Diary of a professional punter

[redarmi]

£15 Lee Haskins to win Prizefighter @ 7/2 Coral

As I mentioned in my bet on Broadhurst last night I don't particularly fancy Haskins for this.  He has a very weird style that is a bit like a crap Naseem Hamed (hard to explain but you will understand if you watch him) that isn't neccesarily suited to the 3 round format but this is just a standout price that seems wrong.  He deserves to be favourite and I had him in at 3/1 which I am fairly confident about as a price and the fact thay pretty much every other bookie makes him 9/4-5/2 backs that up.  As much as i don't fancy him i have to back him at this price.

[millidonk]

Wow. Amazing read!!

Have loads of questions but will hold back for the moment.

[Eso Kral]

I have never done my bankroll in it total.  The way I stake makes it pretty difficult to be honest although I have had occasions where my staking has gone down to levels which can make expenses hard to meet.  As I mentioned earlier in the thread I do have some other income sources but it is fairly rare that they are anything approaching a living wage on a monthly basis but I suppose if neccesary i could step that up to raise a new bankroll.  My bankroll as it stands at the moment isn't anywhere near as big as it has been in the past but that is more to do with lifestyle leaks in the past few years.  Strangely, despite my bankroll fluctuating a fair bit over the years, my betting income has always been fairly constant.  That probably answers the monthly wage question.  I am not that disciplined about separating bankroll and life money and they tend to intermingle which means that my bankroll and bets only really grow when i earn over a certain amount.  Realistically that has meant it hasn't grown in size in any menaningful fashion for a few years now but on the flip side I have been able to maintain a lifestyle that involves a fair bit of travel.  One thing that I have learnt over the years is that I am the kind of person that fits their lifestyle to the amount of money they are earning....that means that when I have been winning very good money I hae also spent it.  The best post I have ever read on here was from Dubai here: http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=50836.msg1336253#msg1336253 and whilst I have never won and done as much money as I imagine Dave has it rings a lot of bells right down to the spending a massive amount of my bankroll one night in Stringfellows and not even enjoying it that much. 

The biggest bets, wins and losses all came in a about a three or four year period from 2000-2005.  I won £42k when the Patriots beat the Panthers in the Superbowl.  At the time I placed the bet I was running bookmaking for a sportsbook in Antigua called WWTS which was one of the biggest US facing online sportsbooks at the time.  i had been hired to turn around their bookmaking and had increased the margin from low 4%'s to 5.6% that year and, coupled with an increase in turnover, we were having the best year that company ever had ($25m gross profit I think) and I was on target for a max bonus which was about a years salary so I was punting fairly big with the backup of very good salary and the certainty of a very decent bonus coming at the end of the year.  I was getting a couple fo quid betting on Betfair at the time too and after a couple of weeks of the NFL season I priced up the Superbowl futures and thought New England should have been 4/1 shots and was amazed that they were available at, I think, 14/1 so had a monkey straight away and basically just kept topping it up until my total bet was aboutn £4k at just over 10/1 average.  In December of that year I had a fairly bad run and dropped a fair bit but worse was to come when just after Xmas the CEO of the firm asked me to go to lunch with him and told me that despite making $10m more than they had the previous year they had decided I wasn't the man to take them forward and they were not renewing my contract.  I would be paid the statutory part of my bonus but not the discretionary element which was about 30% of it.  All of a sudden this ante post bet took on a new importance.  I had just met the girl that is now my wife at the time and this was all a fairly devastating blow for me at the time given that she was a Jamaican national and had basically no chance of a long term visa to the UK at the time.  I asked her if she would be willing to come to the UK and she said she was willing to give up her job (a fairly decent one) but how would we be able to do it?  Eventually we decided that the best thing all around was going to be for her to fulfil her long standing ambition to go to college and she would do it in the UK and we would get her a visa that way but the flipside to that is that a three year university course for a non UK national is expensive......in fact it costs about £40k just for fees over a three year period....where would I be able to find money like that with no job and only the prospect of my bonus to give me money to live on while I tried to find a job?  As you can imagine that ante post voucher took on an even bigger importance at that point.  At this point New England were 7/2 favourites and looked like world beaters but every game was just about the most tense experience of my life if I am honest.  Eventually they reached the Superbowl and, at the time, I had a dodgy DirecTV sat and just as I sat down to watch the game the NFL decided in their wisdom that this might be a good time to block all the illegal signals so with the game kicking off I had to head out and try and find a place to watch the game and by the time Lisa's friend had given me the keys to her place and we settled down to watch Vinateri miss a 31 yard field goal to give New England the lead.  It was possibly the tensest game i have ever watched but eventually the Pats won with by a field goal.  My wife, largely oblivious to the importance of the occasion, fell asleep at some point in the first quarter and only awoke when i was celebrating to ask if we could go home now!!!!

