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Originally Posted by Calzone Lord
I'm amused by some of the other explanations given as to why horse racing was so successful from 1880 through the mid 1940's.
The most popular one was that state lotteries weren't legal...so there wasn't competition.
My grandfather told me how easy it was to play lotteries. How easy it was to bet sports and horses with a bookmaker. How he'd play dice games like barbooth and craps all the time. How clubs in the city also had card games like poker and blackjack.
If you listen to some people in racing, you'd think it were impossible to bet anything but horse racing in that era. That's nonsense. And big off-track betting, in those days, was done through bookmakers at pool halls. The tracks weren't in with them.
At one point, pool halls in cities all over the country served as books and handled massive amounts of money on horse races. Pittsburgh Phil got his start betting horses, first from the pool halls in Pittsburgh and then from the pool halls of Chicago. He was a bookmaker at Monmouth Park for a little while before he became truly famous as a bettor.
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One of my fav reads on the bookies and gamblers is: "Saratoga Stories: Gangsters, Gamblers & Racing Legends".
Some great background in the book on Pittsburgh Phil, Arnold Rothstein & Diamond Jim Brady, etc. Also, a fine description of Saratoga Race Course in the 1800's until early 1900's.
The author discusses some of the thoroughbred greats from that era as well - Sysonby, Omar Khayyam, and Man O' War......