WEST-SIDE TRACK, CHICAGO.
First Race. Purse $400. Six Furlongs.
NO.
50Tom Karl10910
51Prophecy10012
52Fayette1093
53Hornpipe1008
54Susie B.10920
55Famous1125
56Catherine B.1026
57Donovan1064
58Tall Bull10710
59Only Dare1062
80
PLACE.
60Hornpipe 11
61Susie B. 19
62Famous 8
63Tom Karl 12
64Fayette 5
65Prophecy 10
66Tall Bull 10
67Donovan 8
68Only Dare 2
69Catherine B. 5
90

In this case, the player selects his horse for first or second place, tickets for first place being called “straight,” and those for second place, “place.” Generally only favorite horses are bought for straight, but on this board there appears to have been a large field of favorites.[favorites.] The buyer may purchase as many tickets as he pleases for either “straight” or “place” chances. In this event it appears that there were eighty tickets sold as “straights,” and the tickets being sold for $2 each, the amount in the pool book would be $160. The pool-seller deducts 5 per cent. of this amount, or $8, and the balance of $152 is divided between the holders of the ten tickets sold on Tom Karl, the winner. This would give to each ticket $15.20, whether held by one party or in different hands. In awarding the results in the case of the “place” in this event, the pool book exhibited 90 tickets at $2 each, or $180. The seller deducts his 5 per cent., or $9 from this, and after deducting from the remaining $171, the sum of $44, representing the amount paid in by the bettors on the winner of the race, Tom Karl, 12 tickets at $2, and on Prophecy, the winner of “place,” 10 tickets at $2, or $44 in all, he proceeds to divide the balance, $127 equally between these two winners. Thus $63.50 is divided among the ten tickets on Prophecy, giving to each $6.30, and the same amount among the holders of tickets on Tom Karl, or $5.30 to each ticket.

METHODS OF THE “HOUSE.”

Let it not be supposed, however, that the book maker, or his confederates who stand in with him, are to be contented with a fifteen per cent. upon the money that passes through the pool book. On the contrary, he is the most expert and successful of all the gamblers who “play the races.” He is generally the only one of this nefarious outfit who receives a genuine and reliable “tip.” His intimate relations with the jockeys, stablemen and all the habitues of the training stables and racing grounds, are such that he is generally able to pick out a winner, and to discount the results of a race in advance. Thus assured he skillfully sends out his touts to give “tips” that will bring the most grist to his mill, that is to say, to industriously disseminate the belief that that horse will win, which he knows has no chance of success. Under this influence the amateur sport, and the average patron of the racing ground or pool-room, will generally plunge largely on the horse they imagine is to bring them a rich booty, while the pool-seller looks on complacently, knowing that all the money in the strong box belongs to him as surely as if the race had been already run.

The methods employed by these pool-room experts are of the most ingenious and daring order. For instance, at a race in St. Louis recently, the book maker had a secret wire brought into his pool-room, by which he received the actual result several seconds sooner than the news sent by the public wire which supplied the official record. In these few brief seconds of opportunity, and in the intense excitement always prevailing at this point, he was enabled to pocket thousands by “betting on a sure thing.” In short there is no device nor subterfuge, nor daring rascality of any description, to which he will not bend the most astute cunning and the greatest energy in order to extend his thieving operations upon the pockets of those innocent pigeons who lend themselves to be plucked under the miserable and baseless delusion that the pool-room is run “on the square” and that he is getting even a gambler’s chance in the unequal contest with the skillful and audacious knavery with which he is led to contend. Indeed, it is remarkable that men of courage, of resources, of acute perception, of tireless energy, of a self poise that never fails, and an activity of intellect equal to any emergency, as most of these successful sharpers are, should not have preferred to bring their talents to bear upon honorable and lawful occupations in which they could not fail to apply those qualities to the greatest advantage.

THE FRIENDLY “TIP.”

In every pool room, amid the conglomeration of representatives of “queer” industries always there to be found, is invariably a liberal sprinkling of “cappers” or “touts.” These are the lowest and most contemptible of all the instrumentalities employed by the turf sharp, and the most dangerous because they always do their work in the guise of pretended friendship, and under the basest kind of betrayal of confidence. The lowest kind of a bunko steerer is a gentleman by comparison with this most contemptible of all the crawling things that infest this footstool. We have given some insight into the character of his operations. Let it be remembered that every tout is in the employ of the book maker; that every man who offers another a “tip” on a race-course or at a pool room is a “tout,” beyond any peradventure, and be certain that his frank and apparently generous and off-handed advances are but in reality the means by which he intends to aid in the operation of picking your pocket. He is a liar by instinct, by choice and by occupation, and no matter how engaging his manners, or however plausible his representations, you may safely set him down as a thief, and deal with him accordingly. His very approach is an insult to the intelligence of every man whom he seeks to “play for a sucker.”

EXTENT OF THE DEPREDATIONS OF TURF GAMBLERS.

The amount of money abstracted from the business industries, and incomes of the people, mainly of the cities, of the United States, is simply something appalling in its magnitude. In all the great centers of population in the United States: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Kansas City, Denver, New Orleans and San Francisco, the depredations of the gambler will be found to run into the millions in each case. In Chicago and New York it is impossible to make any estimate. The actual truth, if it could be revealed, would no doubt be deemed incredible. One fact, however, that is definitely ascertained, will give some idea of the magnitude of this crime against society, in the western metropolis. At the Fall meeting at Washington Park, in 1889, forty-two gamblers paid to the track authorities, $100 each per day for the term of twenty-four days, the duration of the meeting. That amounted to $100,800. In addition to that they had to pay for the most expensive kind of living at the highest-priced hotels; and had to pay for “police protection,” touters, cappers and hangers-on, salaries that professional men would envy, and had to make high-rollers’ profits. Altogether, there cannot be a question that these sharpers, for the privilege for which they paid over $100,000, must have taken away out of the city, in the neighborhood of half a million of dollars for this one meeting alone. This would represent at a fair computation $2,000,000 for the year, without taking into account the enormous amount constantly being drained from the community by the other gambling operations.