Nfehily19
Apprentice
Depends on which bookie u used, most ssbt's are operated by outside companies and not the bookie, therefore prices are different on machines to over the counter most of the time too.
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Is There Any Good Bookies These Days ?
- Thread starter Might And Power
- Start date
Nfehily19
Apprentice
Bookies vary obviously, but the average will allow a brand new customer to bet to a liability of £1000 if a price is taken on a weekday horse and twice that on Saturday and festival races.
Liabilities larger than that will require a "permission to lay" phone call to the traders.
The affordability/laundering checks come further down the line and obviously depend on the number and amount of said bets.
Liabilities larger than that will require a "permission to lay" phone call to the traders.
The affordability/laundering checks come further down the line and obviously depend on the number and amount of said bets.
Ry
Nfehily19
Apprentice
Last edited:
Quixall Crossett
Apprentice
I honestly dont know how it is gonna look in the future but i can safely say that the number of betting shops is gonna keep on dropping.
Go back 20, 30, 40 years ago and if a Tote monopoly had been mentioned i would have fought it as much as i could. But nowadays, bearing in mind that we have no REAL bookmakers around any more, it wouldnt bother me in the slightest although it probably wont happen in my lifetime.
But going back to price movements and the need to do it manually. i do remember quite a few occasions where i did lose it a bit with one or two people who just became so reliant on the bot that i really thought that there was no real need for them to be there at all. They are probably stacking shelves in Poundland now. I would shout over that they have just taken seven or eight bets in a row on a horse and they would reply "the bot isnt moving the price quick enough". My reply (minus the expletives) was "do it yourself then". They were just so reliant on the f**king thing. And thats just how it is these days. Everything is bot driven. No opinions, no going out on a limb, no taking one on. Nada !!!!!!
Boring !!!!!
Quixall Crossett
Apprentice
And speaking of taking one on, something which may surprise a few people is that we would use Betfair to take a bit more money on an odds on chance that i/we didnt fancy.
I've heard people talk about how bookies just offload all the money they have taken on each horse in each race and have it all back on Betfair and i've read people on about it as well. That is the biggest load of nonsense i have ever read or heard and if anybody really thinks that is what happens then i think they need to give their head a shake.
But when you have a very short one that you dont fancy for whatever reason, you just sit there and wait for all the short price punters to pile in and hope there is plenty of them. But occasionally, if it is quiet or they are playing smaller or whatever, the liability on that horse is nowhere near where you would really like it. So, and i know at least two other firms who did this, we would use our company Betfair account and start laying the odds on chance for as much as we felt comfortable with and get that liability, and hopefully our profit, up. And that was just classed as Betfair having a bet on the odds on chance with us.
That, to me, was what it was all about. Going out on a limb. Having an opinion and taking one on. And thankfully, looking back, it came off far, far more times than it didnt.
Happy days.
I've heard people talk about how bookies just offload all the money they have taken on each horse in each race and have it all back on Betfair and i've read people on about it as well. That is the biggest load of nonsense i have ever read or heard and if anybody really thinks that is what happens then i think they need to give their head a shake.
But when you have a very short one that you dont fancy for whatever reason, you just sit there and wait for all the short price punters to pile in and hope there is plenty of them. But occasionally, if it is quiet or they are playing smaller or whatever, the liability on that horse is nowhere near where you would really like it. So, and i know at least two other firms who did this, we would use our company Betfair account and start laying the odds on chance for as much as we felt comfortable with and get that liability, and hopefully our profit, up. And that was just classed as Betfair having a bet on the odds on chance with us.
That, to me, was what it was all about. Going out on a limb. Having an opinion and taking one on. And thankfully, looking back, it came off far, far more times than it didnt.
Happy days.
Quixall Crossett
Apprentice
Yeah, plenty will lay off on Betfair reet, but what i am talking about is laying on Betfair to get our liability up. For example, lets just say we wanted the 2/5 fav to be a minimum £30k loser and there were only a few minutes to the off and it was only a £22k loser, we would look to lay £20k on Betfair to lose £8k and take the liability up to £30k.
