Category: - A Portfolio Life

A Portfolio Life

Harry Cobden and Robert A Heinlein

13/1/2017

I'm currently reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein. It's a fifty year old science fiction classic, and it's extraordinarily prescient in how it talks about the subject of artificial intelligence.

But nowhere near as it is with its gambling advice. Mike, the book's self-conscious super computer, outlines a system for winning at the horses which has probably been profitable for all of the last fifty years, and certainly is with regards to Harry Cobden for the last two seasons.

Or as Mike puts it in 1967:

I often calculate odds on horse races; the civil service computermen frequently program such requests. But the results are so at variance with expectations that I have concluded either that the data are too meagre, or the horses or riders are not honest. Possibly all three. However, I can give you a formula which will pay a steady return if played consistently....Bet the leading apprentice jockey to place. He is always given good mounts and they carry less weight. But don't bet him on the nose.

What's the Perfect Name for a German Racehorse at the Bottom of the Racecard?

26/10/2014

There was an article in one of the Sunday papers about bias in British elections. Apparently, voters are biased in favour of candidates whose surnames begin with letters near the start of the alphabet and so head the ballot paper, unlike in America and Australia where they randomise the order of the names.

This wasn't the only bias. The electorate also favoured British-sounding names over non-British sounding ones. I haven't read the report – it's called Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box – but there's equivalent bias when it comes to horse racing.

Placepots are massively skewed to the horses at the head of each race over those lower down the field. I'm not just talking market order, I'm talking race-card order. This makes sense to me. Most people assess form in race-card order. I'd guess that laziness, boredom, whatever, will lead many to focus on the first horse they know, or a piece of form that looks solid and, having affirmed that horse, either stop there or unconsciously make it harder for any other horse to make their claim. This would be more pronounced in handicaps where old favourites stuck high up in the weights would strike a chord with the casual browser. I think even good form judges are guilty of this. I'd say it's something that gives ratings-based punters an unacknowledged edge.

When it comes to names I'd suggest two other biases. For years Nick Mordin has been supplying stats showing that foreign horses are underbet. Xenophobia, proximity and intimacy, and wanting your home horses/jockeys/trainers to win, combine to leave German, French and, outside of Cheltenham, Irish raiders underbet.

And there's another name bias. All other things being equal, simple, nice or funny names will be overbet. Foreign, complicated, difficult to pronounce and impossible to spell names will be underbet. Want your horse not to be bet heavily by a Saturday crowd of drunken stag and hen parties? Don't call it Posh Bird. Or Nagnagnag. Call it Muhescerharanhsovic...

What's Up Boys...

23/9/2014

I wrote a book about gambling 12 years ago. Just before Betfair really took off and just before I was at my most successful. I had a publisher and a recommendation from uber-gambler Alan Potts and then the publisher went bankrupt.

So only three people have read the book. One took it as his training manual and remains a successful part-time gambler. Another read the funny bits, ignored the more abstruse non-linear multivariate cognitive reasoning and remains addicted to cheeky 33/1 shots and working man's trixies.

The third was a blogger called Slippery Toad, who at that time had a website detailing one white collar executive's dream of making it from mug punter to the promised land of professional gambler. He was busy reading all the literature on horse racing, especially the American speed-based stuff. All of which is way beyond my modest little book. But what my book did was back-fill some of the basics – which co-incidentally is exactly what my management training does. He's now living his dream and, rather flatteringly, calls me his mentor.

(We did meet once. At Wolverhampton's all weather track one Friday night. As I approached the entrance I realised I had no idea what he looked like, so I texted him. I said "I'm fat and carrying a Racing Post" which, let's face it, didn't narrow the field. “Okay”, he texted back, “I'm six feet four and black”.)

Anyway, the other day he tweeted that he was re-reading my book and that I should publish it and at least two other drunk people said they'd buy it. And Helen tweeted to say said she'd do the cover, like she did so brilliantly for One Dog and His Man. All I had to was choose a horse.

