"MASS" BETTING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 224, 16 May 1932, Page 3

"MASS" BETTING

ENGLISH BOOKMAKERS FIX ' TIME LIMIT FOR RACE WIRES. TO PREVENT FRAUDS. LONDON. Followers of racing may be faced with the most drastic alteration in their bookmakers' rules this year unless action is taken hy Tattersall's committee. Backers at the present moment are allowed to telegraph their bets up to the advertised time of the raee. In certain eases, where the sums are large, this time is shortened by a quarter, or even half, an hour before the start. A number of prominent bookmakers have, however, agreed among themselves that no bet by telegram shall be accepted unless it is timed half an hour before the race, with a proportionate limit for large sums. Numerous instances are . alleged to have occurred during the past six months in which a gang of backers have used an isolated post office from which to send off as many as 200 wires to various bookmakers, backing a horse at some distant meeting. Telephone Warning. The bookmakers allege that the sender of these wires has been in telephonic communication with some individual at the meeting concerned, that the result of the race has been told to him, and that, if the horse named on the wires has not won, .he has been abel to reclaim the bulk of

them under the existing Post Office regulations. The bookmakers also claim that at the smaller race meetings where these coups are brought off a bookmaker financed by the interested parties goes down to the course, lays purposely long odds against the horse, and so makes it appear at an outside price in the starting price returns. It is claimed that one small group have been practising this system really successfully. They have opened a large number of accounts, and have "borrowed" the nam'es of many of their friends who have accounts with recognised bookmakers. Now it is learned that at least two more groups of racegoers have made preparations on similar lines for bringing off coups during the forthcoming flat season. The bookmakers who are concerned in this protest want a ruling that where "mass" betting wires are sent off by any one unconnected officially with the stable, those wires should not be paid either way until the whole cireumstances of their dispatch are investigated by Tattersall's.