Big winnings from Betfair, story from a pro punter

[kiwi steve]

Story from a punter who uses betfair
Last month I explained how my old friend and well known TV pundit Angus Loughran had persuaded me to get into the exchanges. Finally in January 2002, I took the plunge very apprehensively and opened a Betfair account with £50. I was with my friend Jasboy in the office and we got straight into that day's racing. I laid the favourite to lose the £50 at 2/1. As they approached the finish line I was sweating buckets, but I needn't have worried it finished 2 nd – success!

I was off running, or should I say walking. I was still not convinced however, it really didn't feel right laying a 2/1 shot at 9/4. I always felt as a bookie that it was hard enough to win laying sp and I did not feel comfortable with this over the odds stuff. Slowly but surely however, my confidence grew and as I put more money into Betfair my profits started to grow.

I started to play on most of the live TV matches, taking an opinion and laying bets like 7/2 to £1500. Often I would lay the two teams and go for the draw. Trying to read how the market would go was essential in order to lay at the shortest possible prices.

As time went on I felt more comfortable staking increasingly large sums. In fact I was playing really big – it was not unusual for me to win £5k from the football on a Sunday. My horse racing was also going well. During the week of Cheltenham I was on fire and I won £13,000 between the football and the horses. By September 02, my profits stood at £100,000 and by June 03 they were up to £200,000. This was so easy, or so I thought. I decided to sell Sporty Race Nights and concentrate on Betfair full time.

Down to earth with a bump

Unfortunately I got complacent. I was out and about during the day doing nothing constructive to help me on Betfair. I just did not work at it hard enough and I stopped winning. The 5 grand Sundays were a thing of the past and I seemed to be losing 3 or 4 bets a week to 90th minute goals. I was not doing anything different from the previous year but I was no longer getting the results. The struggle to win was a new concept for me and the harder I tried the worse it seemed to get. I feel that confidence is a big factor in betting and that year I did not have a lot of it. I was still winning but nothing remotely like previously.

Then the “full time” period started going very badly wrong. First of all the British Open and the USPGA were disasters for me as I gave the unfancied leaders Ben Curtis and Sean Micheel a right pasting on the last day, losing £20k in the process. The 2003/4 football season was a wash out with me being £25k down. The cause of my downfall was losing £80k on just four matches:

Anderlect 1 Celtic 0

This was a game in which I fancied the draw pre match very

strongly. I managed to take two grand out of Anderlecht , then they drifted and I was able to get Celtic at the right place. Celtic were the slightly bigger loser. The game was going to plan when Anderlecht were reduced to 10 men before half time. I decided that martin O'Neill would play to ensure that Celtic did not lose and I proceeded to lay 4/1 the Belgians to 2500. An early second half goal

meant that I was in trouble. After that point Celtic did not look like equalising.

Result -£11,000

Tottenham 3 Manchester City 4

The damage in this game was all done at half time. Spurs 3-0 ahead and as the teams went off the park I realised that one of Man City 's players had been sent off after the half time whistle had blown. The radio reported it (I always have the radio on when I'm betting in running and on this occasion I was ahead of the pack. 200/1,220/1 EASY MONEY. Thank god I could not get any more money into my Betfair account that evening as we all know what happened next. If you wonder what its like to be married to a professional gambler you should have been a fly on the wall that night. My wife asked me how much I would have won if Tottenham had won? “Errr…I would have lost as I had laid Spurs pre match.” Was my fairly weak answer. She shook her head and I think I heard her on the phone trying to get me certified.

Result -£38,000

Scotland 1 Holland 0

Scotland are possibly the worst international side amongst the reorganised European countries. I laid 6/1 to 1500 and when they took the lead I went in again. In the 2nd leg 4 days later Holland beat them 6-0!

Result - £13,000

Celtic 1 Aberdeen 2

This was a match that I would normally never have got involved in. Celtic had already won the league and had nothing to play for. Aberdeen had been well beaten at home with a young team at the weekend. I had the Aberdeen Press and Journal on the Tuesday and they said that this would be the youngest Aberdeen side ever to play Celtic. The Tuesday evening Willie Miller the Aberdeen legend was on the radio saying that he REALLY FEARED FOR ABERDEEN THE FOLLOWING NIGHT AT PARKHEAD. Celtic actually took the lead that evening but Aberdeen won with a late goal.

Result - £16,000

Greece 's shock victory in Euro2004 was another blow. My betting year ends in July 2004 by which time, despite focussing on it full time I had lost £35k. Not a good year and definitely time for a rethink. I needed to refocus and start working harder at the game.

