I discovered that you can also place a single stake on several horses in separate races, called an accumulator bet, and there are many combinations of accumulators with exotic names such as Trixie, Lucky 15, Goliath, Patent, Canadian and Yankee, to name just a few.
There is even something called a ‘Heinz’, which consists of 57 separate bets on six horses, each running in a different race: 15 doubles, 20 trebles, 15 fourfold accumulators, 6 fivefold accumulators, and a single sixfold accumulator. Any two horses have to win to start paying out, with greater returns the more of them that triumph, and huge rewards if four, five or six of your selections come in.
However, for all of the glamorous methods of wagering your money, I thought back to what ASW had said to me: There’s no such thing as a poor bookmaker.
So punters beware.
My first port of call was the BP filling station on Bury Road, where I withdrew some cash from their ATM. Then, empowered by the wedge of banknotes in my pocket, I went in search of the betting shops.
The nearest one was Ladbrokes, opposite the Queen Victoria Jubilee Clock Tower at the top end of the High Street, its bright red and white frontage making it look more like a supermarket than a bookmakers, with special offers displayed on large posters in the window — two bets for the price of one.
I strode purposefully over to the door but found myself looking round furtively before opening it, checking that no one who knew me was watching, as if I were a naughty boy entering a den of iniquity, a hangout of wickedness and immorality.
I’m not sure what I expected to find — maybe a dark, smoke-filled room bustling with dubious individuals, all wearing hats and with their coat collars turned up, silently going about their business, handing over grubby handfuls of cash to a shirt-sleeved croupier behind a metal grill. Perhaps even with Paul Newman and Robert Redford on hand to relieve Robert Shaw of a briefcase full of twenty-dollar bills.
How wrong I was.
It was nothing at all like a scene from The Sting.
Instead, it was a sparsely populated, brightly lit airy space, statutorily smoke-free, with a light-oak floor and a scattering of easy chairs and stools upholstered in corporate Ladbroke tomato-red fabric.
On one side there was a glass-fronted booth for placing bets, and on the opposite wall, high up, a line of seven large television sets, some showing live horse and dog races, others displaying the odds of the runners. Under the TVs were pinned the various racecard pages from the Racing Post, with a wide shelf beneath for punters to lean on to write down their selections on the slips of paper provided, ready to hand in at the booth with their stake.
In addition, in the quiet corners, there were two electronic fixed-odds betting machines offering casino games such as roulette and blackjack, as well as the regular one-armed bandit spinning wheels.
It was an Aladdin’s cave, a whole new world, with new horizons to pursue.
What had I been doing all my life?
I was like a kid in a candy store.
I walked across to the booth.
‘Do you have odds for the Derby?’ I asked the young woman behind the glass.
‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘I’ll get them off the system. They’ve all changed now that Prince of Troy is confirmed as a non-runner.’
He’s more than a non-runner, I thought, he’s a non-existent.
She disappeared into the office behind and shortly reappeared with a printed sheet. She slid it across the counter under the glass.
‘They won’t all run,’ she said confidently. ‘Maximum of twenty in the Derby.’
I looked down at the list of horses on the sheet. There were thirty-eight of them in all, the favourite at the top, the outsiders at the bottom.
‘Those are ante-post odds,’ said the young woman, pointing at the sheet. ‘You lose your stake if the horse doesn’t run.’
‘Or doesn’t win?’ I replied.
‘Yeah, that as well,’ she said with a laugh. ‘No refunds.’
I scanned the list, looking for Orion’s Glory. He was nearly halfway down and quoted at a price of 33–1. Even I knew that was good, but maybe not quite good enough. I would shop around the other companies to see how they compared.
‘How often do the odds change?’ I asked.
‘The next scratch date is this coming Tuesday. The prices will shorten then for all of those left in. Then supplementary entries close on the Monday before the race. It would obviously change things dramatically if any horses are entered at that late stage. And the Dante tomorrow may cause a few fluctuations. Some of those are running in that.’ She nodded at the list in my hand.
‘But they won’t change in the next hour or so?’ I asked.
‘Not unless another favourite gets killed.’ She laughed.
‘Good for you, was it?’
‘Bloody marvellous. We’ve taken an absolute shedload on Prince of Troy to win the Derby, much of it since long before the Guineas when his price was really long. All the Chadwick lads came in here like clockwork, every week, to put more on him from their pay packets. They’ve been doing it for months. We’re their nearest shop. We stood to lose a bloody fortune if Prince of Troy won, which he probably would have.’
No wonder Ryan’s lads were so gloomy. It wasn’t just their pride that had taken a hit.
‘Manna from heaven, that fire was.’ She laughed again, louder this time.
I didn’t join in. I just stared at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, suddenly, hugely embarrassed. ‘It’s not right of me to laugh like that. I’m really sorry racing lost such a great horse in that manner.’
Don’t lie to me, I thought.
I looked down again at the list. ‘Is thirty-three-to-one your best price for Orion’s Glory?’
‘If that’s what it says.’
‘Not good enough,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I’ll take my twenty pounds elsewhere. I don’t like your attitude to the death of Prince of Troy. In fact, I might call Ladbrokes and complain.’
She was taken aback.
‘I’ll give you better odds,’ she said quickly. ‘How about forty-to-one? Just don’t say anything to head office. Please. I’ll lose my job.’
‘Can you change the odds just like that?’
‘I have some discretion,’ she said, implying she was more important than she actually was.
‘Make it fifty-to-one, then,’ I said, ‘and my lips will be sealed.’
She hesitated.
‘I’m sure that Mr Chadwick’s lads would also love to know that their nearest betting shop thinks it’s manna from heaven that Prince of Troy died in a fire, that it saved Ladbrokes a “bloody fortune”.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Try me,’ I said, staring at her again.
She was descending into panic.
‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘Twenty quid on Orion’s Glory at fifty-to-one.’
‘Make that forty quid,’ I said, peeling another twenty-note from my bundle. I was unlikely ever to get these odds again, either here or at any of the town’s other betting shops.
She hesitated again but I pushed the two banknotes under the glass towards her and she eventually took them.
‘Two thousand pounds to forty,’ she said slowly while typing it into her computer. She passed over the printed betting slip. ‘You’ll get me sacked anyway.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘You’ve taken a shedload from the Chadwick lads. You said so yourself. And that’s all now risk-free.’
I came out of the Ladbrokes betting shop with a real bounce in my step. I was already mentally spending my two thousand pounds. All that had to happen now was for Orion’s Glory to win the Derby. All?