Diary of a professional punter

[bobby1]

I got it from a reliable source now Action, Phil Hardy was the guy.

[Skippy]

Well then....

Is Kevin Pulleins column in the Racing Post on a Saturday good for football punters?

[action man]

I got it from a reliable source now Action, Phil Hardy was the guy.

i know bob still has a patch, can't remember phil hardy ever having a pitch there in the 12 years ive been going

[bobby1]

I got it from a reliable source now Action, Phil Hardy was the guy.

i know bob still has a patch, can't remember phil hardy ever having a pitch there in the 12 years ive been going

That would make sense then as I am talking mid to late 90's

[redarmi]

Interesting prop bet that I saw for the Superbowl.  They bet on which quarter will be the highest scoring.  The way the NFL pans out with a kickoff at the start of the 1st and 3rd quarter means that those quarters will always be lower scoring than the 2nd and 4th quarter but in the regular season the 2nd quarter is highest scring most often.  There are a number of reasons for this but mainly it is because in blowouts the tem in front will run the ball more often and there will generally be less action in the final quarter.  Generally speaking Superbowls aren't like that and 18 of 37 Superbowls have seen the final quarter being the highet scoring which makes some sense to me especially given they should generally be more competitive games too.  Bluesq are 9/4 the final quarter to be the highest scoring and that seems too big to me.  I would be like 13/8 tops maybe 35% or so in in a 100% book.

[Dubai]

9/4 bf too- i taken bl sq if u want any just text

[redarmi]

Cheers Dave but I managed to get all of mine on.  Not sure what it says about the state of our betting with Bluesq that the price is still there......either that or it is like the night they left The Camel in charge of the mens tennis ;-)

[Karabiner]

I'm on too with bsq @ 9/4 within my limit which seems to be taking out £200 with quite a few books.

[redarmi]

Been thinking for a while about ways in which I could keep the diary interesting but without it becoming just a constant stream of tips or thoughts on current sporting events and happenings.  If anyone has anything they particularly want to hear about then I am open to suggestions as I really enjoy writing here.  One thing I thought I might do was write about some of the people I have come across in the past 12-15 years I have been in the game and whilst most of them will be people that are relatively well known in the gambling world like Tony Bloom, Victor Chandler, Frank Rosenthal, Mark Blandford, Jonathan Sparke etc I want to kick off with a guy that played a big role in my early gambling education and experience and that almost certainly nobody else will have heard of and, bizarrely, I never actually spoke to myself with himknowing who I was and vice versa.  The reason he is on my mind and has recently come back to my memory is that sadly he died last week and it was pointed out to me by a mutual acquaintance that he had written an online biography of his life.  It is quite unspectacular in many ways but I found it quite interesting: http://mylifestory.forumer.com/my-life-story-t259429-30.html http://thisismylife.46.forumer.com/this-is-my-life-t219906.html

His name was Rex Towers and it wasn't long after I joined Victor Chandler that he opened an account with us.  At the time we were VC's special offshore operation and only punters who lived out side the UK and regularly staked over £100 were invited to bet with us.  At that time the VC brand was still very much that of the exclusive "Gentlemans bookmaker".  Many of our punters were racehorse owners or were well connected and shrewd so we had to be on our toes.  I had joined VC from Ladbrokes where throughout my student years I had worked as a student assistant manager.  My manager there that I met on my first day was a guy called JGT and we got on very well from the moment we met and I told him cautiously (as I had been told it was frowned upon in the industry) that I was something of a punter.  JGT turned out to be somewhat involved in punting himself and we got on so well that even to this day we are punting partners.