Anyway that was a ridiculously long answer to a fairly simple question but that was my biggest ever win and not only in financial terms.

Great reply thx very much!!

[TheChipPrince]

Biggest single bet accepted in a UK bookies?

Smallest single bet turned down in a UK bookies?

[smashedagain]

I have never done my bankroll in it total.  The way I stake makes it pretty difficult to be honest although I have had occasions where my staking has gone down to levels which can make expenses hard to meet.  As I mentioned earlier in the thread I do have some other income sources but it is fairly rare that they are anything approaching a living wage on a monthly basis but I suppose if neccesary i could step that up to raise a new bankroll.  My bankroll as it stands at the moment isn't anywhere near as big as it has been in the past but that is more to do with lifestyle leaks in the past few years.  Strangely, despite my bankroll fluctuating a fair bit over the years, my betting income has always been fairly constant.  That probably answers the monthly wage question.  I am not that disciplined about separating bankroll and life money and they tend to intermingle which means that my bankroll and bets only really grow when i earn over a certain amount.  Realistically that has meant it hasn't grown in size in any menaningful fashion for a few years now but on the flip side I have been able to maintain a lifestyle that involves a fair bit of travel.  One thing that I have learnt over the years is that I am the kind of person that fits their lifestyle to the amount of money they are earning....that means that when I have been winning very good money I hae also spent it.  The best post I have ever read on here was from Dubai here: http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=50836.msg1336253#msg1336253 and whilst I have never won and done as much money as I imagine Dave has it rings a lot of bells right down to the spending a massive amount of my bankroll one night in Stringfellows and not even enjoying it that much. 

The biggest bets, wins and losses all came in a about a three or four year period from 2000-2005.  I won £42k when the Patriots beat the Panthers in the Superbowl.  At the time I placed the bet I was running bookmaking for a sportsbook in Antigua called WWTS which was one of the biggest US facing online sportsbooks at the time.  i had been hired to turn around their bookmaking and had increased the margin from low 4%'s to 5.6% that year and, coupled with an increase in turnover, we were having the best year that company ever had ($25m gross profit I think) and I was on target for a max bonus which was about a years salary so I was punting fairly big with the backup of very good salary and the certainty of a very decent bonus coming at the end of the year.  I was getting a couple fo quid betting on Betfair at the time too and after a couple of weeks of the NFL season I priced up the Superbowl futures and thought New England should have been 4/1 shots and was amazed that they were available at, I think, 14/1 so had a monkey straight away and basically just kept topping it up until my total bet was aboutn £4k at just over 10/1 average.  In December of that year I had a fairly bad run and dropped a fair bit but worse was to come when just after Xmas the CEO of the firm asked me to go to lunch with him and told me that despite making $10m more than they had the previous year they had decided I wasn't the man to take them forward and they were not renewing my contract.  I would be paid the statutory part of my bonus but not the discretionary element which was about 30% of it.  All of a sudden this ante post bet took on a new importance.  I had just met the girl that is now my wife at the time and this was all a fairly devastating blow for me at the time given that she was a Jamaican national and had basically no chance of a long term visa to the UK at the time.  I asked her if she would be willing to come to the UK and she said she was willing to give up her job (a fairly decent one) but how would we be able to do it?  Eventually we decided that the best thing all around was going to be for her to fulfil her long standing ambition to go to college and she would do it in the UK and we would get her a visa that way but the flipside to that is that a three year university course for a non UK national is expensive......in fact it costs about £40k just for fees over a three year period....where would I be able to find money like that with no job and only the prospect of my bonus to give me money to live on while I tried to find a job?  As you can imagine that ante post voucher took on an even bigger importance at that point.  At this point New England were 7/2 favourites and looked like world beaters but every game was just about the most tense experience of my life if I am honest.  Eventually they reached the Superbowl and, at the time, I had a dodgy DirecTV sat and just as I sat down to watch the game the NFL decided in their wisdom that this might be a good time to block all the illegal signals so with the game kicking off I had to head out and try and find a place to watch the game and by the time Lisa's friend had given me the keys to her place and we settled down to watch Vinateri miss a 31 yard field goal to give New England the lead.  It was possibly the tensest game i have ever watched but eventually the Pats won with by a field goal.  My wife, largely oblivious to the importance of the occasion, fell asleep at some point in the first quarter and only awoke when i was celebrating to ask if we could go home now!!!!