So I've been boring her with photos and videos of What's Up Boys. Especially this one – the Coral Cup at the Cheltenham Festival 2000, when he loses his place at the front of the pack, drifts back to 20th, is 15th jumping the last and then runs up the hill like I've never seen before or since. At 40/1. When I fell in love...

That Betfair Octopus Advert

30/6/2014

That Betfair advert with the octopus is a marvel. Good honest punter Joes swinging their table tennis bats with all the mastery they can conjure, despatched to penury by an eight-armed dark pool of monstery. Betfair as a hungry octopus. Genius.

Arm 1: Crooks
Betfair – somewhere between regulated larceny and the wild west – is where races are fixed, where spots are fixed, where fixers fix and are fixed in turn by other fixers. It's a fat fucking fix of fixing fuckers. Facts.

Arm 2 : Insiders
“Now, I'm not a crook, but I do know my “mate's” horse isn't going to win today, but will break early from a wide draw to trade low in running before running out of puff on the home turn. The jockey will fall off if need be, as he owes us...”

Arm 3: Courtsiders
It's not higher, faster, stronger. It's faster, faster, faster. “Bet in-play now” bellows Ray Winstone for Bet365 like he's bothered by a nasty case of Madame Chalfonts, but bookmakers don't do in-play, not really. In-play is about an edge measured in micro seconds. If you're not at the front of the queue you may as well be Ned Beatty in Deliverance...oink, oink.

Arm 4: Robots
Or to give them their cuddly nickname, bots – sounds like Bod and Farmer Barleymow. Well, they are going to leech onto every bet you try to make and suck the juice out of it until your bet is a sun-dried version of its smiling fat original self. Value is incremental and here's the bad news, the bots own the increments.

Arm 5: Betfair bots
We love our customers. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. So, we understand that as an average punter, that in a two hander you haven't the mathematical nous to to tell whether it's better value to back the one or to lay the other. Don't worry Betfair values its losers, I mean customers, and we always make sure you get the fractions in your favour either way. Oh no hang on, no we don't, we have our own bot that cleans up those pennies before Arm 4 can.

Arm 6: Early birds
Betfair isn't responsible for all the dark pool tomfoolery that will leave you squealing like a pig. Sometimes your fellow, honest to good, ping-ponging, whiff-whaffers, will fuck it up for you. The overnight horse racing markets are like a flame to a moth for the £2 queue-jumpers, who should be strangled with extreme prejudice and righteous vengeance, as they ensure that every 12/1 dark horse in an overnight market starts off at 6/1 in a morning market.

Arm 7: The Pros
At one time, I'm led to believe, one syndicate was responsible for 10% of all horse racing turnover on Betfair. The syndicate had 30-odd, very odd, form specialists, every angle covered, algorithms coming out of their kazoo and every IT advantage imaginable, bar whatever Arms 3, 4 and 5 could come up with – like an armageddon of advantage. If you're sat at the table and don't know who the fool is, it's probably you.

Arm 8: Fat fingers
OK, that was my fault...as of course is my willingness to be Ned Beatty in the first place.

As the advert very nearly forgets to say, “Be careful out there...”

Betting is and is not Numbers

15/5/2014

Take three horses, which have each run three times.

They have a rating for each race, think RPR or speed rating, or a personal rating sourced from God know's what, which for the sake of argument is out of 10. (If you like, you can say 10 is Grade 1 etc, downwards, but it doesn't really matter).

Here are the three sets of ratings:

Horse A: 5 7 9
Horse B: 8 8 7
Horse C: 7 6 10

Say they were each 2/1 to a 100% book? How would you want to bet ? What price would you want to take a value chance on each of them? Seriously.

