A first CairnBet outing for Travis. I rather like Travis, more so since they covered Baby One More Time. I liked that first time round as well by Britney. Somewhat unexpectedly. We all have our guilty secrets, but they'll never involve New Kids On The Block, who Steve sullied our group chat with yesterday. I digress.
Alfie joined us at Hamilton as he is interested in becoming a bookmaker. At least I think that was the reason. It could easily have been the desire to hear the same joke 25 times in the same race. In retrospect it was probably the former rather than the latter. A thoroughly nice chap; we wish him well and he's always welcome to come and watch the magic that Steve performs and the nonsense I shout on the front.
On a similar subject, Simon was in much the same position just over a year ago and, this week, he has been treading the boards at York having got Gambling Commission approval and opted to join our merry band of Cairn Betters. I see a lot of nonsense on Twitter about how on course bookmakers can't exist without the exchanges. Well, as luck would have it, the exchanges went down midway through betting on the 6th race at York on Saturday (for it is Saturday when I am penning this piece) and Simon, with a whole 3 days' experience, was faced with an unfeasibly large liability on Magnum Force and race 7 to navigate thereafter. We had a quick chat on the phone- he hedged what he needed to in the ring, won nicely on the jolly (sorry straight batters) and proceeded to run race 7 the old fashioned way and turned a profit there as well. Not a drama for books who have been doing it for years, but massive credit to a guy doing it with 3 days experience of running a book by himself. And I've seen a lot of bookmakers with a lot more experience turn the board off in similar circumstances. Top work.
1) Alfie very quickly became acquainted with the patented Bingo Book as we stood Boston Run, Canavan and Chloes Courage and got off to a solid enough start on backed in jolly Castle Stuart, which is also a rather nice golf course, if a little easy off the tee at times. Again, I digress. We also won on the forecast. Steve grumbled. I pointed out that forecasts probably paid for our Christmas night out. He pointed out that we don't have a Christmas night out. I pointed out we should probably do more forecasts then. He pointed out something I'm too polite to commit to (virtual) pen and ink.
2) More or less a carbon copy of the first where we had a reasonable win on another bingo book with 2nd fav Imperial Express. This time we just stood the two horses (Own Accord and Golden Melody) out of 6, but for a bit more than in race 1. We won on the forecast again. I wished I had a mince pie on me.
3) Ridiculously good book. Insanely good book. A relentless stream of lumps on The Reverend gave us a big old liability and it drifted obligingly and enormously. It doubled in price 50 yards out of the stalls and I, somewhat, bottled it and had 50 quid back in running at 4s when Steve wasn't looking. I did fess up though. Massive, massive result for us on Military Academy and we were flying. Laid the winning forecast as well. Tail between legs despite monster win.
4) Bit of a nothing book at the top with small liabilities and small winners dotted around, one of which was Mr Alan which was bet with relentless monotony. And I said "Good luck Alan" to every bettor, with relentless monotony. Alfie thought it was still funny by the 20th time. I like Alfie. As it turned out we ended with neither p nor l on the bore draw, La Yakel.
5) Moonstone Boy. Bet like it was going to win. Smashed up like it was going to win. Won. We've had better books. Lost the max.
6) We've had better books here as well. Possibly in every single other book we've ever had. Warrendale Wagyu. Massive liability. 5s into 9/4. We may have had less value in a book but I can't remember when. Took it down to a liability we could live with (max plus) which also put Object into max plus territory whilst Jackie Brown was merely "max" ish, two of them were winning us nowt and we had 2 outsiders winning us something. And then we had one as Borough fell out of the stalls and looked more interested in popping to McDonalds than hunting down the winning post. As Agatha would say, And Then There Were None. Except there was one. Zaphea. And it won to give us a mini jackpot. Rotten book, saved in most unexpected fashion.
Our good run continues after the slog of spring and Hamilton 2.0 has punched massively above its weight for us this year from our workhorse pitch.
A few weeks off now until Musselburgh in a few weeks. Until then...
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