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I was a one man band in a very busy betting office in the centre of Nottm in the 1960s.
If I was lucky I was allowed a Saturday "helper" to get the betting slips in order .
No television , no tea or coffeee machines, no carpet or comfortable seating , no extractor fan even though the place was always full of ciggy smoke ,no duplicated proper betting slips - just torn up bits of paper . punters had to make their own copy of their bets . No receipts were given . Punters just put their name on the bottom of the slip. (which often led to chaos)
The difference between then and now is almost impossible to believe - betting shop wise .
Also No FOBTs or machines allowed of any kind .
The runners and riders were simply printed on big white sheets of paper and stuck on a marker board. I had no Board Marker to mark up information and prices . I just relied on anyone in the shop to mark up the betting shows and results !
Every single bet had to be telephoned in to Head Office ,all in the correct order . These bets were all tape recorded and every single bet was checked the next day for the correct payout . Any OVERPAID amounts were DEDUCTED from my wages at the end of the week (-THIS IS TRUE believe it or not)
At the end of racing all bets had to be sorted out into piles in numerical order and then hand written on to printed duplicated sheets showing the amount of stake plus ant returns . All the plus and minus columns were added up to produce the PROFIT OR LOSS on that particular day .
So Grand National day required a monumental effort .
Amazingly many punters used to come to the office window to collect their winnings about five minutes after the race and expect to get paid out there and then even though I was settling literally hundreds of different betting slips . Plus dealing with all the races to come later in the day .
Looking back it was a nervous breakdown or heart attack scenario for me . The pressure was immense and the concentration needed was 100%.
I very rarely go into any Betting Shops these days
But when I do I have to smile to myself knowing the staff have it so easy !
Any other Betting Shop Manager of that era remember how hard it was to do the job properly ?
If I was lucky I was allowed a Saturday "helper" to get the betting slips in order .
No television , no tea or coffeee machines, no carpet or comfortable seating , no extractor fan even though the place was always full of ciggy smoke ,no duplicated proper betting slips - just torn up bits of paper . punters had to make their own copy of their bets . No receipts were given . Punters just put their name on the bottom of the slip. (which often led to chaos)
The difference between then and now is almost impossible to believe - betting shop wise .
Also No FOBTs or machines allowed of any kind .
The runners and riders were simply printed on big white sheets of paper and stuck on a marker board. I had no Board Marker to mark up information and prices . I just relied on anyone in the shop to mark up the betting shows and results !
Every single bet had to be telephoned in to Head Office ,all in the correct order . These bets were all tape recorded and every single bet was checked the next day for the correct payout . Any OVERPAID amounts were DEDUCTED from my wages at the end of the week (-THIS IS TRUE believe it or not)
At the end of racing all bets had to be sorted out into piles in numerical order and then hand written on to printed duplicated sheets showing the amount of stake plus ant returns . All the plus and minus columns were added up to produce the PROFIT OR LOSS on that particular day .
So Grand National day required a monumental effort .
Amazingly many punters used to come to the office window to collect their winnings about five minutes after the race and expect to get paid out there and then even though I was settling literally hundreds of different betting slips . Plus dealing with all the races to come later in the day .
Looking back it was a nervous breakdown or heart attack scenario for me . The pressure was immense and the concentration needed was 100%.
I very rarely go into any Betting Shops these days
But when I do I have to smile to myself knowing the staff have it so easy !
Any other Betting Shop Manager of that era remember how hard it was to do the job properly ?
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If you underpaid was it added to your wage?
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Wow!
Unimaginable in this day and age! |
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Fookin ell, that sounds like a days graft!
Was the role better paid back then? |
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you'd be bored out of your mind being a glorified amusement arcade manager nowadays,wouldn't you?
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and all that if u could get in the shop from the glue in the door locks
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Very much par for the course in those days,I was a Saturday settler in these days and GN day was a nightmare, we even got a punter who claimed a place bet on the previous years GN.The finer points of Customer service was ignored and he was handed 3/3d and told to F off.
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On the plus side, in those days the first race was 2:00 and the last 4:45, dogs started at 2:08 and finished at 4:48, you had a cashier that would come in at 11 and you'd disappear with the banking to come back at 1:45, no evenings no sundays no slots, much better paid proportionately than today as you were a skilled settler. Yes the shops were busier and GN was a nightmare but I'd rather be a manager then than now.
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Looking on it from that perspective I would agree.