Horse A: The improver. Looks like they're on for a Spinal Tap 11 out of 10.
Horse B: The consistent looking horse that sets the marker, lacking a 9 or a 10, but solid and genuine.
Horse C: The one with proven top class form, but just the once and last time out, possible regression to the mean material (aka bounce).

Maybe you'd take that last run away and look at them then - it would certainly change your perspective. Perhaps you'd want to take course, going, distance into consideration? Or their trainer or jockey? What if Horse A was a four year old filly trained by Stoute and ridden by Moore? What if horse B was trained by Peter Chapple-Hyam and he said she was as good as he's had? What if horse C was trained by Mark Johnston and the market was weak? Or any other extra bits of information. Some of which will be very important, most of which will be noise, and the difference between the two very hard to tell without the benefit of hindsight.

The beauty of gambling on horses in a nutshell. Well, actually no. These were the scores of the chefs competing just now in The Great British Menu ahead of their dessert course.

The result of course is irrelevant, but for completion here's how this particular race panned out.

Horse A: 5 7 9 6
Horse B: 8 8 7 10
Horse C: 7 6 10 8

(Which to be fair is how I would have bet, preferably at longer than 2/1)
And so the game would continue.

Numbers. Stats. Beautiful. Maths is poetry. Imposing order on chaos.

I've spent a lot of time with actuaries. They like raw data. They like reduction. They're very, very clever people and often complete idiots. Their downfall? People are irrational. As are horses. Be careful out there...

A Day at the Races

25/1/2014

You arrive nice and early and find somewhere to sit, maybe have a drink or some distinctly dodgy food, and look through the day’s racing. You circle some contenders for a fun placepot, and pick out your nap of the day in the third, the one you’re going to put a nice wedge on. You’ve given yourself £100 to play with, not including entrance fee but hopefully including sundry drinks and scoff. In your mind you’ve divided it into £10 on each of five races, and £40 or £50 on the big race. Your nap looks to have a lot going for it – Henderson and Geraghty, and in this field you may be able to get 4/1. You tell your mates you like the look of that. You like to think of yourself as a shrewd gambler, compared to them anyway.

You look at the first race and can’t see anything you fancy. Two of the big yards have unraced horses with chances – Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson. You wouldn’t dream of betting in this race at home, but as you’re here you may as well have a bit of fun. You decide to see what’s happening with the prices – they are both a tentative 3/1 on the Racing Post tissue. Opening show has the Henderson horse at 5/2 and Nicholls' at 4/1. You lean towards Nicholls. After all, you’ve just seen him tucking into an ice cream in the pre parade ring. Besides the punters don’t give Henderson's a chance and it drifts out to 7/2 at the off. You’re happy you got the ‘value’ (a tenner at 4/1) on the well-backed Nicholls horse, which goes off at 11/4.

The Henderson horse wins. The Nicholls horse drops out of contention three from home. Your placepot choice falls at the last when hanging onto third. You have a drink. Henderson's got the favourite in the next. It’s won it’s last two races, looks to be improving and nothing else looks likely. 2/1 will have to do. You’ll at least get your money back.

You go outside and it seems everyone wants the Henderson horse. The bookies are being cautious – you see 7/4 a few boards back and try to get there, but a bloke in front of you gets £700 to £400, and the bookie rubs the price off. Most boards are now going 6/4. Suddenly you see 13/8, you run and grab an extra note from your pocket to make the most of it. It’s a score. You find yourself giving the bookie both notes. Your tenner fun bet is now a £30 win bet. Still, phew, you’re on.

It seems like the whole crowd is on your horse. Two out, it hits the front and the crowd starts cheering. Fantastic. From the corner of your eye you see another horse travelling ominously well a couple of lengths behind. They jump the final flight alongsides and the jockeys settle down to fight it out. Your horse must win under the Geraghty drive, but as they stretch away to the line you can see that he other horse is going to win – the cheers die in the crowd’s throat. Your mate’s girlfriend next to you starts cheering. Her horse – let's call it Pretty Iris - has won at 20/1. “I liked the name” she says. You smile, but you’re cross with yourself. And then you look down and see that it was trained by Nicholls, his second string ridden by the stable apprentice. Just brilliant.

