Tote board

Last updated March 08, 2024

A tote board (or totalisator/totalizator) is a numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a race track (to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a telethon (to display the total amount donated to the charitable organization sponsoring the event).

History

Parimutuel systems had used totalisator boards since the 1860s, and they were often housed in substantial buildings. However, the manual systems often resulted in substantial delays in calculations of clients' payouts.

The first all-mechanical totalisator was invented by George Julius. Julius was a consulting engineer, based in Sydney. His father, Churchill Julius, an Anglican Bishop, had campaigned, in the early years of the twentieth century, against the iniquities of gambling using totalisators and its damage to New Zealand society. That attitude had changed by late 1907 when he argued that the totalisator removed much of the evil of gambling with bookmakers. Bishop Churchill was himself an amateur mechanic, with a reputation for fixing clocks and organs in parishes he visited.

Initially, George Julius was attempting to develop a voting calculating machine for the Australian government, to automatically reduce the instances of voter fraud and create a cheat-free political environment. He went on to present his unique invention, only to have his design rejected as it was deemed to be excessive.^[1]

The first all-mechanical machine was installed at Ellerslie Racecourse in New Zealand in 1913 (first used on the Holy Saturday races on 22 March 1913), and the second was installed at Gloucester Park Racetrack in Western Australia in 1917. George Julius founded Automatic Totalisators Limited (ATL) in 1917, which supplied the "Premier Totalisator: now including electrical components".^[2] The first totalisators installed in the United States were at Hialeah Park, Florida, in 1932 (by ATL), and at Arlington Park racecourse, Chicago, in 1933 by American Totalisator. The first entirely electronic totalisator was developed in 1966.

Totalisators have been superseded by general purpose computers running specialised wagering software such as Autotote. In many cases beyond older systems, telethon tote boards have either been replaced by LCD displays showing totals, or scoreboards adapted to display dollar amounts.^{[ citation needed ]}

Automatic totalisators

An automatic totalisator is a device to add up the bets in a pari-mutuel betting system. The whole of the pot (the stakes on all competitors) is divided pro rata to the stakes placed on the winning competitor, and those tickets are paid out. Essentially, it implements a system of starting price (SP) betting.

In particular, it refers to the invention of George Julius, the English-born, New Zealand educated, Australian inventor, engineer and businessman, though there have been other claimants, notably engineer Joseph G. Nash.^[3]

The term automatic refers to the fact that the bets were automatically summed and a ticket issued when a bet was registered on the issuing machines, and it provided a safe and virtually fraud-free method of betting, replacing the earlier jam-pot totes, which used either paper transactions or some method of counting bets like steel ball bearings. The machine did not actually calculate the payout.

The method was widely used in the Australian, New Zealand and American horse-racing industries and for greyhound racing in the UK, although there were other installations in countries as diverse as France, Venezuela and Singapore.

Related Research Articles

Parimutuel betting or pool betting is a betting system in which all bets of a particular type are placed together in a pool; taxes and the "house-take" or "vigorish" are deducted, and payoff odds are calculated by sharing the pool among all winning bets. In some countries it is known as the tote after the totalisator, which calculates and displays bets already made.

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Thoroughbred horse racing is a spectator sport in Australia, and gambling on horse races is a very popular pastime with A$14.3 billion wagered in 2009/10 with bookmakers and the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB). The two forms of Thoroughbred horseracing in Australia are flat racing, and races over fences or hurdles in Victoria and South Australia. Thoroughbred racing is the third most attended spectator sport in Australia, behind Australian rules football and rugby league, with almost two million admissions to 360 registered racecourses throughout Australia in 2009/10. Horseracing commenced soon after European settlement, and is now well-appointed with automatic totalizators, starting gates and photo finish cameras on nearly all Australian racecourses.

The superfecta is a type of wager in the United States and Canada parimutuel betting in which the bettor, in order to win, must pick the first four finishers of a race in the correct sequence. This is even more unlikely than a successful wager in the trifecta, which requires correctly picking the first three finishers in order, and as such will have a correspondingly higher payoff.

The Australian and New Zealand punting glossary explains some of the terms, jargon and slang which are commonly used and heard on Australian and New Zealand racecourses, in TABs, on radio, and in the horse racing media. Some terms are peculiar to Australia, such as references to bookmakers, but most are used in both countries.

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Sir George Alfred Julius was an English-born New Zealand inventor and entrepreneur. He was the founder of Julius Poole & Gibson Pty Ltd and Automatic Totalisators Ltd, and invented the world's first automatic totalisator.

Tote may refer to:

The Totalisator Agency Board, universally shortened to TAB or T.A.B., is the name given to monopoly totalisator organisations in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They operate betting shops and online betting. They were originally government owned, but in Australia most have been privatised. In Victoria, for instance, the Victorian Totalisator Agency Board began operating in March 1961 as a state enterprise, and was privatised in 1994.

Henry Lobe Straus was an American electrical engineer, horse and cattle breeder, sportsman, entrepreneur and computer pioneer.

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A betting pool, syndicate, sports lottery, sweep, or office pool if done at work, is a form of gambling, specifically a variant of parimutuel betting influenced by lotteries, where gamblers pay a fixed price into a pool, and then make a selection on an outcome, usually related to sport. In an informal game, the vig is usually quite small or non-existent. The pool is evenly divided between those that have made the correct selection. There are no odds involved; each winner's payoff depends simply on the number of gamblers and the number of winners.

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Tote Ireland is an Irish gambling company founded in 1929. It is Ireland’s largest pool betting operator. Its product offering also includes sports betting. Business operations are led from its headquarters in Kildare.

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Betting on horse racing or horse betting commonly occurs at many horse races. Modern horse betting started in Great Britain in the early 1600s during the reign of King James I. Gamblers can stake money on the final placement of the horses taking part in a race. Gambling on horses is, however, prohibited at some racetracks. For example, because of a law passed in 1951, betting is illegal in Springdale Race Course, home of the nationally renowned Toronto-Dominion Bank Carolina Cup and Colonial Cup Steeplechase in Camden, South Carolina.

References

↑ "The History of Australian Sports Betting". Archived from the original on 2018-03-10. Retrieved 24 July 2017.
↑ Chisholm, Alec H. (ed.), The Australian Encyclopaedia, Vol. 4, p. 538, "Horse Racing", Halstead Press, Sydney, 1963
↑ "Invention of Totalisator". The News . Adelaide. 30 April 1929. p. 8 Edition: Home. Retrieved 22 September 2015– via National Library of Australia.

External links

Totalisator History by B Conlon
Hialeah Park, Florida installation by ATM
Bob Doran, The First Automatic Totalisator, The Rutherford Journal.
Automatic Totalisators Ltd in Australia
Who killed the Bookies New Zealand University of Canterbury thesis by R A Graham^{[ permanent dead link ]}

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[1] "The History of Australian Sports Betting". Archived from the original on 2018-03-10. Retrieved 24 July 2017.

[AE-2] Chisholm, Alec H. (ed.), The Australian Encyclopaedia, Vol. 4, p. 538, "Horse Racing", Halstead Press, Sydney, 1963

[3] "Invention of Totalisator". The News . Adelaide. 30 April 1929. p. 8 Edition: Home. Retrieved 22 September 2015– via National Library of Australia.

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