@Nfehily19 Actually starting to go the other way with shops been brought in house. WH mirrors on line with a few twists on horse racing prices, Betfred moving in house in the majority of shops with new software and SSBT’s. Lads/Coral are also using Entain odds. Times are changing
Bet365 profits crash 44 per cent to £349m as majority shareholder Denise Coates takes £280m in dividends and pay
Profits slumped by 44 per cent at bet365 for the year ending March 30, even as turnover soared past £4 billion for the first time at the gambling giant.
Despite the drop in pre-tax profits to £349 million from £627m, founder and majority shareholder Denise Coates received at least £280m in dividends and pay, according to the company’s accounts published on Tuesday.
Bet365’s accounts are the first set published since reports emerged in April that Coates, and her brother John, had spoken to Wall Street banks and advisers about the full or partial sale of the company at a value as high as £9bn.
Revenue for bet365 increased by nine per cent to £4.036bn with the bookmaker stating it was driven by a five per cent increase in sports and 25 per cent in gaming revenue.
Restructuring at bet365 resulted in increased expenses for the company of £324.7m, including a “one-off restructuring and reorganisation” cost of £59.2m which bet365 said came as the result of “our exit from certain markets”.
In March, bet365 announced they would stop taking bets from China-based customers adding at the time that they continually reviewed and assessed markets to which they offered their services.
Bet365 have continued to push into the US, where they have launched in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kansas and Maryland.
The company also contributed £130m to the Denise Coates Foundation, a charity funding projects in Britain and abroad.
In a note, analysts Regulus Partners said bet365 would likely be a “material net beneficiary” from rising gambling duties next year as the company was more sport-focused, although it added that the firm’s “absolute position” would be worse.
Regulus added: “Another year has gone by, and a lot has changed, but the underlying problems caused by a lack of in-play driven growth and growing market complexity in terms of product, competition, and regulation, remain stubbornly the same, in our view.”
William Hill owner Evoke considers sale or break-up of business following budget tax hikes
The owner of William Hill is considering a sale or break-up of the business having launched a strategic review following last month's budget.
Evoke, which also runs the 888 and Mr Green brands, had warned after the budget that the tax hikes announced by chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves would result in an annual hit of around £125-135 million, before mitigation, once fully implemented from April 2027.
The company said on Wednesday that it had "decided to undertake a review of the company's strategic options, which will include the consideration of a range of potential alternatives to maximise shareholder value, including, but not limited to a potential sale of the group, or some of the company's assets and/or business units".
Bankers from Morgan Stanley and Rothschild have been appointed as joint financial advisers in connection with the review.
Evoke, formerly known as 888 Holdings, completed the £2 billion acquisition of William Hill in 2022.
Shares in the company, whose net debt stood at £1.82 billion at the end of June, have plummeted from a high of 77.8p this year but were nearly 8.5 per cent higher on the back of the news at 23.7p on Wednesday afternoon.
Reeves increased remote gaming duty to 40 per cent from 21 per cent from April next year in the budget, while a new online sports betting duty of 25 per cent, excluding horseracing, will replace the existing general betting duty of 15 per cent 12 months later.
In response Evoke's chief executive Per Widerstrom said its mitigation plans would "involve a significant reduction in investment into the UK, and, very regrettably, the likely need for thousands of jobs to be cut up and down the country".
It was subsequently reported by Sky News that Evoke was considering selling off its Italian operation.
The company told shareholders on Wednesday there was "no certainty" that any transaction would arise and that further announcements would be made "when and if appropriate".
I will bang these next five up here and if you are not interested in them DON'T read them
It is the sort of scene that would work perfectly in a blockbuster movie. The only living soul in that scene could just as easily be the movie's hero.
On a scorching hot afternoon a Ford Explorer travels down an otherwise deserted desert highway somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix. In the driver's seat is an exquisitely tanned man who wears expensive jewellery, a suit and sunglasses. He is the epitome of cool. He is also one of the world's biggest, most successful and wealthiest gamblers.