The girlfriend gets her £40 winnings from the Tote and buys you all a drink. She’s delighted. It’s the first time she’s been racing and it all seems so simple. You smile. You’re a bit late leaving the bar, and the prices are up for the next. So much for that 4/1. More like 3/1. You groan. You wait to see if it will go to 7/2. You re-look at the form. There’s another nice-priced Nicholls horse, this time at 8/1. You look up and see 10/1 at the board next to you. You immediately ask for twenty quid at 10/1. Once you’ve got your ticket you realise the ‘value’ on the Henderson horse has gone – it’s now 11/4 at best. You go inside and do a fiver combination exacta on the two runners. No a tenner. After all, you meant to have a good bet on this race.

You go back to the standing area where you and your friends meet between each race. They ask you what price you got. You smile enigmatically and don’t say anything. The girl says she’s had a fiver on Barney Geraghty. Oh how your friends laugh. And so does she, when Barry goes six lengths clear at the last to win to tumultuous cheers. The Nicholls horse fell four out when struggling.

You excuse yourself and go the toilet. You go to a cubicle, wondering whether you really are going to pretend to your mates that you had backed the Henderson horse. You count how much money you have left from your hundred. What with a race programme, lunch and a placepot, plus £80 in bets, you have £2.15 left. And it’s your round.

Familiar?

Be Careful Who You Sit Down With

23/1/2014

Better Bet

Here's a gambling tip for free:
If Betfair is the biggest price,
And it seems too good to be true,
Before you wade in, you'd better think twice
Because someone knows more than you.

Saturday gambling - advice from a bookmaker

18/1/2014

Anyone thinking of getting stuck into some short-priced football accas after last weekend's results should read this wealth-warning from the boss of William Hill

Ralph Topping reavealed that last weekend's football results – in which eight odds-on favourites in the Premier League won, along with 11 of the 12 shortest-priced favoruites in the Football League – cost Hills £13m. However, Topping told analysts:

“These are the kind of results, just like Dettori day, that change customer behaviour. In 1996 we saw a big increase in accumulator betting on racing after Frankie won all seven races at Ascot. This time it's about a lot of small numbers – 50,000 customers online won at least £50 and retail saw the same thing. That's great if you are in my shoes because it's the sort of win that gives customers confidence, and that confidence lasts a long time.”

Be careful out there...

How do you know if you are winning?

2/1/2014

The New Year – that's not a bad time to take stock of your gambling, is it? In the past I've always chosen a somewhat arbitrary “end” to both the flat season (Cesarewitch) and the jumps season (Grand National). But I want to spend 2014 on this blog thinking about gambling rather than posting up bad bets, so let's start with a clean slate.

Let's start with this question. How do you know if you're winning or losing? After all, ask most gamblers how they're doing and they'll shrug their shoulders and say “I'm about even”. As we know everyone takes this to mean “losing”.

Obviously, if you're at all professional you will have a detailed spreadsheet itemising all your bets entered under all sorts of categories (sport, racecourse, type of bet etc, etc). Back in the day mine was a thing of utmost beauty. A friend e-mailed me last week to say with typical precision – “I ended the season £130.35 down.” which as you can maybe guess for someone so meticulous is a rare red figure he'll be working extra hard to rectify.

I haven't kept a spreadsheet since my serious gambling days. I don't bet enough, or well enough, any more for it to be worthwhile. Instead, I looked at my Betfair profit and loss for 2013, and it wasn't pretty. Both football and racing showed miserable losses, though - to put that into perspective - the accumulated losses for the year are the equivalent of one bad Saturday back in the proper gambling years.

