In many movies/tv shows/etc when there is a fistfight/cockfight/mongoose vs snake/etc race or competition you’ll often see the ‘organizer’ gathering bets. However, it just seems like he’s taking fistfuls of money from bettors; how the hell does he know who and how much to pay out?! I don’t see him writing any of this stuff down.
You need an extraordinary memory to run an illegal business off the books. Paper trails are deadly to such an entrepreneur.
In cash. Usually at an agreed upon meeting place.
Most bookies handle their business over the phone and do document the bets of the their customers, but in some sort of code. Most bookies will not take your bet if you tell them that you are out of state, because then it would be a federal crime for taking illegal bets across state lines.
What, the Feds haven’t made intrastate illegal on the grounds that it “affects commerce” in interstate betting?
I always thought that was a dumb movie cliché. It would seem impossible to know who or what to pay, as the OP said. Even if there is no written record, just grabbing fistfuls of cash is completely unrealistic.
They’re not just grabbing fistfuls of cash; each bettor is stating an outcome and amount, and the taker is remembering all of them, individually and accurately. (If he failed to do this well, very soon nobody would be placing bets with him.) It may seem impossible to you–and it would be impossible for most people, in a noisy chaotic environment–but it’s one of those specialized skills.
This doesn’t seem all that different from the other standard movie cliché dealing with noisy, chaotic environment with vast amounts of money changing hand. The New York Stock Exchange, as depicted in every film that touches on the subject, seems to be a nightmare of carefully but barely controlled mayhem.
That’s actually true, though. (Well, not so much anymore, since so much trading has moved to electronic systems.)
And the market makers are basically doing the same thing as cockfight bookies; keeping track of everybody’s bid/ask and making a profit on the fly.
But the stock transactions are completed instantly, no? “I’ll buy X and $Y” or “I’ll sell X for $Y”.
Unlike a Cock Fight where they aren’t resolved until the fight is complete.
Are you saying you have knowledge that the type of activity depicted in these movies is an accurate portrayal of something that happens in real life? Or do you just believe it to be the case despite not having seen it outside of movies?
I know a guy quite close to me, who is a bookie. A self-employed /semi retired fellow to be exact. With the invention of online casinos, his job has been made far easier. He has “clients” place their bets online with a service, and he collects or pays out on Tuesdays. This service gets a 1% cut of all the action that goes through them.
For anything too large for my guy to cover himself, he gives to bigger operations to handle. For those who have a problem paying on time, he suspends their online accounts and requires them to pay up front for any action that they want.
Yes, pretty much. The basic idea of somebody keeping track of a bunch of wagers at a time, by the bettor, the anticipated outcome, and the amount, and purely by memory, is not fantasy. I couldn’t do it, but some guys have a head for such things.
I worked with a guy who was a sometime attendee at illegal cockfights, so I checked it out, in the interest of anthropology. The overall scene was more like a family reunion picnic than a boxing match (people were there who didn’t seem to bet at all, or even watch much; there were more empty cases of beer than dead chickens at the end), but a smaller group of men took the betting very seriously.
I’ve been a few places with betting like that (and described in the OP) - sometimes there is a second (often large) guy behind the bookie making notes of the bets and basic descriptives of the bettors (50w turkey wearing monocle - $50 on the white guy bet by someone who looks like Unca Cecil) in case there is some dispute afterwords. You don’t always see him; its his job not to be noticed but he is almost always there.
And sometimes no matter how good a witness you got or how honest a bookie, you aren’t going to collect on a winning bet. You are somewhere remote and/or hidden doing something possibly illegal - and that bookie ain’t doing it for his/her health. He takes more action from one side than the other and runs out of funds before he pays you. The large guy who had the notebook explains life and Obama-care to you in terms you understand and you get to lose and win at the same time. It happens.
Or so I read once in a book. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
That book won’t stay in business very long.
[quote=“kopek, post:13, topic:553626”]
As JXJohns said, he’ll quickly find his trade taken by another bookie. His profit is based on repeat custom, and it’s especially hard to build up a decent reputation in an illegal business. You may get away with not paying on a few big bets for short term gain, but word will quickly spread and you will find that punters a reluctant to place bets with you in the future. With a market full of people willing to spend on illegal betting, someone will come in and take your business.
Poking around I ran across this:
[quote=“kopek, post:13, topic:553626”]
I had an experience assisting with a few small “off the books” MMA fights.
We had standard little 2 part paper tickets (like this) and a number that was the amount bet in sharpie on it. We then entered ticket totals into a spreadsheet (just fighter and amount) and were left with a number of shares $1 bet = 1 share of the remaining pot.
so if $1000 in bets were
Fighter A $200 in bets
Fighter B $800 in bets
A winning ticket for fighter A would return $5 per dollar bet
A winning ticket on fighter B would return $1.25 per dollar bet
House can’t lose, all bets covered, everyone gets something for picking the winner.
Is it also possible that the bookie knows his customers? That is, if these fights are a regular event, and the same people attend each one, does the book know the bettors and can almost predict what the bettors are going to do? He would have to listen to the bettors as he takes bets, of course, but his thinking might be something along the lines of “Bill always takes $5 on the underdog–thanks, Bill–and Sam always wants $10 on the favorite–thanks, Sam–and Frankie always wants $5 on the favorite–oops, not today, gotcha Frankie, $10 on the favorite…” And so on. But if he can remember the “usuals,” and the “unusuals” stand out as memorable somehow, I can see how it would be possible for someone experienced at this style of making book to do like in the movies.
How does the service/bookie pay the winning customers?