Over the coming days our Masters of Betting series will feature legendary punters of the past and present. You will read about exceptionally shrewd individuals from whom some valuable lessons can be learned. These are extraordinary people who are living or lived extraordinary lives. Quite rightly leading the way is Don Johnson.
It's a good name for someone whose story feels ripe for a Hollywood portrayal. Johnson is a former jockey and racecourse manager who in a five-month spell won $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos. The 63-year-old is good at blackjack and not bad at racing, either, which is handy as he is part of a computer-assisted wagering syndicate that regularly pumps millions of dollars into pari-mutuel pools. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the Miami Vice star's namesake knows a lot of famous people.
"I have some friends who happen to be actors or actresses, people like Paris Hilton, Kevin Dillon and Charlie Sheen," says Johnson from behind the Explorer's steering wheel. "Some of those guys love the ponies. They don't have to pay Kevin to show up for horseracing. He loves it."
Johnson loves it, too, and always has done, right back to when he was spending his childhood in Oregon on a thoroughbred farm and then earning a living riding races, generally at a level some way removed from the Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup.
"I was born into the racing industry," says Johnson. "I fell in love with it and I've never had to leave. I've flourished in this industry because I enjoy it.
"I loved being a jockey and probably rode around 100 winners but I'm 6ft 1in, so I was starving myself just to make the weight. I rode in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and northern California but a lot of those circuits I rode on weren't even printed in the Daily Racing Form, so there is no record of many of my races.
"After I finished riding I transitioned over to officiating on racing and then kept looking up, trying to get the next position. I was a junior racing official, a steward, a racing judge and then ran a racing commission. I moved on to managing tracks and ultimately wound up at Philadelphia Park."
It was while working at the Pennsylvania track that Johnson's life changed. His interest was sparked by groups of punters – known as 'handicappers' in the US – who repeatedly turned up at the track and consistently seemed to win. Supported by two British bosses, Bob Green and Bill Hogwood, who shared his enthusiasm for using data, he made a point of supplying the punters with all the information he could muster, knowing that the more they bet, the more it would increase the track's betting handle and therefore also its profits. Johnson watched and learned.
"It was obvious they weren't degenerates or addicts," he recalls. "They knew what they were doing because they were making money – and they were all using additional information.
"It was clear to me they had an edge. There was a science behind what they were doing. That made me think about transitioning that science across to other areas of gaming. That's when I got the blackjack idea. I was lucky to meet the right maths guys at the right time. It gave me the confidence to put some real dollars behind it and to start building up a bankroll."
The bankroll quickly got bigger and bigger. At the same time, casinos hammered by the financial crash became desperate to attract high rollers, offering an array of perks and concessions in an effort to bring vast sums of money into their halls.
"If your edge is big enough, it doesn't take a lot to get going," says Johnson. "At the time, Atlantic City were giving away too many advantages. I don't think even they realised they were giving away their house edge. You can't give somebody a 20 to 25 per cent rebate on their losses per trip and expect to win. I never bet to lose more than the maximum rebate. All I had to do was play perfect strategy."
In one jaw-dropping period he played that perfect strategy perfectly. Between December 2010 and April 2011, Johnson won $4m from Caesars, $5m from the Borgata and $6m from the Tropicana, where he staked in the region of $60m.
"Everyone asks me how I felt but it really wasn't emotional," he says. "It was mechanical to me. I don't ever remember high-fiving anyone. It wasn't like that. It wasn't an emotional ride. I just carried on playing because I had enough confidence in the edge.
"It was a bit surreal but there wasn't any celebrating between hands, even after the largest hand I ever played, which was $800,000. At some point I knew the game was going to end – and in one of the games that was after I'd won the $6m. It wasn't like I had any plan of stopping at that point but I didn't realise the regulations stipulated they weren't allowed to put more chips on the floor than they had cash in the cage to cover their liability. I had already taken all the cash. I do remember at that point thinking I was awfully tired and wanted to take a nap."
Johnson adds: "I was very good at the execution. I figured out clever ways to get the money down but at some point the casinos decide they just can't take bets from someone winning so much money. Pool betting on racing is different. A winning punter can be a good partner to the racing industry.
