INQ fails to win Vodafone Derby

CONTINUING A long-standing tradition of trying to bet on horse races from a WAP phone, the INQ managed to pick a horse that came second in Saturday's Derby race. The event is sponsored by Vodafone.

You'd have thought by now that it would be easy to place a bet on a horse using your mobile phone. Surely you could raise a stake by accepting multiple reverse billed SMS messages? Not as far as we can see.

Several of the betting sites available from the Orange WAP portal, only enable gamblers to set up an account via email. Useless if you're travelling in a car but desperate to place a bet on one of England's most famous horse races.

Luckily Blue Square allowed us to sign up with them over the phone. It was then possible to surf the Blue Square site and back Dragon Dancer at 66:1.

It' s actually possible to bet that the horse will come in one of the top places (Each way). So the INQ could feasibly have won some serious wonga on Saturday.

Sadly Blue Square's opening offer only worked if you backed a horse to win. So we did. And it didn't (quite).

The mobile Internet still has a long way to go. It would have been far simpler to have just spoken to a bookie by phone. µ