As for your conventional internet bookmaker accounts, measuring them is easy. You don't have to delve back into history. There's three levels of success:

1. You win consistently (or sometimes just once) and they will either refuse your business or limit your stakes to such an extent they might as well have closed your account. This is mighty annoying and I'll come back to it again, but for the moment the best approach is to treat it as a badge of honour.

2. You are allowed to bet as much as you want with whomever you want. You are in that “breaking even” netherworld we mentioned above.

3. The bookmakers inundate you with loyalty vouchers, special offers, inducements and trinkets. In simpler times they used to send “valued customers” a diary for the coming sporting year. A friend often boasted of receiving 17 diaries a year and, in so doing, unwittingly confirmed his own gambling incompetence.

As am I when I say Bet365 have been offering me £5 “bonuses” all year – roughly fortnightly. That's how well my betting has gone in 2013. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, it looks like they too have been reviewing the year's profit and loss on my account. For this morning I was upgraded to a £10 bonus...

My new rule for gambling this winter...

21/11/2013

So, after some thought, here's my new rule for the jumps meeting – at least up until Cheltenham.

I'm not going to watch any racing live. All bets will be placed early doors and then I'm going to do something else and watch the racing later on Sky plus.

When I was betting full-time, being in the moment was critical. Most races I was involved in I was making a book – often dutching at odds against but nudging Evens – and late changes were important: Changing conditions, the in-meeting form of trainers and jockeys, draw and pace biases, the buzz from the market. But you need time, and total immersion, and a bank and an approach that caters for that.

And right now I don't. I'm a Saturday gambler. So I need to play my cards accordingly. Which means I can't afford any leakage. No mug bets. No fun bets. No chasing. I'm much better off having a couple of decent bets and getting on with life. That's actually how I got to be a full-time gambler in the first place.

Right, roll the dice...

Open Golf

17/7/2013

Last Saturday's tip page looks pretty awful. Especially when you consider the other horses I backed, and their prices compared to SP:
Sun Central 1st 3/1
Aljamaheer 1st 3/1
Danchai 1st 16/1
Es Que Love 2nd 10/1
I'm So Glad 3rd 25/1
Niceofyoutotellme unplaced
Beaumonts Party unplaced

All I need to do now is put the right ones in the doubles!

Let's play the golf.

My approach is to save at least half my stake for in-running. There's nothing worse than having spunked all your ammunition halfway through Thursday. Plus I'd probably just chase my losses and top-up anyway.

However, there are two areas I think we should concentrate on early doors. Both offer the potential for "value". That said the concept of value is a dubious one when it comes to early prices on the golf. Say you think a golfer should be 50/1 and you can get him at 60/1. Even if your estimation is right you're still getting a very minimal edge about something very unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, the each way terms the bookies are falling over themselves to offer surely have some juice in them, if you can focus on the place element at least. So much so that Betfair is throwing inducements at me to play in their uncompetitive Top 5 and Top 10 markets.

The two for me at 7 places (and possibly 8 places), are Garcia at 33/1 and Fowler 50/1. Using Betfair as a marker, they are the same prices in the win market and trading at 7/1 and 10/1 in the Top 5 Place market.

The other angle is the trend for old-timers to go very close in Majors of late. Pick a few of the grand old-stagers, back them to a few quid each at 500/1+ win only on Betfair, and hope one of them hangs around long enough to be able to lay-out at single figures for a green book.

An Even Break

2/7/2013

I was planning a half year review as to progress. I was going to post a separate update on each of the three streams of my portfolio life. Then I read one of the entries in my book The Northern Line to Shropshire and realised that it said it all - even though it was written in 2011.

Gamblers have a uneasy relationship with luck. After all, we're hard-headed mathematicians spanking the arses of mis-estimated probabilities and systematic pricing errors. Strange that we're also a neurotic mass of wine stains, gibbering through the glass darkly about hubris and the gambling gods.

