Diary of a professional punter

[tikay]

Yeah it was Nigel T I was talking about.  I haven't heard anything about him for ages either actually.  That doping case always brings back funny memories for me.  At around that time I had started working for VC and their offices in London got raided in connection with that and all the faces involved had accounts or we bet with them.  I remember my mother being quite disturbed that this great new job I had got that was supposedly with the "Gentleman Bookie" and it was this prestigious firm that operated out of a Georgian terrace in Marylebone and whose clients included people like Edward St George and Middle Eastern royalty was now being exposed as a tacky mob that were into all kinds of dodgy stuff  and it reinforced all of her misgivings about me deciding to make a career out of the gambling game instead of politics and public affairs as I had initially intended.  My old man, on the other hand, was delighted and thought it was superb that his son was going to be on the inside track to all these massive gambles and this proved it all.  Of course the reality was nobody at VC had the first idea about these dopings but every punter involved had accunts with us and we had followed the sharp money as we always did but we had no idea why it was sharp so we ended up with lumps on these bent horseraces.

More cliffs on this story, please, such as you feel able to reveal.

[tikay]

Cheers fellas. Got some good reading material methinks.

Whilst we're all here, what was it (those of you who did it seriously) that you all bet on?

Feel free to give a life story, I'm intrigued!

Edit: Sorry for thread hijacking redarmi...

I bet on the same as Keith....basically everything, actually ironically tennis I have very little interest in but I would bet on it if I got a good card regularly but I never have really, but my main profits come from American football, football and racing.  Done this on and off for about 12 years but had some fairly lengthy periods in employment in that period working for bookies but punting full time for last five years or so but sometimes got a salry because was punting for someone else as well as myself....its all in the first few pages of diary actually.  Dont worry about the derail....is good to have a bit of life in diary again and great to have so many nowledgable people around to debate with.

Will re-read the thread in that case.

Find the bit about betting on football interesting as I met a professional punter on a football website who ironically advocated completely staying away from betting on football. I'm sure titbeam could confirm this. Difficult to question him as he made a bucket load of money betting on tennis and US sports (and was willing to prove it by posting P+L's).

Would it be far to say he was quite clueless when it comes to football betting as you both seem to do it? The very basic way in which I understood his logic was that there were too many variables and that he didn't like the fact there was 3 outcomes as opposed to the normal two with US sports. I might be doing him a disservice here as it's been a while so I might be misremembering his reasoning, but he definitely didn't think betting on football was a profitable idea.

these days he is abs right  

90 minutes and associated markets that is.

Ages ago, on here, I started a thread "Betting against the tide" or some such bullshit.The theory behind it still holds very true though.

Wait for a significant market move in a big football match, and unless there's a major fact which has come to light to explain the move, bet the other side.

Definitely the best system, unless you can do a Blatchly and predict the initial move 100% of the time.

It was almost 3 years ago, Keith.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=39450.0

Well worth reading through if anyone has the time to spare, some of the Posts, 3 years down the line, look very interesting, with hindsight.

For those that want to skip to the end, & just read Camels NEW 2012 INPUT (goooo on Keith, do it!), here's a link to the last entry, in July 2009.

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=39450.630

It was well viewed at a time when our Betting Board was lightly used - 43 pages, & 18,000 views in 6 months. It'd get treble or quadruple that now.

[smashedagain]

Nice to have Keith back. Thats all thx

[TheChipPrince]

Great discussion, riveting stuff.

[Graham C]

Great discussion, riveting stuff.

[scotty2hatty]

redarmi, you're amazing, but please break those walls of text up a little.

Thread is gold.

[bobby1]

He isn't a friend as such, more of someone I got to know from the dog track and his betting in the shops. V nice guy, very sharp too.

I once offered to lay him some bets on the footy as it made sense for me to find out what he liked, with a view to maybe piggy backing them. The first bet he asked for was about 20 times bigger than I wanted so that didn't work out very well.