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don`t frequent betting shops much these days,usually full of down and outs quaffing the free coffee and w*****s playing the fobt`s
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It seems like it was a "proper" job back in the day.....not the pound coin counting bar code producing job it is today. Just had a girl join my place of work who previously worked for Lads....i mentioned working alone and she said it was often. They promoted her to Manager and she asked if she could bring her dog to work (pitbull reportedly) for an element of protection, they said yes before she accepted the job then said no once she had it. She worked in a decent area (High Barnet) so didn't feel overly threatened but how can you single man a place with a female (not being derogatory) in a rougher area.....it seems to me these big firms don't really give 2 hoots about their staffs safety.
She said she was nervous closing up every night and quite right too.....shocking imo. |
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I also asked about breaks, loo breaks etc.....she sais she relied on the regulars and asked them to be patient....seems like she was lucky that she worked in an area that had an element of a community.
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NO CAMERA ? bet there was a couple of Dodgy slips in the Pile
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homefortea used to do 6000 slips at the morning dogs
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interesting post Dik...talk about a different world in those days....i remember working an Easter holiday at Raper's cavern in Doncaster in 66;great fun.
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Casemoney - thats right no cameras to photo the betting slips . But if anyone tried to slip in a winner after time it was a sackable offence . All bets were phoned through to H/O before each race started and the tape machine timed the bets. Each bet was checked 100% the next day . It was a tight system and was very hard on the Managers . Any betting slip that was UNDERPAID stayed with the firm .
The only "perk" for me was the unclaimed winning bets . Folk just forgot to collect or forgot what they had backed ! But on average it only amounted to about £3 -£5 a week . |
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halcyon days?
 how things have regressed! |
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The vast majority of shop staff now wouldn't be capable of settling a fiver each way double let alone a Dundee Shuffle !
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homefortea used to do 6000 slips at the morning dogs Wink
In 1 shop then drive to 1 of the other 4 he worked in and did the same again........ |
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back in those days an acquaintance worked for customs and excise and went round shops putting on test bets
that had a full office checking returns and making sure that the tax was being paid on all bets |
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In those days there were NO CALCULATORS . Just little booklets that were called "ready reckoners" So to settle bets you needed a quick brain as nearly all bets were settled in your head . Tricky manytimes with EW Round Robins and Super Yankees etc . There was NO HELP available to settle any really complicated bets .
Seems a lifetime ago- well it was to me ! |
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Just one other thing that Settlers had to contend with in busy Betting Offices.
Combination bets like Yankees ,Goliaths and such like ,to small stakes ( one penny doubles and trebles WERE ALLOWED in the 1960s ) were tricky to work out under pressure . But in 1965 I left the security of Nottingham and went to live in London and managed to get a job in the huge credit office at Hilly Billies. What a revelation that was to work there . A different world . And settling became much easier as they taught me the BLOCK METHOD . This meant that a winning YANKEE of 11 separate calculations (6 doubles ,4 trebles and the accumulator) was reduced to only 4 by using the revolutionery BLOCK SYSTEM . It was all about understanding all the different short cuts that suddenly became available to anyone with a mathematical brain . Saved many hours of time over a working week . Did anyone else gain access to the new settling methods - just prior to electronic calculators becoming available ? |
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Glad i wasn't doing it in the 60s in old money, sounds horrendous what you had to do. I started with WH in 72 and we were sent to settling school, showed us how to work out all the blocks and point added etc, enjoyed the job in those days managing an LBO, just the odd drunk and yobbo to contend with but great days really. When i bought my own shop also bought a genie which i still have, used to do the bets on a block and check with the genie if prices were tricky, mind you was always easy to settle a pile of losers!
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I started at Joes in 1980 and went on a settling and management course for 6 weeks, 4 weeks setting and 2 weeks management, thought it was brilliant, the guy who took the course was Dave Hatt, really nice guy, we used o travel to Halstead every Monday and back home on Thursday, after the 6 weeks and 2 back in the shops I was given my first shop, the safe was in the ground and the very first day I changed the combination and messed it up and someone had to come and drill it out of the ground, things improved from then and opened my own shop in the 90s, I still have my silicon express settler machine.
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Sound like you had it flaming easy STEWART !
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DIK
with a calculator at the ready , how long would it take you to work out a 4 winner lucky 15 now ? |
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Anything would sound easy with all the carp you had to put up with, but were busy shops, had some funny moments and some not so funny but generally enjoyed it back then.
