Flashback, a blast from the past early Nov 1973.
Betting on the jobsite. I was working at Blackwater coal mine in Queensland.
My birthday was on Sunday, Melbourne Cup day was Tuesday.
This activity occurred on the Monday evening at the bar in the Blackwater hotel.
One of the guys in the group claimed that he knew the winner for every race on the card at Flemington on cup day, and would prove it on Tuesday evening to anyone at the bar, by presenting the winning ticket for each race, (for a side bet of twenty dollars each). Many people took up the bet, as how would anyone be able to know this? Around 50 or so people took him up on this bet.
Sure enough, he walked into the bar on Tuesday evening, and spread out the 10 winning TAB tickets, one for each race, for all to see. The losing guys were incredulous, and paid up. Over $1000 in his pocket.
What they saw was that he had only bet one dollar to win on each ticket, so the TAB winnings were only mediocre, and all the losers could not understand why he had not bet more?
I had seen this scam in Western Australia while working on the oil rigs several months earlier, and realised how he did it.
He had bet $1 to win, on every horse on the card that day, which was less than $150 outlay to TAB.
Not a bad profit for the day. From memory, I think Gala Supreme won the Melbourne cup that year.
