About 15 or so years back I was head compiler on the day in my bookie headquarters in Cork, at about 11am I got a call on the internal phone system from one of our city branches, it was Evan, a nice young lad, very straight-laced and honest lad, he said to me; "There's a fella here wants Ten Grand @ 2/5 on the Fav in the 11.15 at Bloemfontein (South Africa)". I ask Evan; "Does he look like he has Ten Grand ?". Evan replies; "No". I say to him; "Fine, let him have it, I'll bet he hasn't the price of a cup of tea in his pocket !".
Ten Grand is always the magic figure and we used to get it a few times every year that some idiot would be sitting at home thinking to himself; 'I'll really show those bookies up today, I'll ask fer a Ten Grand bet and when they refuse me I'll tell the whole of Cork about it !', most usually I will always say "Fine" to them and watch as they turn tail and leg it out the door looking like a fool.
A minute later Evan rings me back; "Yea, he had that Ken, all paid up in cash", I was surprised, I turned on my T.V. monitor and watched the horse lose the race. Five minutes later Evan rings again; "Yer man want's 5 Grand on trap 1 @ 6/4 in the 11.28 at Romford". "Fine" I say "Give it to him, actually give him anything he wants, take the bets first and ring 'em in to me AFTER you take them". I knew I had a 'Whale' on the line and a good manager in Evan running the show on the ground and I sure wasn't gonna let my Whale slip-off my line. The dog won and the customer continued trading in 5 and 10 Thousand Euro bets fer the rest of the morning. When he was all done at about 1.30pm he was down about Thirty grand and he left just as quietly as he had entered.
I rang Evan later in the afternoon fer a chat because I knew that kind of trading can be harrowing on a young lad, I didn't say much to him, but allowed him the opportunity to express his thoughts and concerns to me. I arranged fer the money to be off-counter and out of that shop within 15 minutes of the Whales departure. During our chat Evan told me; "A few of the regular punters had been chatting to yer man and he was an ex-Docker and he got his redundancy last week, his Dream all his life had been to go in to the bookies and bet in Tens of Thousands !".