About a third of the way through this book I worked out that I had an unbeatable system for winning at the horses. All I would need was a degree in mathematics, or access to someone who has one, a lot of research on horses, jockeys and racecourses under my belt, including inside knowledge, and a little seed money. Say, £100,000. Two thirds of the way through I realised I would also need some links to organised crime, and if I didn’t have any, they would be furnished for me, whether I wanted them or not. By the end of the book I reverted to my original opinion: that it is not for the likes of me.
Monsieur X is the story of Patrice des Moutis, a French aristocrat and gambler who, over the course of the 1960s and ’70s, did his best to wring as much money out of the French state betting system, the Pari-Mutuel Urbain, or PMU, as he possibly could. He claimed that he did it perfectly legally, by analysing form in depth, using his formidable knowledge of French horseracing and exploiting loopholes that meant he could use numerous proxies to go around different cafés, all over the country if necessary, betting in various combinations (the big wins go to those who predict the first three horses in any race, in order; lesser prizes await those where the order is unspecified).
Des Moutis won big, repeatedly; and the PMU didn’t like it. They smelled a rat, and started withholding his winnings. But Des Moutis did not take this lying down: he may have had the manners of a gentleman — everyone agreed about that — but he was damned if he was going to let any jumped-up functionary deny him what he had won, he insisted, fair and square.
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