The ball, the horse, and the unlucky plummer

I decided to go along for the filming of Ntokozo’s betting story. Though that was a beautiful Saturday, I preferred to see the emotional footbal betters to resting in bed. Then I found out that I was wrong, because….

Negative effect of the World cup

The owner of the betting company, Salvino,  told me that the World Cup takes some of his regular customers away. They’d rather stay at home watching football than come here betting for it, cause for them bet on football is boring.

There're 2 kinds of people in a betting place, one in front of desk to give the money, and one like Salvino behind the desk to count it

Number 1 – horse, number 2 – rugby, and then football

I was surprised and tried to find out the reason by talking to an old man sitting in a corner of the room.

Rosewell is a freelance plummer aged 55, he raises 4 children with under 300 USD monthly income. He comes to bet on horses every weekend. Bet on football? For him, that’s too boring —  only 2 teams with 3 options: Win, lose or draw…

Horse betting, a whole new world.

Forget the dream of crazy football betters.  I gave Rosewell 10 Rand to enjoy a new challenge. He chose horse number 1 “Russian Sage”, this is a favourite so we would get only triple if the horse ended the race at 1st position.

In a battle for money, you need a partner, but you not always find the lucky one

I have to say that horse racing is thrilling, our choice kept pole position for most of the race. And this picture shows how the ending was:

In a match, you perform for 90 min, in a race result is only in 1% of the last second

There were 7 or 8 noses touching the finish line at the same time. Slow motions gave the 1st place to horse number 14 and took away our 20 Rand.

Changing tactics

Rosewell tried his luck one more time with the new partner (me). He chose a harder way with 3 horses. If they were all to come at the first three positions, we would get 200 Rand from 20 Rand. His look shows how it ended:

Gambler's eyes tell only 2 things, win or lose, and this one has lost

And this is the result for the day: The poor plummer went home with ten unlucky tickets:

In a bet, there are 2 kinds of people, one make cheerful sounds (not much), and one goes home with failed tickets (a lot)

The Regular losers

We stayed there for 3 hours. And there are much more sighs than cheerful sounds. Salvino, the owner, explained the small customers enjoy time here cause they don’t have cable TV at home, while rich ones create an account and  just bet through the Internet or the telephone.

Finally I paid 30 Rand for a journey to the world where football and World Cup mean nothing.