gambling

[silax]

gambling scams on challenge tv

[mathare]

:laugh

I just saw in the Recommendations area a post entitled Gambling and thought "Silaz is recommending I gamble, why hadn't I thought about doing that before?" :laugh

[silax]

first one was quite good barny curly 1975 won the equivelent of 5 million

[mathare]

I did actually watch it all and it was enjoyable. I had heard about the Barney Curly one before though

[andyp]

I missed this program, what was the best scam and how did they do it?... hmmm that sounds a bit like i want to do a scam myself? :doh nah, just curious.

[mathare]

It's a series I think.

This episode covered Barney Curly's scam at the Irish races (Bellestown?) in the late 70s that netted him the equivalent of £5m in today's terms. Him and his mates put a load of bets on with bookies on a horse at long odds and before the bookies could phone bets through to the course to reduce their liability and decrease the odds at the course the scammers tied up the phone lines so the bookies had no way of getting the on course bets on. The horse came in at 20/1 and nothing illegal had been done.

They also covered a card-marking gang who used special contact lenses to spot marked cards. A bloke who counterfeited casino chips and slot machine tokens that were so convincing they even fooled the mint. And he was only sentenced to 27 months in jail. Oh yeah, and a gang of scammers who nobbled greyhound favourites by feeding them sausages just before the race and then punting on the second favourite.

[andyp]

Thats class, i love stuff like that! :D

[Win2Win]

Not a very good title then! Barney Curley was an excellently worked coup, and he was a hero for doing it, not a scam.

[silax]

depends how you interperate scam
the programme gave the impression he was a hero

[bigcumba]

He took the bookies to the cleaners - 100% hero in my eyes!

[silax]

He took the bookies to the cleaners - 100% hero in my eyes!
maybe so but i tend to liken it to in todays terms of getting a jockey to lose so you can lay the fav.imo he did the 1975 version of this he basically stole cash off the bookies (about to get hammered for this)
what he did according to the programme was get an average to good horse to run badly by running it on ground and courses that weren't suitable well thats what was said but he could also have been paying the jockey to run the horse slowly then found a small track which was suitable and waited for the right ground. stuck an average jockey on board and told him exactly how to run the horse.
how many people lost cash on the fav not many (proberbly all the ******* cash was going on the 20/1 shot).
now if you still think he was a hero next time you see fallon or any other jock run a horse badly don't complain about it just remember there will be a hero somewhere taken some betfair bookies to the cleaners

[silax]

another thing when you here of the barney curly gambles on course where he's making it very public his couple of grand is going on a horse how do you know his mates aren't sitting on pc's laying the horse to the hilt.

[susanwells]

There is a great book about a man who cheated casinos out of zillions.. called American Roulette and I recommend it :hearty

[Onlyforfun]

I'm with silax on this one. No bookies = no racing, pure and simple. I'd have full respect if he'd studied a race(s) inside out and backed £1m at 5/1, but this would have robbed ordinary punters and if he worked in Financial Services he'd have done porridge.

[davidsteel]

Agreed Silax, although what you got remember is that the horse is still got to win , which ain't guaranteed, as you know..he don't know he's 6/4 or 20/1