Back to winning ways

So far in the current year I am £76k ahead on football, but £9k behind on other sports including horses. I do not feel that I have an edge on other sports and have now almost totally stopped betting on anything other than football. The other change is that I am more disciplined with my stakes - rarely exposing myself to potential losses of more than £5k in any match. I am playing on the half time full time market a lot and on some other new markets which is proving to be very successful. Probably the biggest change is that I am no longer trying to win fortunes and have settled for earning a decent steady income.

As well as relying on my own research I have made contacts with several excellent young judges who provide me with information on English football. As a tactic this has worked out extremely well for me and my profits from English football now rival my profits from Scottish football. Sometimes you don't need to be an expert – you just need to know who is an expert! The liquidity on the lower Scottish leagues is very poor, considerably worse than it used to be. I suspect because the mug punters on the exchanges have been fleeced and gone away, and seemingly have not been replaced by new members. In my opinion the betting exchanges are not doing enough to bring in new Scottish punters. I have some marketing ideas on this – perhaps I should suggest them.

Betfair deserves enormous credit for what it has done in transforming the betting industry for the benefit of punters. However, I do not feel it can be good for the punter for one site to be so dominant and I would like to see some credible opposition emerge. I'm not too keen on the new commission tables for example and do not know anyone who considers this to be anything other than a thinly disguised price hike. Over the next month or so I will be taking a break to get a medical issue sorted. When I return my commission rate will have risen to what I consider to be an unacceptably high level. I have received offers to take my business elsewhere at preferential rates, and perhaps this is the time I will have to take up one of these offers.

As I bring my story to a close I wonder what the exchanges will be like in 20 years time. All these 25/30 year olds will be older and so much the wiser. The exchanges are producing some unbelievable talent that can only mature and I see a big future for a lot of good judges. The only thing that may hold them back a little is that they will get married, become parents and these young modern men will be watching the kids, doing the housework and the wives will be saying “not the computer again”. My advice to them is don't start doing the housework. Let the women get on with it - start the way you mean to continue!

Last August I bought a lovely house in Las Gigantes in Tenerife with wonderful views over the cliffs and of the Atlantic . I expect to spend 18/20 weeks a year there. I have the internet installed along with Sky. I've got a cheap telephone service and I feel even more focused there spending more time researching than I do at home.

Got to finish, coming darling yes I'll start the hoovering now.

hail hail to you all

Sporty

[parlayin]

translation?

[DrunkenGoon]

The Scotland - Holland game cost a lot of people a lot of money. I remember that Anderlecht game as well, Dindane did Celtic in.

The guy has the right approach, both the asians and the exchanges are doing unbelievable volume on in progress action. They probably outvolume pre game bets by a 3-1 ratio with the live stuff. If you have the nuts and the feed, you can make it in this shark infested type of market. The beauty is that the margins are minuscule, so even with a modest 54-55% winning ratio, you should be able to grind it out and get that Tenerife villa. I'm sure the weather beats the crap out of what this guy was getting anywhere in the UK.

BTW, thanks for the great article!

[nehpets]

"My advice to them is don't start doing the housework. Let the women get on with it "
hehe

[Conrad]

It's no secret that within a couple of years live-betting will account for 70-80% of a book's turnover on sport. Take my word for it, this is where the industry is heading.

As far as exchanges are concerned though, they hold the key to how betting should look like in the future. I'm surprised more companies haven't entered the market in a serious way, which pretty much means that Betfair has a worldwide monopoly that grows stronger by the day...

[alsoran]

I was under the impression that Betfair did not take US customers. However, I just saw the US listed in the dropdown of countries in the sign up page.
So they do take Americans?

Good article.

[mvbski]

Originally posted by: alsoran
I was under the impression that Betfair did not take US customers. However, I just saw the US listed in the dropdown of countries in the sign up page.
So they do take Americans?

Good article.

No they do not take them [img]i/expressions/brokenheart.gif[/img]

[DrunkenGoon]

I would bet by the start of the new soccer season, there will be a few UK based exchanges that will change to accept US based customers.

[The Actuary]

Betonbet changed recently.

I am pretty sure I tried to play there in the past and was declined-

also saw US on the list of choices for betdaq, it was not there before-will probably give them a shot one of these days-

starting to view betting games in advance of them starting as passe.

[Dominator]

Good read.. thanks Kiwi Steve