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ZEALOT - my Settling days are over thank goodness. I could settle an EW Lucky 15 to-day ---IF IT WAS MY BET and worth the effort !
I once settled a winning 8 horse GOLIATH bet by hand -and thats 256 bets . But it took a while -and then longer to double check it ! |
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let me show you a quick way dik that works with any multiple + singles .
say 4 winners on a lucky 15 . 2s 6s 9s and a 12/1 all winners . Add 2 to the first number , then times them all together , then take away 1 to get the exact return to £1 . So in this case (4x8x11x14)-1 = £4,927. If prices are bit diff say 5/2 it just becomes 4.5 11/4 becomes 4.75 etc etc etc etc Works with any multiple + singles bet and takes about 5 secs on a calculator !!!! |
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@Alices , I had one of those safes and the bottom could fall off of them if they were not tightened up regularly, they had to be drilled out then.
Arthur Prince used the combination type in most of their shops, it must have been a job lot,already. |
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On these threads you always hear the add-a-point and block methods mentioned but those real settlers looking in must laugh their balls off because no one ever mentions m/m bets.
PS I was never a real settler.  |
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oh n dik if u have a non runner just use the number 2
cheers |
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The manageress asked me yesterday if you got 1st 2 places for an e/w bet on a 4 horse race.
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zeal..how did anyone fathom that formula out ?
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I got 1.50 lunch allowance on a Saturday for chalking up as I had to do the
Dogs from the early time of 10.45 to get the first show and all the papers up on the board..No TV just the blower and loads of smoke nobody knew F all about horse racing not many people won ...but it was good fun... |
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I was a WH manager battersea in the 80s, remember one month with O/T and BH clearing £1200, no eves no sundays.
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I worked SP way back in the sixties , we wrote out every bet for a customer on a duplicate "carbon copy " set of numbered ( pre printed ) docket pads . Only coverage for racing was on BBC initially , Grand National was by far the biggest event of any year , queues all morning to get on .
Different ball game nowadays , meet and greet staff in several offices I visited this morning ( to collect bets from Friday ) . Only bet I had in the bookies was a £2 freebie from one of the papers on the national -- there was no value at all in any of the shops I visited --all the attention was geared to one race which no serious punter regards as a betting proposition . Family members I was talking to today had no bets on the National , way back it was unthinkable to miss having a bet on the race . Loads of media hype about the race , but I suspect any "action" revoles around the internet and exchanges , not the bookie high street shops . They are just the places where the FOBT's and the like are located , looked after by the arcade manager . |
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"roida 11 Apr 15 23:13 Joined: 12 Feb 11 | Topic/replies: 2,212 | Blogger: roida's blog
zeal..how did anyone fathom that formula out ?" Roida - I know you'll find it hard to believe but I discovered that same formula for myself about 30 years ago when L15's started to replace yanks. It's nowhere near as complicated as it sounds and the reason I stumbled upon it was that I was trying to find a system for myself and if I backed four 8/1 shots and got them placed at 1/4 odds, then that would be like four winners at 2/1. Every time I used similar figures (such as 8/1, 12/1 & 16/1) I eventually noticed that the total was always ONE point less than a SQUARE number - I actually thought it was ME that discovered this formula  but it's obviously something that's now done the rounds.After tweaking 'MY' formula, I then realised that (as Zealot stated) it was a case of adding two points to whatever the SP was, multiplying them out and then subtracting ONE at the end. Maybe that's a small benefit of having a Grade A Maths 'O' Level as in my day, everyone seemed to know what were square numbers even though perverts like me can recognise CUBE numbers!  PS - I've often sníggered to myself that people think I'm some sort of genius when I can work out their bets in my head within seconds - it's the same for patents too. |
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But it's not right now for a lucky 15 is it, when you have a bonus to add on!
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haplessamatuer
11 Apr 15 14:35 Joined: 04 Mar 12 | Topic/replies: 2,056 | Blogger: haplessamatuer's blog back in those days an acquaintance worked for customs and excise and went round shops putting on test bets that had a full office checking returns and making sure that the tax was being paid on all bets The C & E didn't bother themselves with returns. All they were interested in was making sure General Betting Duty was paid on every bet, paying particular attention to phone bets. They dealt with the big companies differently, but for independents they'd visit unannounced - usually on a busy day. If they had reason to suspect suppressed turnover, then they'd test bet, and they could be devious as well. Always using public funds of course! I could tell you some stories... |