‘Professional punter’ is basically meaningless these days. Every one of the bastards in the middle tier has four or five income streams. If I’d done my brains when I was at it, I’d have ended up on the streets. The ones at the top have so much cash they don’t even want their name in a phone directory.
I never considered myself a ‘professional punter’. I was a punter—and the rent being paid depended on me being good at it. Put any of the social media morons out on the street with €5k and tell them they need to survive, and you'd return to find them in a scene out of Gaza. The game now is all talk, all bravado: look at my ROI, look at my expected value. None of it matters except how many notes you’ve folded in your pocket. No other metric is worth a damn.
% agree with this because this is real world speak, not social media fantasy bragging.
And "bragging" is the operative word here.
If some quiet reclusive individual can make betting their primary source of income, even if it's less than the median income pawras not unreasonably draws comparison with, if they want to privately think of themselves as a "pro punter," then why not, it might make them feel more personal self esteem and it impacts on literally no one.
But the instant an individual starts publicly referring to themselves as a "pro punter," they are setting themselves up as superior to other punters and are open to legitimate scrutiny.
Far too many punters seem to prioritise others knowing they win over the actual winning.
For me it's a massive character failing - and I should know, I've got every character failing in the book and quite a few you won't find in any book.
If you can win, just keep your edges to yourself and quietly win ffs - don't feel the need to prove yourself to every random fecker you encounter on the web.
As Slim says, the ones who win most you know least about - they're not in the phone book.
The one who might (I don't care enough to research it) be the biggest on the planet once phoned me at 2am in the morning 20-odd years ago.
He seemed a regular guy, actually, I liked him, but most people wouldn't recognise his name.
I used to know another one who was pretty major too - he also maintained a low profile.
The more they know the less they say, whereas the more they pretend (for various reasons) they know the more they say.