Anyway that was a ridiculously long answer to a fairly simple question but that was my biggest ever win and not only in financial terms.

Great reply thx very much!!

on par with eso krals diary with this post. great stuff

[redarmi]

In a betting shop I managed to get £600 on a 16-1 shot with ladbrokes once and £500 e/w France in the last Rugby world cup but I have never really asked for more.  I was surprised to get both of those bets tbh but it is more about what you bet.  When i was a student I worked for Ladbrokes in Chinatwon in London and we took £50k over the counter on a couple of World Cup matches so they will take a bet to be fair but I know their trading limits so I don't really ask for anything I think is going to mark me up.

Smallest bet refused - Betfred consistently refuses £20 e/w singles on 'bad' e/w races in certain shops.  Online I have had £2 bets refused!!!!

[adnmdv]

Not sure if you'll have the answer but since you worked in a bookies, but do you know if it's true certain brick and mortar bookies will have different implied limits depending on location? Supposedly Chinatown + Leicester Sq area take higher bets than elsewhere due to the type of people that go there...no idea if that's just hear say though?

[kukushkin88]

Not sure if you'll have the answer but since you worked in a bookies, but do you know if it's true certain brick and mortar bookies will have different implied limits depending on location? Supposedly Chinatown + Leicester Sq area take higher bets than elsewhere due to the type of people that go there...no idea if that's just hear say though?

They do have different limits in different shops but they´re much more interested in individuals, if you are a regular in a shop and a winner they have pretty detailed notes on you and records of every bet you strike. (This is based on experience from working at Coral when I was a student >10 years ago).

[redarmi]

Not sure if you'll have the answer but since you worked in a bookies, but do you know if it's true certain brick and mortar bookies will have different implied limits depending on location? Supposedly Chinatown + Leicester Sq area take higher bets than elsewhere due to the type of people that go there...no idea if that's just hear say though?

I only ever worked in Mayfair/Soho for Ladbrokes but I have peeked behind the counter at Ladbrokes in other places and the 'trading principles' are the same.  That said when i worked in Chinatown we would often take bets and phone them through later but from punters we knew would be accepted.  What I would say is if you regularly go into a betting shop anywhere outside of Central London and are regularly placing bets of £100+ you will very quickly be tagged  by the manager and if your business is anything like sharp they will be referring you soon enough because a winning punter at that level can impact upon a shops margin more than you would think and their supervisors/area managers will be on their back soon asking why margins are down.  In Central London a £100 punter doesn't stand out especially during racing.  They are still large in the general scheme of things but the cashier isn't going to be surprised.  This is the case more in certain shops than others.  If I was trying to land a touch on a horse I owned (those were the days!!!!) then I would start in Leicester Square and work my way through all the shops in Chinatown and through Soho to Mayfair.  i can't talk for other firms but in terms of Ladbrokes the best shops would be those in Chinatown, Dover Street and Curzon Street, Mayfair.  

[kinboshi]

I have never done my bankroll in it total.  The way I stake makes it pretty difficult to be honest although I have had occasions where my staking has gone down to levels which can make expenses hard to meet.  As I mentioned earlier in the thread I do have some other income sources but it is fairly rare that they are anything approaching a living wage on a monthly basis but I suppose if neccesary i could step that up to raise a new bankroll.  My bankroll as it stands at the moment isn't anywhere near as big as it has been in the past but that is more to do with lifestyle leaks in the past few years.  Strangely, despite my bankroll fluctuating a fair bit over the years, my betting income has always been fairly constant.  That probably answers the monthly wage question.  I am not that disciplined about separating bankroll and life money and they tend to intermingle which means that my bankroll and bets only really grow when i earn over a certain amount.  Realistically that has meant it hasn't grown in size in any menaningful fashion for a few years now but on the flip side I have been able to maintain a lifestyle that involves a fair bit of travel.  One thing that I have learnt over the years is that I am the kind of person that fits their lifestyle to the amount of money they are earning....that means that when I have been winning very good money I hae also spent it.  The best post I have ever read on here was from Dubai here: http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=50836.msg1336253#msg1336253 and whilst I have never won and done as much money as I imagine Dave has it rings a lot of bells right down to the spending a massive amount of my bankroll one night in Stringfellows and not even enjoying it that much. 

