger.

It sounds like, even had Scobie’s words been proven, an ordinary chap on a passing omnibus would have put them down to vulgar abuse, rather than have analysed them and seriously thought  of  Scobie that he was an escaped convict who had taken to the Australian bush in order to lead a predatory life and had somehow ended up in London.

There was some background between them – Scobie had been private trainer at Whitsbury to Sir Charles Hyde, on whose death the property had passed to Hill’s company.   Hill had allowed Scobie to continue to train there but there had been friction between them, characterised by Hill as rudeness and disrespect and by Scobie as plain speaking,  and Hill was at the time said to be contemplating sacking Scobie.

<br>As regards Hill and the stable’s commission of £600 EW:

If Hill had agreed to put on the bet with the SP books rather than stand it himself, then he would seem to have acted in the best interest of the stable by getting £500 EW at 25/1 rather than £600 EW at 10/1,  and that seems to be what Tatts found  (though one wonders whether it was strictly their business or capability – its not like it was the SP books paying out who had the issue with Hill).

<br>As regards the coup itself:

The jockey Sharpe was in his forties and had rarely been allowed to ride a fancied horse carrying more than 7st.   Told as he was being led onto the course on this 9st  ride – the best part of 3st dead weight between him and his mount –  that the horse was fancied and all he had to do was not fall off, he apparently couldn’t believe his ears  and had to have the message repeated.  

The illusion was carried further by Hill himself offering 25/1.

The SP books never took it to the police, but could they have claimed conspiracy to defraud them?

Neither the stable nor Hill were under any duty of disclosure to them, and it is unlikely that any words or conduct were required to misrepresent or persuade the SP books to accept the bets – by definition its not as if they had to be persuaded into offering a different price to what they otherwise had on offer, or that the SP figure paid was not the genuine reflection of what was generally on offer on-course.

Nor would it have been the first time something like this had happened, so it would have been known the SP books were susceptible to such coups.   Caveat SP bookies and punters.

As noted above, the SP books who had to pay up at 25/1 never took Hill to Tatts, and nobody (other than, perversely, the actual beneficiary Scobie) suggested he had done anything wrong.    It perhaps rather tempts one to side with Hill’s assessment of Scobie.

Fantasia on the case:

a. if Hill had put up and obtained matches at 25/1 of his £500 EW on a hypothetical betting exchange of the time –  nothing wrong

b.  if the team, with an eye to a profit on the hypothetical exchange,  had made arrangements with other jockeys to manipulate their horse’s chance in breach of the rules of racing  –  something wrong, even if the other horses in fact overcame the manipulation applied to them

c.  if the team, with an eye to a profit on the hypothetical exchange,  had made arrangements to manipulate their own horse’s running in breach of the rules of racing  –  something wrong, even if in fact it overcame that manipulation

d.  if the team had agreed and fully intended to do either b or c, but one of them changed their mind at the last minute, or double-crossed the others for his own purposes –   still something wrong, even though as it turned out the race was  run straight and in accord with the rules of racing.

The horse was Vilmorin, who went on to be a successful sprinter and sire of sprinters.

best regards

wit<br>

[Racing Daily]

Why would the price not drop incrementally, as the money came in?  Is it not logical that a £250ew stake on a 25/1 shot would bemore than enough to knock the horse into 16s – the other £250ew would merely knock it in farther.  Were the markets not quite so dynamic back then?

[wit]

RD,

the off-course SP firms settled at just the one agreed fixed rate: the SP.    they couldn’t juggle or fluctuate their prices, as could the ring.

the SP business was a hierarchical structure and the biggest SP firms were where the buck stopped.  they had a blower arrangement with The Victoria or The L&P to get money back to the course

at the farmost reaches of the SP hierarchy, if you spread bets without precipitating them laying-off up the chain to any firm who had the blower – and by no means all SP firms did around the country –  you could orchestrate a big punt without affecting the all-critical SP.

i think that is what Hill was charged with doing through his contacts.

best regards

wit

(Edited by wit at 12:59 pm on Aug. 5, 2006)

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