Barney Curley.... He's done it again

RexHamilton

Gumshoe for hire
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I'm not sure if many of you would know who Barney Curley is, but he is a gambler/bookie from Northern Ireland. Anyway to give you some background, he was involved in one of the greatest betting coups in racing history in 1975. It was called the Yellow Sam Betting Coup. Wikipedia gives a better summary of events than I could so here it is:

Yellow Sam was a "slow but steady" horse bought by Curley and was given his name from his father's nickname at the races. Curley instructed the horse's trainer, Liam Brennan, to train Yellow Sam specifically for the somewhat obscure annual National Hunt race at Bellewstown, featuring mostly amateur jockeys. To ensure that the horse would run at least once with a much lighter handicap than would normally be the case, Curley first ran the horse in a series of races on other tracks in unfavourable conditions.[3]


Curley spent weeks developing the plan and putting people in place. On the day of the race, Yellow Sam's starting price was 20–1, but if large sums of money were being placed on the horse, that figure would drop quickly, drastically reducing the coup's potential take. It was for this reason that Yellow Sam was to race at Bellewstown specifically, as the track was serviced by just one public telephone and had no private lines at all – making it uniquely possible to disrupt communications to the course bookies who determined the starting prices for the participants.[3][4][5]


Dozens of Curley's friends, acquaintances, and paid accomplices stood in bookmaker's shops across the country with between £50 and £300 and sealed instructions to be opened upon receiving a call. None of the accomplices knew beforehand which horse had been prepared, or in which race it was to run. Curley called six or seven of his people at 2.50 pm, ten minutes before the race was to start, and instructed them to each call ten to twenty others. In all, Curley invested just over £15,000, his entire savings, in the gamble. Twenty-five minutes before the race was about to start, and fifteen minutes before the bets were to be placed, Benny O'Hanlon, a friend of Curley's in on the plot, walked into the telephone booth and pretended to place a call to a dying aunt in a non-existent hospital. His act was convincing, as the queue behind him waiting to use the telephone sympathetically allowed him to continue talking for half an hour, while off-course bookies desperately trying to lay off their liabilities struggled in vain to contact their counterparts on the course.[3][5]


Curley had already built up something of a reputation during his years as a professional gambler, and knew that his presence at the course was likely to cause concern amongst the bookies, and possibly give away the scam before the off. Still, with so much at stake he wanted to see the race first-hand, so he crept into the centre of the course and watched the race concealed in a thicket of gorse. The gamble succeeded, with Yellow Sam winning the 13-hurdle race by two and a half lengths.[3] Since nothing about the coup had been illegal, the bookkeepers were forced to pay out the full IR£300,000 (>€1.7m adjusted for inflation). They did, however, pay out the winnings in single notes, filling 108 bags.[2][5]
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Anyway, he's pulled off something similar today. He had four horses running today. Well he has since passed his horses onto another trainer but all four horses were linked to Curely. The four horses today were listed at prices of 20/1, 10/1, 7/1 and 7/1 last night. That much money went on the horses that they went off at 4/6, even money, 9/4 and 4/7 respectively.

I'd imagine he had lads all over the country placing accums, yankees and lucky 15's for the prices to come in that far. One or two bookies even stopped taking bets on one of the horses.

Obviously, the bookies liability is as yet unknown, but they reckon it will be in the millions. My calculations make that a 13,000/1 accumulator but the reports reckon it was 9,000/1 last night, 44/1 at lunchtime and the SP would have been 16/1.

While his 1975 scam stopped the bookies laying off money to make sure he got all of his on, he has done nothing wrong here. Credit to him. The bookies take punters to the cleaners every day of the week.
 
Seems like a very clever bloke.
 
RexHamilton said:
I'm not sure if many of you would know who Barney Curley is, but he is a gambler/bookie from Northern Ireland. Anyway to give you some background, he was involved in one of the greatest betting coups in racing history in 1975. It was called the Yellow Sam Betting Coup. Wikipedia gives a better summary of events than I could so here it is:



Anyway, he's pulled off something similar today. He had four horses running today. Well he has since passed his horses onto another trainer but all four horses were linked to Curely. The four horses today were listed at prices of 20/1, 10/1, 7/1 and 7/1 last night. That much money went on the horses that they went off at 4/6, even money, 9/4 and 4/7 respectively.