"Even during those Atlantic City days I was still working on trying to figure out an analytics model that would work for betting on racing. It's all about always trying to come up with new data. You don't always know where the data is going to come from but then you test it and find it has value."
Meet the former jockey who took $15m off Atlantic City - and is now one of the world's biggest racing punters
Lee Mottershead talks to Don Johnson, blackjack genius and a pioneer in computer-assisted wagering
It is the sort of scene that would work perfectly in a blockbuster movie. The only living soul in that scene could just as easily be the movie's hero.
On a scorching hot afternoon a Ford Explorer travels down an otherwise deserted desert highway somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix. In the driver's seat is an exquisitely tanned man who wears expensive jewellery, a suit and sunglasses. He is the epitome of cool. He is also one of the world's biggest, most successful and wealthiest gamblers.
Over the coming days our Masters of Betting series will feature legendary punters of the past and present. You will read about exceptionally shrewd individuals from whom some valuable lessons can be learned. These are extraordinary people who are living or lived extraordinary lives. Quite rightly leading the way is Don Johnson.
It's a good name for someone whose story feels ripe for a Hollywood portrayal. Johnson is a former jockey and racecourse manager who in a five-month spell won $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos. The 63-year-old is good at blackjack and not bad at racing, either, which is handy as he is part of a computer-assisted wagering syndicate that regularly pumps millions of dollars into pari-mutuel pools. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the Miami Vice star's namesake knows a lot of famous people.
"I have some friends who happen to be actors or actresses, people like Paris Hilton, Kevin Dillon and Charlie Sheen," says Johnson from behind the Explorer's steering wheel. "Some of those guys love the ponies. They don't have to pay Kevin to show up for horseracing. He loves it."
Johnson loves it, too, and always has done, right back to when he was spending his childhood in Oregon on a thoroughbred farm and then earning a living riding races, generally at a level some way removed from the Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup.
"I was born into the racing industry," says Johnson. "I fell in love with it and I've never had to leave. I've flourished in this industry because I enjoy it.
"I loved being a jockey and probably rode around 100 winners but I'm 6ft 1in, so I was starving myself just to make the weight. I rode in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and northern California but a lot of those circuits I rode on weren't even printed in the Daily Racing Form, so there is no record of many of my races.
"After I finished riding I transitioned over to officiating on racing and then kept looking up, trying to get the next position. I was a junior racing official, a steward, a racing judge and then ran a racing commission. I moved on to managing tracks and ultimately wound up at Philadelphia Park."
It was while working at the Pennsylvania track that Johnson's life changed. His interest was sparked by groups of punters – known as 'handicappers' in the US – who repeatedly turned up at the track and consistently seemed to win. Supported by two British bosses, Bob Green and Bill Hogwood, who shared his enthusiasm for using data, he made a point of supplying the punters with all the information he could muster, knowing that the more they bet, the more it would increase the track's betting handle and therefore also its profits. Johnson watched and learned.
"It was obvious they weren't degenerates or addicts," he recalls. "They knew what they were doing because they were making money – and they were all using additional information.
"It was clear to me they had an edge. There was a science behind what they were doing. That made me think about transitioning that science across to other areas of gaming. That's when I got the blackjack idea. I was lucky to meet the right maths guys at the right time. It gave me the confidence to put some real dollars behind it and to start building up a bankroll."
The bankroll quickly got bigger and bigger. At the same time, casinos hammered by the financial crash became desperate to attract high rollers, offering an array of perks and concessions in an effort to bring vast sums of money into their halls.
"If your edge is big enough, it doesn't take a lot to get going," says Johnson. "At the time, Atlantic City were giving away too many advantages. I don't think even they realised they were giving away their house edge. You can't give somebody a 20 to 25 per cent rebate on their losses per trip and expect to win. I never bet to lose more than the maximum rebate. All I had to do was play perfect strategy."
In one jaw-dropping period he played that perfect strategy perfectly. Between December 2010 and April 2011, Johnson won $4m from Caesars, $5m from the Borgata and $6m from the Tropicana, where he staked in the region of $60m.