 After I left for Gibraltar we had vowed to stay in touch and share our thoughts on racing/bets etc.  Together with my info from VC and various other systems and approaches we were taking we were doing relatively well even allowing for the 9% tax on turnover.  JGT's father was also in with us and one day I called and he he had some very interesting news for me that his Dad had discovered a way for us to get on tax free.  This was truly great news as it meant that we would be increasing our profits massively so from that day on JGT and his Dad we responsible for getting the bets on and I just phoned every day and talked to them and we came up with the bets between the three of us and the rest was up to them and we agreed a figure daily whilst I went around my daily business mainly answering the phones to these VIP's at VC including Mr Towers.  We went on a pretty good run and won a very decent amount and on the occassions I answered the phone to Mr Towers or looked over his figures he seemed to be doing very well too and his selections often coincided with ours but I thought he was maybe using the same ratings service (RSB) that we were and at the end of the day sharp punters are going to be coming to the same conclusions quite often.  Anyway one day the boss Mick asked me to take a look at a selection of accounts and decide what we wanted to do with them.   The general criteria was whther the punter was winning and if he was did he have any special value to us ie. was he connected to a stable, was he friends with Victor or Michael Tabor (who owned a big slice of the firm) and could we effectively follow him.  I looked at rex's figures etc and decided that he had had a good run he was winning well into five figures lifetime) and there didn't seem any real reason to keep his account open so I advised that it should be shut......

I am sure most of you have realised by now that the next day when I have phoned JGT to talk about our days action he told me that we had hit a bit of a snag and that our tax free connection had had his account shut down so we would have to go back to paying tax.  Rex was the tax free connection and had hit upon the idea that he could get punters from the UK on and charge them 2% on turnover and hedge the business offshore tax free himself.  I subqequently joined a punting email group called SmartSig where Rex was also a member and he was an interesting character and his tax free avenues helped build my first ever bankroll although reading his biography it was interesting to read about his interactions with us.  My mates Dad had even told him we were getting info from Willie Carson!!!!!  Anyway I was very sad to see that he had died and to a horrible disease.  RIP Rex!!!!

[Horneris]

haha good story

[The Camel]

Cheers Dave but I managed to get all of mine on.  Not sure what it says about the state of our betting with Bluesq that the price is still there......either that or it is like the night they left The Camel in charge of the mens tennis ;-)

There was worse than the tennis one.

Superbowl XXXV I made the book for first touchdown scorer.

I did ALOT of research (I was the first up in the UK market - and the US books were betting to 250% or whatever) and was really hapy with my book.

One problem though.. I forgot to put in a maximum bet size for each selection.

So even restricted punters could place bets which could win up to Bluesq's limits (in those days 100k I think).

Five or six SPIN traders who were on 5% (Sporting and City Index [City owned BlueSq back then] had a fierce rivalry in those days - absolutely hated each other) came on in the middle of the night and had between £200 and £1000 on Brandon Stokely at 25/1.

D'oh.

[pleno1]

hey,

how long did you live in gibraltar? Where did you live/what period? Its maybe v.dif to when you were here depending on when you moved.

[tikay]

Fabulous story, Stuart, many more like that, please!

PS - Did you get that cash I sent you?

[redarmi]

hey,

how long did you live in gibraltar? Where did you live/what period? Its maybe v.dif to when you were here depending on when you moved.

I was there between 1998 and 2000 and I have been back in the mid 2000's and even then the place had changed beyond recognition.  We were basically the only gaming firm there back then and when I started at VC there were between 15-20 of us and we recorded every bet on paper and handed it to the computer girls at the back to put into what I think was an ms-dos system of accounting and we settled every bet by hand.  By the time I left 2 years later the internet boom was in full flow and we had 250 employees and everything was on computer.  At the time I was young and ridiculously ambitious and wanted everything right now which was why I left because I got a few different job offers but in retrospect I wish I had hung around a bitn longer because they were a decent firm and it pains me to see what they have become really.  Gib itself had massively changed from how it was in 2000 when you could buy a flat in Eurotowers for £80k to where it is now (or was in 2006 last time I was there) where the cheapest flats were 250k and there are now so many gaming firms there with Party guys buying two flats in the best blocks in town and knocking them through because they weren't big enough etc.  When I was there in 2006 it was like you imagine the old gold rush towns of mid america to be.

[b4matt]

Thats a great tale Red. Did you ever tell your partners that you closed the account?