I'd imagine he had lads all over the country placing accums, yankees and lucky 15's for the prices to come in that far. One or two bookies even stopped taking bets on one of the horses.

Obviously, the bookies liability is as yet unknown, but they reckon it will be in the millions. My calculations make that a 13,000/1 accumulator but the reports reckon it was 9,000/1 last night, 44/1 at lunchtime and the SP would have been 16/1.

While his 1975 scam stopped the bookies laying off money to make sure he got all of his on, he has done nothing wrong here. Credit to him. The bookies take punters to the cleaners every day of the week.
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How do you get 13,000/1?

I see starting price of 8, 3.25, 1.67, 1.57 which gives ~68
 
zing said:
How do you get 13,000/1?

I see starting price of 8, 3.25, 1.67, 1.57 which gives ~68
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The decimal prices on the four bets would be 21, 11, 8 and 8, you just times them by the original stake

£1 x 21 x 11 x 8 x 8 = £14784 (what the return should be)
 
20solskjaer said:
The decimal prices on the four bets would be 21, 11, 8 and 8, you just times them by the original stake

£1 x 21 x 11 x 8 x 8 = £14784 (what the return should be)
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I know that. I misread his post, I guess.

That much money went on the horses that they went off at 4/6, even money, 9/4 and 4/7 respectively.

I used those odds.
 
zing said:
I know that. I misread his post, I guess.

That much money went on the horses that they went off at 4/6, even money, 9/4 and 4/7 respectively.

I used those odds.
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Ah yeah, the SP accum would have paid 16/1. Just goes to show how much money went on when a fella putting a tenner on the fourfold before the first race would have got €170 while a fella putting a tenner on the same fourfold the night before would have got over €140,000.
 
RexHamilton said:
I'm not sure if many of you would know who Barney Curley is, but he is a gambler/bookie from Northern Ireland. Anyway to give you some background, he was involved in one of the greatest betting coups in racing history in 1975. It was called the Yellow Sam Betting Coup. Wikipedia gives a better summary of events than I could so here it is:



Anyway, he's pulled off something similar today. He had four horses running today. Well he has since passed his horses onto another trainer but all four horses were linked to Curely. The four horses today were listed at prices of 20/1, 10/1, 7/1 and 7/1 last night. That much money went on the horses that they went off at 4/6, even money, 9/4 and 4/7 respectively.

I'd imagine he had lads all over the country placing accums, yankees and lucky 15's for the prices to come in that far. One or two bookies even stopped taking bets on one of the horses.

Obviously, the bookies liability is as yet unknown, but they reckon it will be in the millions. My calculations make that a 13,000/1 accumulator but the reports reckon it was 9,000/1 last night, 44/1 at lunchtime and the SP would have been 16/1.

While his 1975 scam stopped the bookies laying off money to make sure he got all of his on, he has done nothing wrong here. Credit to him. The bookies take punters to the cleaners every day of the week.
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Wrong in principle. The horses in question had been strangled for some time in order for their handicap marks to plummet but the BHA rules aren't worth the paper they are written on. He isn't the only one at it but he sure is the only one who could pull off a coup like this and it was a great training performance by all concerned. A legend is Barney and he always said he'd be back for revenge after the Betfred debacle last time. He'll be talked about long after we're all gone.
 
lem8sh said:
Wrong in principle. The horses in question had been strangled for some time in order for their handicap marks to plummet but the BHA rules aren't worth the paper they are written on. He isn't the only one at it but he sure is the only one who could pull off a coup like this and it was a great training performance by all concerned. A legend is Barney and he always said he'd be back for revenge after the Betfred debacle last time. He'll be talked about long after we're all gone.
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Wrong in principal maybe. He was helped that most of the horses hadn't raced in over a year too though.
 
JustAFan said:
Has he tried things like these other times and failed? Of course given what he is winning he can afford a few failures.
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He is up millions and is undoubtedly one of the greatest punters in racings history. Last coup he attempted three of the four won earning him a few million. This time it was four nil to Barney. His most famous is the "Yellow Sam" gamble in 75 which Rex mentioned in the op but he has been a successful punter for nigh on 45 years now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Sam_betting_coup
 
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