Fortune's Formula
The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street
Prologue
The Wire Service
The story starts with a corrupt telegraph operator. His name was John Payne, and
he worked for Western Union's Cincinnati office in the early 1900s. At the
urging of one of its largest stockholders, Western Union took a moral stand
against the evils of gambling. It adopted a policy of refusing to transmit
messages reporting horse race results. Payne quit his job and started his own
Payne Telegraph Service of Cincinnati. The new service's sole purpose was to
report racetrack results to bookies.
Payne stationed an employee at the local racetrack. The instant a horse crossed
the finish line, the employee used a hand mirror to flash the winner, in code,
to another employee in a nearby tall building. This employee telegraphed the
results to pool halls all over Cincinnation leased wires.
In our age of omnipresent live sports coverage, the value of Payne's service may
not be apparent. Without the telegraphed results, it could take min ... read full excerpt from Fortune's Formula ebook