And naturally this spills into our real lives. On the one hand I know how privileged and advantaged I am, yet, on the other, can't help thinking we've had the most awful run of luck since we moved to Shropshire (for which incidentally we still entirely blame my sister-in-law and a broken mirror).

However, the last couple of months I've had that feeling, that all gamblers know, of being able to see the end of the losing run - glimpsing the sunlit uplands of a successful Cheltenham meeting say, reaching out and touching the joy of that life-changing win treble.

And I'm not talking about gambling, except as a metaphor. After all, sadly that's only a small stakes hobby these days. I'm talking about the world of work. I've been struggling to find any work this year. It's been one long frustration. But lately there have been glimmers, hints, possibilities. Hope.

And it was in such a mood yesterday that I was slathering my toast, when it fell from my grasp and somersaulted to the ground. And landed butter side up. I bent down to pick it up and said out loud: “There. See. Told you.” The world back in kilter. The deck reshuffled. The wheel in spin.

And then somehow, I've no idea how, I dropped the toast again. Butter side down. That's the thing about the gambling gods. They hate dreamers.

Losing (and winning) runs

1/5/2013

A stats professor used to set his class this exercise as a warm-up. She divided the class into two groups. One group was told to each flip a coin some n number of times and record the number of times it came up heads and tails. The other group was told to each imagine that they were flipping a coin and write down an n sequence of heads and tails. She would leave the room whilst they were doing this so that there was no way for her to know which person was in each group. After checking all the papers she would effortlessly divide the papers into two groups. How? Because the people who were faking it were invariably too careful not to include long runs of heads and tails. The truly random data invariably contained several long runs of the same type.

It's important to remember this when you hit a losing run (or winning run). So that you don;t become too despondent (or euphoric). And this is especially true if you're betting the shorties and hit a bad streak. Which I have just been doing on the football. It's important to remember that a run of 5 or more losers is to be expected.

In any given 100 flips of a coin there is a 54% probability of there being 6 heads in a row, and in 1000 flips of a coin there's a 99.7% probability of there being 6 heads in a row. In any given 100 flips of a coin there is a 32% chance of there being 8 heads in a row.

One of those weekends....

15/4/2013

I've just had one of those weekends. One where, the dust settled, you feel a bit sick. Sick of yourself and sick of gambling.

I definitely over-played, I probably over-staked, and just possibly I was a little unlucky...

Saturday's racing didn't really interest me. So I had no excuse for getting involved in two races. On the plus side, both horses were very well backed and ran well. Which doesn't disguise the fact they both lost. As did the horses in the race I unforgivably chased in - choosing three horses from my short-list of six, only to see the other three land the bonus trifecta pool.

The football followed a similar pattern. Which left me with the golf. Late on Saturday I hauled myself out of my drunken self-pity onto the laptop to top-up on some bets, all my earlier golfing picks long since out of the running. I wondered whether Adam Scott was being opposed on betfair by all those who watched him lose the Open last year. And there was certainly juice in the price at 8s. Except by the time I'd deposited some money, to replace the day's losses, the price was 5s.

Instead I turned my attention to Leishman. Pootling along nicely, under the radar. And so my Adam Scott money went on Leishman at 25/1 each way, first three. I went to bed when he dumped his ball in the water at 15. He finished fourth, naturally.

Back in the old days I took weekends like this on the chin. Or did my best to. In this new world with a minimal bank, I can't afford to be so phlegmatic. I need a "maximum" loss

Horse Racing

21/3/2013

I essentially gave up betting on the horses for over a year. That didn't stop me thinking about how to gamble on them..

And the last week or so I've been trying out a slightly new approach to midweek racing. Even when I was gambling full-time the small midweek meetings were not profitable for me, with the exception of decent novice chases. And on the flat I was too often sucked into betting on some complicated Class 3 bookie benefit handicap. Too often I played doubles for some action whilst I watched dross racing. Too often I chased non-existent value.