"Everyone asks me how I felt but it really wasn't emotional," he says. "It was mechanical to me. I don't ever remember high-fiving anyone. It wasn't like that. It wasn't an emotional ride. I just carried on playing because I had enough confidence in the edge.
"It was a bit surreal but there wasn't any celebrating between hands, even after the largest hand I ever played, which was $800,000. At some point I knew the game was going to end – and in one of the games that was after I'd won the $6m. It wasn't like I had any plan of stopping at that point but I didn't realise the regulations stipulated they weren't allowed to put more chips on the floor than they had cash in the cage to cover their liability. I had already taken all the cash. I do remember at that point thinking I was awfully tired and wanted to take a nap."
Johnson adds: "I was very good at the execution. I figured out clever ways to get the money down but at some point the casinos decide they just can't take bets from someone winning so much money. Pool betting on racing is different. A winning punter can be a good partner to the racing industry.
"Even during those Atlantic City days I was still working on trying to figure out an analytics model that would work for betting on racing. It's all about always trying to come up with new data. You don't always know where the data is going to come from but then you test it and find it has value."
Following a brief stop on the road, Johnson resumes his journey towards Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and then on to his Pennsylvania home. Behind him is an awful lot of sage brush and a University of Arizona symposium, at which he attended a session assessing the value to racing of computer-assisted wagering (CAW), the betting approach that uses algorithms and advanced technology to assess form, odds and real-time betting data before automatically placing large numbers of bets in the final moments before a race. Johnson is now a prominent member of the CAW scene. Indeed, his turnover, prowess and profits earn him a lofty position in a table of the world's biggest gamblers, at which the number-one spot goes to the publicity-shy London-based Australian Zeljko Ranogajec.
Stressing that he does not work alone, Johnson says: "The largest team in the business has north of 2,000 people working for them and they're doing in the ballpark of $6 billion a year. The smaller groups are doing maybe $100m a year. Our syndicate is somewhere in between, although we're definitely at the higher end of the food chain, rather than the lower end.
"Not everyone in the group appreciates the exposure but, for me, the exposure is already out there because my blackjack endeavours were written about years ago.
"The architect of our group is the maths genius who did the modelling and wrote the mathematical code. I call him Good Will Hunting because he never went to university and started what he's doing now in high school. He then perfected it and made it better and better over a number of years. I've now been working with him for a little over 20 years, which shows you this didn't just happen overnight."
It could be said that 'overnight' is practically the only time that Johnson and his crew are not consumed by racing and the quest to find winners and new winning systems.
"I watch racing every day," he says. "Everyone like me does that. To us, watching racing is like breathing or drinking water. We look at every pool type in every race every day. Everything gets handicapped because you don't always know where your edge is going to come from. You also don't know what the betting public is going to do. Someone could cause an outlier anomaly in a pool that drives up a price and makes a horse undervalued.
"I don't ever get tired of it but I could never have envisaged this happening at this level. Even now, there are days when I'm astounded by the turnover numbers. It's crazy how big they can be. There are days when we're betting in the millions. If it's a day with a few big races around the globe, we can certainly bet $5m in a single day. That would not be inconceivable.
"We've knocked down a few of the big Pick6 pools, winning anywhere from $1m to $2.5m. You're not hitting all of them, though, and there's a lot of variance. When a 99-1 shot wins people say the CAW players are bound to have backed him. There's no guarantee of that. We still have to handicap a horse, like everyone else, and there's no reason we should have the extreme outliers. You're dumping big dollars into those pools, and it's great when you hit the big numbers, but sometimes you blank."
Money is also pumped into British and Irish racing pools and markets, although their attractiveness may be fading.
"Betfair has got increasingly difficult because there is less liquidity," says Johnson. "For me, the UK Tote is also a bit problematic because it's well known they bet into their own pools. As a former regulator, I have a problem with that. If you're the custodian of a market and you bet into that pool, it looks like you're competing with your own customers. It also says to me that you lack liquidity."