I think there were a couple of bookies thrown off the Sheffield dog track for a couple of knock out jobs when Sheff became a BAGS meeting. You could suddenly get a lot more money on the races from there in the shops. I can't remember for sure if he was one of them but I think he may have been.

More stories like that from you boys, please, incredible stuff, & riveting reading from us mere mortals. Lol @ "knock out jobs", too.

iirc the knock out jobs were just really basic market manipulation. When Sheffield started to feature on the betting shop track rota the limits that you could get bets on in the shops increased significantly. Basically their is a chart, if you want a bet at Portsmouth you can have about 50 quid etc, same with some of the other smaller tracks. Once you got onto the BAGS circuit the limits were much bigger as they were treated as regular betting shop tracks.

So you would get a Thursday morning card starting at 11 am, that had about 25 punters and 4 bookies, the on course market went up about 4 minutes before the race to about 135%, they would take a handful of bets as they drifted a few out. Then the SP reporter came out to take the final starting prices , they would just knock out every runner on the off to make the % more respectable. Every shop gets the final SP's to settle on and basically most of those prices were all worse on the track until about a minute before the off.

The bookies that got warned off worked out they could bet something they really fancied in the shops,.Then put up a market on the track 4 minutes before the off and then lengthen the selection they had backed to a price that was much bigger than it should have been bang on the off for the SP man to send as the starting price. There were only 25 punters on the track,  most of them were either on before the last minute or betting on the Tote so pushing out 'your' dog bang on the off didn't matter to the books on track as nobody could really bet the knock out prices as the race started soon afterwards.


In the end they got a bit carried away, the straw that broke the camels back was when one that opened about 11/4 returned an SP of about 5/1 and they were on for loads in the shops. Some investigation went on at the track and they were told they couldn't stand there any more.

There were plenty of other angles there for a while too, there is/was a bet called the 'Placer' which is basically a Placepot bet that has a dividend returned using the SP's of the dogs placed in the first two in the first 6 races.

Harry F used to play these, along with a few of the on track bookies and staff and his Mrs would come into the shops with biggish perms placers, you would look at them at it would be

5,6
5,6
5,6
5,6
5,6
5,6


64 bets at £25 quid and you knew the track had been rolled a certain way, or watered a certain way or that some track bias had been manufactured. There used to be a multi trap and barking banana's spread market too, these would move 10-15 units a time when Sheffield was one of the BAGS meetings that day, when the in crowd that knew how the track was going to run/had been set up got stuck in. I think the spread firms stopped offering them at certain tracks in the end.

[redarmi]

Are the bookies paid any money for standing at BAGS meetings?  The last time I went to one was an afternoon at Hall Green and there were probably 3 bookies there and after ignoring the bookies floormen, staff and various track staff there must have been ten punters there and the Ladbrokes rep.  No other off course firms were represented.  How are they supposed to make any money?  Is it really realistic to base the off course market with probably £100k+ punted on every race on this?  Is it any wonder they try and find other ways to earn?

[bobby1]

It was the same at a Saturday afternoon Newcastle meeting I went to last year. Three books and the SP man, less than 20 punters. I guess they must get paid by the track to be present, I suppose that comes form the increase in payments the tracks get for providing the BAGS meeting but I am guessing really.

[mulhuzz]

can someone explain why or what we're modelling with a poisson distribution when it comes to football betting and why we think the poisson is the best model? (or am I asking for the keys to the lucrative kingdom?)

[redarmi]

You are modelling goal distributions.  It was once the keys to a lucrative kingdom but now pretty much everyone gets it at a superficial level.  Besides football doesn't follow a pure poisson distribution you need to adjust it and the understanding of those adjustments is as important as anything.

[action man]

niglel t still has a pitch but he's seldom there, usually run by his mate. His brother spencer is quite a character

[bobby1]

niglel t still has a pitch but he's seldom there, usually run by his mate. His brother spencer is quite a character

cheers, I must have got the wrong guy that was thrown off.

[action man]

might have been jim wragg?

[bobby1]

might have been jim wragg?

B Holmes rings a bell now.