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ENGLISH BETTING DIFFICULTY Queer Complication and Decision Over Dou bles in 1920 Racing When the Cambridgeshire was abandoned in England last year owins to the miners strike all double bets on it and the Cesarewitch were declared off Tiie Cesarewitch was run before the Cam ¬ bridgeshire fell through and backers who had actu ¬ ally lost their double bets when the firstmentioned race was decided were highly pleased with a ruling that gave them their money back The decision was based on the fact that as circumstances abso ¬ lutely prevented the books from losing they could not well expect to win There was a deal of news ¬ paper controversy and a member of a prominent bookmaking firm made the following suggestion as to the best way out in the event of a nice con ¬ stituting the second leg of a double not taking place A perfectly fair rule would be that these backers should be paid on Bracket as a single bet not at starting price but at the price ruling against the horse at the time the double event wager was made Bookmakers should be compelled to pay tills and be entitled to collect all losing stake money The present rule is unfair on both sides and is especially hard on firms who like ourselves make a double event book for months before the race This involved very heavy office work and the risk of losing large sums of money and in the end we get nothing and the backer goes scotfree We are pleased to say that backers themselves realize tlie unfairness of it ail as every one we have spoken to admits it is all wrong We trust something will be done to get the rule altered but so far we have not seen a silicic protest from anyone the reason we shrewdly suspect being and we say this with ¬ out wishing to seem uncliaritable but human nature is human nature all the world overt that Bracket was so bad in most of the big doubleevent books that the layers were only too thankful the Cam ¬ bridgeshire was cried off We venture to say that had an outsider poped up in the Cesarewitch there would have been a storm of protest from all over the kingdom