Having developed software that better assesses the merits of horses trained outside the US, Johnson is now increasingly comfortable backing European-trained runners in his home country. That proved profitable when his syndicate aligned itself with the Willie Mullins-trained 27-1 Breeders' Cup Turf winner Ethical Diamond.
"It was really something for me to be backing an Irish jumps trainer," says Johnson. "It was mostly to do with the fact the class of jumps horses he had been competing against was similar to the quality of horse he could have been racing against in Grade 1 Flat races in the US. He was a phenomenal grass horse and we could see the trainer was very good with jumps horses going on to the Flat.
"The week after the race I was in Melbourne for the Cup and went to a breakfast hosted by Robbie Waterhouse. Ethical Diamond's trainer showed up for that, which was a real treat for me.
"I actually went with Robbie to Cheltenham a few years ago. I loved it, although it was confusing at first. I couldn't work out how the hell the jockeys knew where to go. It looked like they were jumping a hedge, then a moat, doing a loop-the-loop and then running up a hill."
While the intricacies of jump racing remain something of a mystery to Johnson, gambling does not. He made headlines when winning millions of dollars from vast casinos that were forced to wave white flags of surrender. Since then he has focused his skills on his first love, horseracing, embracing a method of betting that has proved controversial, not least for its tendency to pour huge sums of money into pools less than a minute before races start. Indeed, a class action was last year filed against a number of leading American racecourse groups and featured allegations of collusion, a rigged system and 'no risk, no loss' wagering.
Johnson – now a racehorse owner and successful in numerous big races – refutes the accusations and argues his preferred method of betting will aid, not damage, the sport.
"We did a study through Southampton University in the UK that highlighted how much recreational players benefit from the informed trading pros," says Johnson. "Recreational punters all get sized up when the pros miss – and they miss more often than people think.
"The computer-assisted wagering acronym was created 20 years ago when they were calling it robotic wagering. The reality is none of this is robotic. This isn't about Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's not The Terminator and the machines aren't taking over. It's not Armageddon. None of this runs itself. It all has armies of humans working behind the scenes to keep improving the software.
"People talk about CAW players but everyone is a computer-assisted wagering player. Everyone is now using a hand-held device that is more powerful than computers were 20 years ago. We also all know young people want to use data. It was true 20 years ago, it was true ten years ago and it's just as true today. As technology improves, if you want to attract a younger generation to racing, you have to let them use the toolkits they're accustomed to using. That's what turns them on."
It's what turns him on, too. It is also central to the piece of advice he offers regular punters.
"There is a lot of data out there that you can use in your own handicapping that will make you a better player," says Johnson.
Coming from one of the very best players in the world, it must be a tip worth taking.
Stressing that he does not work alone, Johnson says: "The largest team in the business has north of 2,000 people working for them and they're doing in the ballpark of $6 billion a year. The smaller groups are doing maybe $100m a year. Our syndicate is somewhere in between, although we're definitely at the higher end of the food chain, rather than the lower end.
"Not everyone in the group appreciates the exposure but, for me, the exposure is already out there because my blackjack endeavours were written about years ago.
"The architect of our group is the maths genius who did the modelling and wrote the mathematical code. I call him Good Will Hunting because he never went to university and started what he's doing now in high school. He then perfected it and made it better and better over a number of years. I've now been working with him for a little over 20 years, which shows you this didn't just happen overnight."
It could be said that 'overnight' is practically the only time that Johnson and his crew are not consumed by racing and the quest to find winners and new winning systems.
"I watch racing every day," he says. "Everyone like me does that. To us, watching racing is like breathing or drinking water. We look at every pool type in every race every day. Everything gets handicapped because you don't always know where your edge is going to come from. You also don't know what the betting public is going to do. Someone could cause an outlier anomaly in a pool that drives up a price and makes a horse undervalued.
"I don't ever get tired of it but I could never have envisaged this happening at this level. Even now, there are days when I'm astounded by the turnover numbers. It's crazy how big they can be. There are days when we're betting in the millions. If it's a day with a few big races around the globe, we can certainly bet $5m in a single day. That would not be inconceivable.
