FOOTBALL POOLS NIGHT

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20510, 28 May 1938, Page 17 (Supplement)

FOOTBALL POOLS NIGHT

(London Times.)

CHARLIE CAME out from the scullery, hurriedly drying his face and hands. Hia wife looked up from feeding their two children. “There’s your slippers, dear; under that chair.” , “ Hm,” sniffed Charlie, his cheerful face gradually emerging through the top of his shirt. “ Sure sign it’s pay-night; any other time I ’ave to look for ’em meself. Now, where’s me football coupons? Clear all this stuff off the table. I’ll just show you 'ow to win a thousand pounds.” “A good chance you’ve got.” said his wife, in a tone that made Charlie shudder. “ Far better put the money towards a pair of boots for Tommy.” “ Encouraging, aren’t you? But women are all the same—got no imagination. Look, see what it says ’ere. Last week somebody won two thousand three hundred pounds vor a penny. Might be me this week. Then Tommy can ’ave a pair of boots for Sunday as well, and you can ’ave a different ‘tit for tat’ for each day in the week. If you don’t speculate you don’t recuperate.” “If you give a correct forecast, everybody else will have done the same. You Pick Out the Obvious every week.” she commented, coming to look over his shoulder. “ Look what happened the other week when you had a win. All your mates had backed the same teams as you, and all you won was four bob.” “ That won’t happen again. I’m working to a different system now. Anyway, if I wasn’t doing this I’d be in the pub cr we’d be at the pictures. Here, you fill up a . couple of columns, if you think you can do \ better than me.” His wife had already become interested in the litter of papers on the table—the coupons, the football league positional tables, and cuttings cf Press forecasts of

the week’s matches. Soon she was as immersed as Charlie, yet with a woman’s practicability gambling the snilling from her housekeeping money on that easier section of the Pools which, offering a larger selection of matches, gave an average dividend of hundreds of shillings instead of thousands of pounds. Charlie scorned any such compromise. Not stopping to consider that his chance of winning a large prize was so minute as to be almost invisible, he studied past performances of the teams and slowly filled in various columns with his stub of pencil, egged on by the hope that springs eternal, and by the sight of the smiling faces of past winners on the advertisement sheet of the Pools Company. There was little relaxation for the two in their manner of spending the evening; it was no passe-temps; there was No Light-hearted Calculation. They were taut with the knowledge that one quick stroke of the pencil could make all the difference between a large win and the loss of their hard-earned money. Even less recreative are the automatic methods adopted by a large percentage of pools addicts. One is to use a set of threesided dice strung on a wire, the dice being numbered 1,2, X, the cyphers used for forecasting on the coupons. The wire is twirled, and the combination shown by the dice is copied on to the coupon. Whichever means is employed the excitement is equally shared on Saturday evening. After the eager listening to the wireless, or the tense scanning of the evening paper, comes the analysis of each forecast. “If I’d put a draw instead of an a waywin. there,” says Charlie. “ I’d have ’ad that column all right.” “And if the baby ’adn’t cried at that moment I know I would ’ave put two home wins at the end,” laments his wife.