How to Have a Flutter

Lilian Guest, 50-year-old charwoman in Godalming, Surrey, for years has performed a weekly ritual. Every Thursday she laboriously fills out long and complicated forms with her choices of winners in Britain's football (i.e., soccer) matches. Then she mails them off with a postal order for a few shillings to cover her previous week's bet. Last week Lilian's patient efforts were rewarded. She got word that she had won $210,000. "And to think," said Mrs. Guest, "that I was out charring only this morning." To Lilian Guest, the money was no more than proper pay for an expert; twice before she had won more than $500 by a special system of picking the teams. But in Bournemouth next day, a nonexpert got equally good results by "just picking them at random." On a bet of $1.50, ex-Teacher Ernest Albert Lumsden, 71, also won $210,000.

Charwoman Guest and ex-Teacher Lumsden are only two of the 10 million Britons (one in every three adults) who send off their pennies and sixpences each week to "have a flutter" on some 100 football pools. The average weekly bet is low (about 50-c-), the chances of winning about one in 30.* The payoffs run from a half crown to the maximum of -L-75,000. But because of the get-rich-quick lure and the fascination of working out "the perfect system," playing the pools has be come a national gamble that keeps families all over Britain busy for hours each week. It has also become big business the seventh largest in Britain. The football pools now gross $150 million a year, account for 10% of the nation's mail, 60% of its money orders, and are largely responsible for the post office being one of the few government agencies to operate in the black.

The Two-Percenters. Biggest of the pools is Littlewoods, organized in 1922 by brothers John and Cecil Moores. They started with a single printing press to turn out coupons, and three employees to check returns. Today Littlewoods does more than 50% of all Britain's pool business, employs 12,000 people (mostly girls) to check the 5,000,000 coupons it mails and receives every week. In one of its six huge Liverpool plants, four-color printing presses stretch out for a quarter of a mile.

To nobody's great surprise, John, 54, and Cecil Moores, 50, have fared better than bettors on their pools. The reason is simple: they take a flat 2.2% out of every pot (or some $1.6 million a year) to pay themselves and cover costs of plant and equipment. Of the rest, 30% goes to the government in taxes, 15.7% for operating expenses and 52.1% in "dividends," i.e., payoffs. The Moores brothers, said to be worth $36 million now, have long since expanded into other fields. They own a chain of 43 stores, patterned after Woolworth's, a big mail-order house and sit as directors on at least 22 companies. A few years ago, John Moores bought Bermuda's Elbow Beach Surf Club for a reported $980,000.

Special Delivery. Britons play the pools so eagerly because they offer one of the few real--if remote--opportunities to get rich in Britain's high-tax, austere economy. Even the biggest payoffs are taxfree, since the government takes its 30% out of the pot.

Littlewoods tries to protect its "investors." Anyone who wins more than $5,600 has his check delivered in person by a Littlewoods agent, gets free advice on how to hold on to his winnings. "Remember," cautions Littlewoods' pamphlet Safe Investment, "there are many sharks and sharpers . . ."

*Britons have a choice of more than 50 types of pool. Simplest: picking games for win lose or draw. One of the most complicated (and biggest payer): picking eight draws out of some 50 games, then multiplying the chances of winning by "permutation," i.e., a method of grouping alternative forecasts.

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