"We've knocked down a few of the big Pick6 pools, winning anywhere from $1m to $2.5m. You're not hitting all of them, though, and there's a lot of variance. When a 99-1 shot wins people say the CAW players are bound to have backed him. There's no guarantee of that. We still have to handicap a horse, like everyone else, and there's no reason we should have the extreme outliers. You're dumping big dollars into those pools, and it's great when you hit the big numbers, but sometimes you blank."
Money is also pumped into British and Irish racing pools and markets, although their attractiveness may be fading.
"Betfair has got increasingly difficult because there is less liquidity," says Johnson. "For me, the UK Tote is also a bit problematic because it's well known they bet into their own pools. As a former regulator, I have a problem with that. If you're the custodian of a market and you bet into that pool, it looks like you're competing with your own customers. It also says to me that you lack liquidity."
Having developed software that better assesses the merits of horses trained outside the US, Johnson is now increasingly comfortable backing European-trained runners in his home country. That proved profitable when his syndicate aligned itself with the Willie Mullins-trained 27-1 Breeders' Cup Turf winner Ethical Diamond.
"It was really something for me to be backing an Irish jumps trainer," says Johnson. "It was mostly to do with the fact the class of jumps horses he had been competing against was similar to the quality of horse he could have been racing against in Grade 1 Flat races in the US. He was a phenomenal grass horse and we could see the trainer was very good with jumps horses going on to the Flat.
"The week after the race I was in Melbourne for the Cup and went to a breakfast hosted by Robbie Waterhouse. Ethical Diamond's trainer showed up for that, which was a real treat for me.
"I actually went with Robbie to Cheltenham a few years ago. I loved it, although it was confusing at first. I couldn't work out how the hell the jockeys knew where to go. It looked like they were jumping a hedge, then a moat, doing a loop-the-loop and then running up a hill."
While the intricacies of jump racing remain something of a mystery to Johnson, gambling does not. He made headlines when winning millions of dollars from vast casinos that were forced to wave white flags of surrender. Since then he has focused his skills on his first love, horseracing, embracing a method of betting that has proved controversial, not least for its tendency to pour huge sums of money into pools less than a minute before races start. Indeed, a class action was last year filed against a number of leading American racecourse groups and featured allegations of collusion, a rigged system and 'no risk, no loss' wagering.
Johnson – now a racehorse owner and successful in numerous big races – refutes the accusations and argues his preferred method of betting will aid, not damage, the sport.
"We did a study through Southampton University in the UK that highlighted how much recreational players benefit from the informed trading pros," says Johnson. "Recreational punters all get sized up when the pros miss – and they miss more often than people think.
"The computer-assisted wagering acronym was created 20 years ago when they were calling it robotic wagering. The reality is none of this is robotic. This isn't about Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's not The Terminator and the machines aren't taking over. It's not Armageddon. None of this runs itself. It all has armies of humans working behind the scenes to keep improving the software.
"People talk about CAW players but everyone is a computer-assisted wagering player. Everyone is now using a hand-held device that is more powerful than computers were 20 years ago. We also all know young people want to use data. It was true 20 years ago, it was true ten years ago and it's just as true today. As technology improves, if you want to attract a younger generation to racing, you have to let them use the toolkits they're accustomed to using. That's what turns them on."
It's what turns him on, too. It is also central to the piece of advice he offers regular punters.
"There is a lot of data out there that you can use in your own handicapping that will make you a better player," says Johnson.
Coming from one of the very best players in the world, it must be a tip worth taking.
Ian_Davies
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In another life, when I was a Betting Exchange Operator, Zeljko asked to give me a call - we were on the phone from 2am-4am (I think he was in Australia at the time).
For a host of reasons I take to very, very, few people in the racing and betting industries (and, let's face it, in life tbh), but I actually rather liked him, he seemed a completely regular guy.
I've since met others who knew him and they said pretty much the same.
He's one of two punters with that modus operandi I've met in my life and I learned plenty off both of them. #knowwhentojustlistenandlearn
In a five-part series, we have profiled the people who strike fear in bookmakers; the ones who all punters aspire to be. They are the Masters of Betting – Don Johnson, Steve Lewis Hamilton, Phil Bull, Alan Potts and Tony Bloom – and they are about to be put under the spotlight by the Racing Post like never before.
