In almost any movie featuring underground boxing, you see people excitedly handing fistfuls of money to a bookie. How does the bookie understand what each person is betting on, and how does he make money?
my only experience with mass, out in the open, almost everyone was doing it, gambling took place years back.
there was a main ring and two side rings. there was lots of people there but very few unknowns.
this all went on out in the country, at night, in sheetmetal dirt floor buildings
you had to keep track of who you had bets with, for how much, and of course who won the fight(s) you were betting on.
you kept your money till it was time to pay up if you lost a bet.
*it was chickens fighting if it helps to know that. I wouldn’t go to animal fights now and do agree it’s cruel to do. the thing is I was much younger and dumber at the time and basically didn’t give a fck. it was also legal back then.
I personally recommend against this sort of betting. Unless you’re just having fun and will laugh if the counter-party forgets what he owes you.
The strangest betting I ever saw was at Hi-Lo dice games in rural Thailand. A man (A) put a banknote (฿100) on Hi; a woman (B) moved it to Lo; the man moved his money back to Hi. I assumed it was a husband-wife uncertain where to bet their ฿100. Then a 3rd player © moved the same banknote to the 6-4 combo!
Soon someone explained what was happening. Each movement of the banknote was a new bet! When the woman moved the banknote from Hi to Lo, she was betting Lo AND fading the Hi bet. When the dice are exposed, banker will settle the only bet visible on the board (C’s bet on 6-4), while the prior bets will be settled by player’s memory. If Lo, A will owe B ฿200. If Hi, A collects ฿200 each from B and C. (And only the single ฿100 banknote was ever visible!) It can get much more complicated than this example.
(But beware! I was slightly amazed to learn that, right here in low-tech rural Thailand, some players might have a cigarette-lighter sized object in pocket that vibrates when sixes are face-up!)
I once helped out a bookie at a trotting event in the Midlands. This was a very much vanilla version of what you describe, but even so, it was all done on trust and relied on the fact that all the betters were known, and the bookie and his book-keeper had excellent memories. The likelihood that anyone on either side would cheat was very low.
“Trotting”, properly called Harness racing is horseracing with a flimsy cart to carry the ‘jockey’. In this country, the racing is legal, but not the betting, so it had to be kept discrete, unlike the bookies at the conventional racetrack. Naturally, no records were kept so if there was a raid, there would be no incriminating betting slips.
I don’t know how dice games work, does this mean that the dice are thrown first (and presumably kept secret) before the betting takes place?
Thanks everyone for your answers. Honestly just hearing about these methods makes me dizzy. I’ll stick to my yearly game of Blackjack.
I know that I’ve seen betting like what the OP is describing but I don’t know how everyone keeps it straight. It does, however, remind me of open outcry as formerly used on a trading floor. (If you remember the movie Trading Places, that’s the sort of trading that was going on in the scene at the commodities exchange.)
Not exactly related to the OP, but in the book Band of Brothers, the true WWII memoir, the author noted how when it came to gambling, even people who were bad at math, suddenly became good at math.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Yes. The three dice are on a porcelain saucer under a porcelain cup. They’re shaken prior to the betting. (The shaking is often quite gentle. 
) Rarely, one of the players will ask the banker to reshake the dice after bets have been placed. (Bettor can remove their banknotes from the table at any time, but they can’t cancel the bets they’ve faded — ‘yakked’ — as I explained above.)
“Ya Got Trouble” from *The Music Man * by Meredith Wilson
Further to my original point. a) there would be no strangers betting, and b) “Welshing” on a bet (and the origin of that phrase might be worth a whole other thread) was considered to be a heinous crime and the perpetrator would be at risk of serious injury or even death.