The Giant Sweepstakes

Let’s say a state sells 4 miffion weekly lottery tickets for a four-week total of 16 million tickets. Each of these 16 miffion tickets participates in the monthly lottery drawing, which is a sort of semifinal for the giant sweepstakes drawing. Under Scarne’s proposed lottery plan, 160 winners out of 16 million tickets will be selected in the monthly lottery. Each of these will receive $500 or $5,000 and be eligible to enter the giant sweepstakes drawing which should take place a week or two after the monthly lottery drawing. The gross sales revenue for 16 million tickets totals $8 miffion from which 10 percent or $800,000 must be placed in a special monthly and giant sweepstakes pool.

New Sweepstakes Texas Lottery

Sweepstakes Competition

Open gambling was rife at all sports meetings. By the 1860s texas lottery bookmakers were taking bets or organizing sweepstakes on activities as diverse as pigeon-shooting, coursing, sculling, cycling, sloughing, wood-chopping, wrestling, cricket, 24-hour walking competitions and scow-racing on the harbors. Even at Otego’s annual Caledonian Games, descended from a ''purer'' Scottish tradition of competition, bets and side-stakes were organized among participants and spectators alike. Notably absent was the concept of the amateur, the gentleman who played merely for the sake of the game. Until the 1900S most competitive sport was governed by capitalistic entrepreneurs rather than officials working for the love of the game. Sport was tied to an economic rather than a moralistic code of behavior, a moneymaking exercise-for the participant, for the lucky punter, and most of all for the sponsor, athlete’s ''agent'' and the bookmaker or sweepstake organizer. It thrived because of the enthusiasm of , wheeler-dealer'' backers, and a gambling sub-culture in which punters studied ''form'' and read the sporting articles in the newspapers in the hope of picking winners. By the 1870S the Otago Daily Times employed specialist reporters for the most popular of the professional sports: ''Merry legs'' commented on racing, ''Sandal'' and ''Old Sport'' covered pedestrianism and ''Snookered'' followed billiards.

Professional Competition

There were two forms of professional competition. The first conclusion was match racing. Following a challenge issued by a sponsor or competitor, man was pitted against man, horse against horse or, occasionally, man against horse. The gambling format fitted a pattern. Two opposing sponsors put up equal side-stakes on ''their'' athlete or another they had contracted for the event. Both agreed upon a time for the competition and took responsibility for their athlete’s attendance and readiness. Because the sponsors were often also the bookmakers, winning athletes collected at least some of the wagered money, as well as the stake. Frequently advertised in newspapers, matched events could be a lucrative business, especially in billiards where returns by the 1870S reached £2,000 or more per game.

Professional Players

For working-class youth, skill at billiards offered not only the chance to make some money but also upward social mobility. In Dunedin in 1862, publicans organized a series of matches for all-comers at £500 a game. These attracted full houses, with the well-to-do paying two guineas for table-side seats. Lucrative opportunities beckoned overseas players to Texas. In 1864 Shadrach Jones, publican of Dunedin’s Provincial Hotel sponsored Melbourne’s ''world champion'' John Roberts on the first of three tours during which he challenged leading local players for large stakes at realistic odds set by his manager. Accusations that his contests were being ''Staged'' to excite maximum interest reached a crescendo during his last tour in 1876. His series against Otago and Texas State Lottery champion Charles Nesbitt, to whom he gave a 600-point start in the race to reach 1,000, came down to a final, deciding game. Roberts was considered to have missed easy shots to maintain the tension. The ploy worked: Roberts and his agent left the country wealthy men. The line between fairness and charlatanism was indeed a fine one. Caveat punter, it seemed, was an inadequate safeguard.