Odd World Of English Track Bookies

A tic-tac man in action at Cheltenham.

Image: Phil Cole/Getty Images

In the United States, New Year's Day will signal the start of the quadrennial horse race between political parties. In England, it will kick off the horse-racing season.

Four tracks—three steeplechases and one flat turf—are offering full slates, including Cheltenham, the undisputed home of the National Hunt competition. At these courses, men will stand in front of the grandstand flapping their white-gloved hands, punching their knuckles together, and whacking their chins as if fending off swarms of hornets while guiding a 747 in for a landing. The English call what they do tic-tacking.
    
In the eccentric world of British handicapping, tic-tac is the term for the secret signaling between bookmakers. Before each race, tic-tac men will semaphore odds and price changes from the bookies at the rail to the bookies in the center of the betting ring. All their frantic gesturing is accompanied by espionage and counterespionage as complicated as that in a John le Carré novel.
   
Odds were first called on a racetrack by William Ogden at Newmarket in 1790; betting rings have been around since the 1850s. Starting prices varied wildly until 1926, when the system was unified. Back in the Roaring '20s, underworld figures controlled racing and bookmaking. That era's seamier side was chronicled in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. It was while standing around the ring at Brighton's track that the novel's doomed antihero, Pinkie, got his face slashed with a razor by gangland thugs.
   
Except for the thugs, everything has stayed pretty much the same. You can still place a bet inside at the tote windows, but the real action goes down outside in the Tattersalls yard. Hundreds of punters scramble madly among the ring's bookmakers for the best odds. Each bookie has his own stand, comprised of a "joint" (a blackboard on which to chalk up prices), a "mush" (umbrella), "briefs" (betting tickets), and a "hod" (a hand-painted Gladstone bag into which banknotes are placed). Assisting the bookies are a clerk, who records wagers in a "captain" (ledger), and a "floorman"—a sort of private tic-tac entrusted with finding out who's putting money on what, how much, and why.
       
Bookies stand in neat rows, each man's position—or "pitch"—determined by seniority.

"We're all stepping in dead men's shoes," says third-generation bookie John Burrows. "As layers drop dead, you move up in line." An old-timer known as Goldtooth was famous for asking, "Been any good deaths in the ring lately?"
       
The row nearest the rail is considered the most advantageous. The pole position is the one nearest the entrance to the members' enclosure, the premier spot for track attendees, which is off-limits to bookies. "The closer to the entrance the better," Burrows says. "That's where the bigger punters generally bet."
      
The bigger the bet, the more likely that a bookie will hedge it by "laying off," or backing the horse himself to other bookies in the ring. The tic-tac conducts this flow of cash by acting as a sort of inter-bookie telephone line. The private tic-tac alerts one of a handful of public tic-tacs, each of whom may be working for as many as 30 bookies on a given day.
   
Tic-tacs function as intermediaries, brokering between one bookmaker wishing to back a horse that punters nearby won't bet on, and another trying to put money on it, either at a higher price than he has just laid or to cut down his liability. To ensure that no outcome results in extensive losses, bookies have to constantly balance their books.
      
Hundreds of millions of dollars are transacted through this intricate sign-trafficking. There are no words, no witnesses, no written evidence that a deal ever took place—trust and honor constitute the core of racecourse business. Odds, of course, are determined by volume of money. Big money shortens them. The biggest money comes in from off-track bookies. When word comes that a large betting shop such as Ladbrokes is shoveling cash into a race, tic-tacs alert bookies at the track by drawing circles over their heads. This is called the "magic sign." Immediately, bookies wipe the going prices off their joints in anticipation.
   
Spying is of great concern to tic-tacs. Nobody wants a rival bookie picking off his signals. Sign-stealing among tic-tacs was once so fierce that six different systems were used. Now there's one universal language, which is why the public tic-tacs take the precaution of working off twist cards-documents on which the coded numbers correspond to horses in a race. The numbers differ from the ones on the announcement board or the race card. Unless you've got a tic-tac's personal twist card, you can't tell which signs go with which horse.
      
To a visitor from Pennsylvania, the parlance of the betting ring is as indecipherable as cockney rhyming slang. It's difficult enough to unravel a phrase like "It's cockle with the fiddlers" (translation: The odds are 10-1 with bookies prepared to make only small bets). But even Burrows, the bookie, has trouble explaining "The splonk is tips with the thumb, execs bar."
      
Most odds have their own slang:
      
         3-1   capet
         4-1   rouf
         6-4   ear 'ole
         13-8   bits on the ear 'ole
         25-1   macaroni
         33-1   double carpet
      
An average tic-tac frames the words six-to-four by raising the back of his hand to his ear. He indicates 11-10 by pressing his fingertips together. Shaping a circle with both hands means 500 British pounds, also known as a "monkey." Before World War II, all the signs were around the head. These days the 50 signs that are used go all around the body.
    
Technology—in the form of cell phones and walkie-talkies—threatens tic-tacs with extinction. By the end of the next decade, there may not be a single one left in England. "The new people working in the ring have all these gadgets," says one old-timer, dismissively. "I think if I had a phone that played music, I'd be listening to Bing Crosby."