The biggest bets, wins and losses all came in a about a three or four year period from 2000-2005.  I won £42k when the Patriots beat the Panthers in the Superbowl.  At the time I placed the bet I was running bookmaking for a sportsbook in Antigua called WWTS which was one of the biggest US facing online sportsbooks at the time.  i had been hired to turn around their bookmaking and had increased the margin from low 4%'s to 5.6% that year and, coupled with an increase in turnover, we were having the best year that company ever had ($25m gross profit I think) and I was on target for a max bonus which was about a years salary so I was punting fairly big with the backup of very good salary and the certainty of a very decent bonus coming at the end of the year.  I was getting a couple fo quid betting on Betfair at the time too and after a couple of weeks of the NFL season I priced up the Superbowl futures and thought New England should have been 4/1 shots and was amazed that they were available at, I think, 14/1 so had a monkey straight away and basically just kept topping it up until my total bet was aboutn £4k at just over 10/1 average.  In December of that year I had a fairly bad run and dropped a fair bit but worse was to come when just after Xmas the CEO of the firm asked me to go to lunch with him and told me that despite making $10m more than they had the previous year they had decided I wasn't the man to take them forward and they were not renewing my contract.  I would be paid the statutory part of my bonus but not the discretionary element which was about 30% of it.  All of a sudden this ante post bet took on a new importance.  I had just met the girl that is now my wife at the time and this was all a fairly devastating blow for me at the time given that she was a Jamaican national and had basically no chance of a long term visa to the UK at the time.  I asked her if she would be willing to come to the UK and she said she was willing to give up her job (a fairly decent one) but how would we be able to do it?  Eventually we decided that the best thing all around was going to be for her to fulfil her long standing ambition to go to college and she would do it in the UK and we would get her a visa that way but the flipside to that is that a three year university course for a non UK national is expensive......in fact it costs about £40k just for fees over a three year period....where would I be able to find money like that with no job and only the prospect of my bonus to give me money to live on while I tried to find a job?  As you can imagine that ante post voucher took on an even bigger importance at that point.  At this point New England were 7/2 favourites and looked like world beaters but every game was just about the most tense experience of my life if I am honest.  Eventually they reached the Superbowl and, at the time, I had a dodgy DirecTV sat and just as I sat down to watch the game the NFL decided in their wisdom that this might be a good time to block all the illegal signals so with the game kicking off I had to head out and try and find a place to watch the game and by the time Lisa's friend had given me the keys to her place and we settled down to watch Vinateri miss a 31 yard field goal to give New England the lead.  It was possibly the tensest game i have ever watched but eventually the Pats won with by a field goal.  My wife, largely oblivious to the importance of the occasion, fell asleep at some point in the first quarter and only awoke when i was celebrating to ask if we could go home now!!!!

Anyway that was a ridiculously long answer to a fairly simple question but that was my biggest ever win and not only in financial terms.

Great reply thx very much!!

on par with eso krals diary with this post. great stuff

Very much this.

Also "He has a very weird style that is a bit like a crap Naseem Hamed (hard to explain but you will understand if you watch him)" - makes perfect sense!

[redarmi]

£10 Cunning Clarets @ 11/2 lads 325 Wetherby

I really wanted to back Glorybe in this race too but I have missed all the fancy prices and 11/2 is pretty close to the bone.

[bigtadger]

just like to say redarmi brilliant read , really gonna enjoy this one, quick question for you , are you basically telling us every bet you strike on here  or are you betting on more sports, horses ect but keeping them to yourslef as your betting / punting more heavily on these bets  or are people paying you to join a service ?

[redarmi]

just like to say redarmi brilliant read , really gonna enjoy this one, quick question for you , are you basically telling us every bet you strike on here  or are you betting on more sports, horses ect but keeping them to yourslef as your betting / punting more heavily on these bets  or are people paying you to join a service ?

I have posted every bet I have had since I started.  As I said at the start the stakes aren't correct in terms of actual cash.  My bankroll obviously isn't a grand but it works to show in principle what I am doing.  I also don't really want a bookie being able to read this and shut accounts I am using by being able to trace exact bets to me.  I am not offering a service and I have intention of doing so.  I dipped my toe in that once and, frankly, it wasn't very enjoyable at all and certainly not worth the hassle.  I am, however, getting paid to provide my views on certain football leagues so I might have to be a bit circumspect about exactly what I post on that front.

[Horneris]

£10 Cunning Clarets @ 11/2 lads 325 Wetherby

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

[typhoon13]

£10 Cunning Clarets @ 11/2 lads 325 Wetherby

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

+1