gulfstream

The History of Parimutuel BettingWhen you gamble in the casino on most casino games, other than poker, you are wagering against the house. When you bet on a horse or dog race (also jai lai) you are not playing against the house. Instead you are making a parimutuel wager and are in essence betting against all the other players wagering on that event.The entire money bet on the event goes into a large pool. The holders of winning tickets divide the total amount of money bet on the race (the pool), after deductions for tax and racetrack expenses. The money take out is similar to the rake taken out by the pot in a poker game played in the card room. However unlike the small rake in poker, in the parimutuel pool this “rake” can amount to 15 – 25 percent of the total prize pool.
Most players visiting the track or off track betting facilities have little knowledge of the history behind parimutuel betting. Because the modern day facilities use computer calculations that are displayed on large electronic “Tote” boards players may think that this form of wagering is fairly new. The history of parimutuel betting goes back quite a few years.
The Beginning Parimutuel betting is credited to Pierre Oller a French perfume shop keeper who in 1865 had the idea in to sell tickets on a horse race and keep all the proceeds in a common prize pool to be split amongst the winners. (Parimutuel means betting between ourselves) After the race was over Pierre would take a five percent handling charge and then distribute the rest to bettors based on the odds established by the bets made on each horse. Pierre set up his wagering system in the racing parks and by 1887 parimutuel wagering became the legalized form of betting in France.
Around 40 years later in 1927 after proposals led by Sir Winston Churchill, the English Parliament passed legislation establishing parimutuel wagering as the legal betting system at all tracks in the country. Around the same time parimutuel wagering was adopted at race track in the United States.
Electronic Calculations Around that time a young engineer name Henry Straus left a Maryland racetrack angry over the payoff he received during a race. He bet a horse with posted odds of 12-1 but only collected 4-1 on his winning ticket. At the time there was much corruption at track around the country as odds were calculated by hand.
Straus along with some fellow engineers founded the American Totalisator company (AmTote) and invented an electro-mechanical device which would accurately calculate the odds of a race and assure an honest payout while displaying the odds on a lager electronic board. The first machine was installed at Pimlico race track in 1930.
Today the odds are calculated by faster computers and the tracks may take a slightly bigger percentage of the pool but parimutuel betting remains the same as it was over 100 years ago.

Historians can be called "the scientists of hindsight." Hindsight can be focused on a single event or a chain of events. Much of Keys history is chained to the great quantity of ships passing, or trying to pass, their shores since they were discovered. Why are thousands of ships lying sunken on and off our reefs? The primary answer is the flow of the Gulf Stream, bad weather and poor judgment. The Gulf Stream exerted a tremendous influence on the colonization of North America. Most all colonization from Virginia to the south chose the southern route across the Atlantic even though it was 2,000-3,000 miles farther. Few return voyages to Europe failed to utilize at least part of the Gulf Stream. Cortez was perhaps the first to send large numbers of ships from Mexico northward through the Florida Straits, then eastward following the clockwise motion of the Gulf Stream to return to Spain. A visit with any of the shipwreck museums will reveal the results of the unsuccessful voyages. A notation in the Herrera's summary of the log of Ponce de Leon's voyage log, on April 22, 1513, noted, "A current such that, although they had great wind, they could not proceed forward, but backward and it seems that they were proceeding well; at the end it was known that the current was more powerful than the wind." This is probably the first written evidence of the Gulf Stream and Ponce de Leon is considered its discoverer. It was not until six years later that one Anton de Alaminos set sail for Spain from Vera Cruz, Mexico following the Florida coastline northward before turning eastward to Europe. This same Anton de Alaminos was the chief pilot aboard Ponce de Leon's ship on his earlier trip and had also sailed with Columbus on his last voyage. Some historians credit Alaminos with the discovery of the Gulf Stream, since he was the first to take advantage of it. The use of the Gulf Stream resulted in many treasure-laden ships traveling northward along the Keys, many of which wrecked upon its reefs. The indigenous Indians were the first to take advantage of these unfortunate shipwrecks. Soon an industry followed known as "wrecking," or salvaging goods from wrecked ships. The Bahamians perfected the wrecking industry. When Florida became a U.S. territory, Key West and Indian Key became the Keys' primary headquarters for this industry. A captain Ben Baker, known as "King of the Wreckers," settled on Key Largo in 1866 and grew pineapples between shipwrecks. Years followed Ponce de Leon's discovery and not much was written about this ocean river. Perhaps they were keeping it as secret as possible. Charts in the 1800s labeled the general area as the 'Gulf of Florida', 'Straits of Florida' and 'Canal de Bahama.' I have a 1842 Sidney Morris and Samuel Breese map using the label Gulf Stream. " Alexander Dallas Bache of the U.S. Coast Survey began detailed observations of the phenomenon in 1845. Matthew Maury in 1855 wrote, "There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottoms are of cold water, while its currents are warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain and its mouth is in the Arctic Seas. It is the Gulf Stream. There is in the world no other such majestic flow of waters. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon." The Gulf Stream generally flows northward between the Keys and Cuba up the northeast coast toward Cape Hatteras and then turns eastward across the north Atlantic. The temperature of the stream differs from its surrounding water. In fact, the temperature at the surface may be around 80 degrees while 400 fathoms down it may be 45 degrees. Years before the above quotations, Benjamin Franklin while in England in 1769 was told of complaints that westward mail from Europe to America took weeks longer than the east-bound ships from America. Franklin was the U.S. Deputy Postmaster General, so he was interested in the alleged complaint. A Nantucket whaler by the name of Timothy Folger said that the English ships had to buck the Gulf Stream.