I'm just dipping my toe for now, but with encouraging results - famous last words, I hope the gambling gods weren't listening to that. I'll keep you posted, but it may offer one way back into part-time, profitable gambling. Which would be a start. My profit and loss alongside will provide some sort of marker as to progress...

Why the Price might be Wrong

3/3/2013

What is value betting? Now there's a question to keep betting forums churning over with froth and venom, year after year, without end.

For me, it's better to re-frame the question. How about asking "Why might the price be wrong?" In years of searching I have a long list of possible reasons, and an unpublished book explaining them all. I think when I come across examples I'll share them here.

Garynella was a very hot horse yesterday for the big race of the day at Newbury. When I priced the race up in the week - in a rough and ready way granted - I put him in at a tentative 9/1. Tentative, because he did look like just the sort of lurker the Pipe yard might unleash in such a race, so close to Cheltenham. The big firms probably priced him a bit shorter when they compiled their tissues, say 7/1. But, here's the crucial thing. I price to what I think a horse's chances are. Bookmakers price to that but then have to add other elements. They have to think about what people are likely to want to back, what prices their competitors are likely to offer, and their profit margins.

There was every chance Garynella was going to be a hot horse. There'd probably been some money in the week for him, and some commentators in the big papers tipping him up. So from a bookie's perspective, let's knock a point or two off, and then knock another point off to make sure we're not stand-out price come the morning of the race. And so it happens that, early Saturday morning, Garynella is a best-priced 5/1 shot. And the Pricewise pick. At which point weight of money and fear pushes his price down to 3/1. That's 3/1 about a horse with a chance more likely to have been somewhere between 5/1 and 9/1. A horse being given a 25% chance as opposed to a more realistic, say, 12.5% chance.

Of course, we don't know for sure. He could have won on the bridle. But here's the key thing for me. Here's why the price might have been wrong. The "IF" was already in the price. On Friday evening, the bookmakers had already protected themselves to a point where they were happy. Indeed, come race time the bookmakers in the ring, without previous exposure, were trying to stand him for all they could get at 3/1.

That price surely meant there was "value" to be had elsewhere. Shame I didn't find it! Or, if I did, didn't profit from it.

Slippery Toad

18/1/2013

I'm mighty humbled by a post on his website from an old mucker from my golden gambling days:

I had originally planned to pen something about the forthcoming All Weather season but then the realisation hit me like a train. I don’t have the motivation to write anything new.

Way back when I harboured dreams of making it big, I imaged that to reach the stage I’m at now, the end result would be punting full time. What I didn’t realise was that being a “professional” is not synonymous to being a “full time” bettor which is the bit most people focus on. No, this is only one aspect of being a pro, for me it relates mostly to your attitude and approach to betting.

Having considered going “pro” it became clear that I was in the comforting (and less stressful) situation of having the best of both worlds in retaining my current position in a job that I really enjoy and in parallel do very well out of the GG’s. “Doing well” in the limited time I have available for betting does not equate to millions in the bank but provides a smallish second income for the finer things in life.

Also back then I was on a journey and I learnt a lot from writing about aspects of punting that I had uncovered, discovered or achieved. I also enjoyed receiving numerous comments from readers of the blog which have expanded my own thinking on the subject matter. Along the way I have had the privilege to get in contact and meet some outstanding punters who took time to explain the ropes and demonstrate to me what it really means to be “professional” (Gary Twynam I thank you).

Today I punt using methods most punters would consider sophisticated via approaches that in 2004 I thought only existed in books. I have developed automated ratings I trust, they aid in the process of determining race contenders and as a consequence they open up all manner of punting possibilities, yet I want to do more.

I feel honoured and humbled to be name-checked like that, and just delighted that Toad has reached his version of the promised land. See, blogging isn't just howling in the wind. It isn't just solipsism and onanism. It's a community of sorts. A strange one granted. But, right now, a fulfilling one. Go Toad.

www.slipperytoad.co.uk