Not a subscriber? This is the perfect time to sign up with our introductory offer of 25% off for your first six months of a monthly subscription - just click here and enter the code MASTERSOFBETTING256 at the checkout.
If you were to cut Steve Lewis Hamilton there's little doubt he'd bleed the colour of bank notes; the old paper ones, brown, purple and pink, like you used to give to the bookies on the racecourse back in the day. Chop off a leg and he'd have 'Old-School Punter' written right through him like a stick of rock.
Luckily, there's no need for such drastic measures. A couple of hours in his company are all it takes to piece together the story of a boy from south London who packed up his job at Smithfield meat market to make a go of it on the track, negotiated the bumps in the road and never looked back.
He rode the rails from course to course, when the internet was but a twinkle and the market was strong, and with a sharp mind and a flexible attitude he has reinvented himself as a player in the modern age, albeit from a garden workspace in Chesterfield these days – an honest punter in the town of the crooked spire.
He'd never claim to be any kind of master himself. At the age of 70, he'd be more likely to reflect on how crazy it feels to have made a living and raised a family from betting on the first horse past the post; but at the end of the day he's happy that he's not done bad for a Bermondsey lad who started with seven-eighths of bugger all.
His status in the punting community comes more from his longevity and resilience rather than any swashbuckling battles with the bookies. He's never been a "big player", he admits, but with a grasp of the figures and a head that's learned to be professional on shoulders that have been able to bear the load, he's survived through it all.
The start of it, though, was not so much a blaze of betting glory but a dodgy bank loan for a kitchen that never existed.
'We borrowed ten grand from Barclays to start us off'
Lewis Hamilton was bright at comprehensive school, always had an interest in horses and as a boy he often showed up at Sandown and Epsom with his dad. When his dad wasn't available, he and his underage brothers would badger strangers to take them in, and soon Lewis Hamilton developed an 'in' to the action, through betting.
"I was bright enough to realise I had to go racing to try to understand the gambling as opposed to just the form work," he explains. "I was in my early thirties when I did a year keeping proper records. My maximum bet would have been 50 quid and at the end of the year I'd shown a profit of about 50 quid a week. I thought if I could step that up and earn 500 quid a week I'd be on to something.
"We [he and wife Jayne] had no money though, so we borrowed ten grand from Barclays for a new kitchen and I started with that. We got the kitchen eventually when I had a jackpot up on Ascot Heath day which won us 22 grand, but there were a few bumps in the road along the way."
Never has a bank loan been so dishonestly or so well invested. Our man told his wife that he wanted to make a proper go of punting, starting at 5am at Smithfield, finishing at ten and then hopping on the train to wherever he needed to be that day, often in the company of inveterate rail traveller, fellow punter and racing journalist Eddie 'The Shoe' Fremantle.
Fremantle introduced him to the right people and he struck up friendships with the likes of renowned backer John Gough so things clicked pretty quickly.
"I started earning ten times more than when I'd done my year of practice," he recalls. "My minimum bet, all of a sudden, would be £100 and my maximum £500. I packed up at Smithfield, where I'd been getting £190 a week, and inside a month [famed old-school punter] Johnny Lights came up to me and asked me to mark his card for him and said he'd give me £200 a day, which made me realise what was possible."
What might have been the insurmountable obstacle – persuading a wife with no interest in racing that the precarious existence of professional punting was a good way to go for a young family – was overcome by early success.
"I only did jump racing – it was all on-course because you still had off-course betting tax – and I remember going down to Newton Abbot in August for the start of the season and in the first week I won four and a half grand, ready money, all cash," he remembers. "It was a bit of a false dawn, and when I only won a grand the following week it was a bit of a disappointment, but it proved to me I could make it work."
Not a subscriber? This is the perfect time to sign up with our introductory offer of 25% off for your first six months of a monthly subscription - just click here and enter the code MASTERSOFBETTING256 at the checkout.
If you were to cut Steve Lewis Hamilton there's little doubt he'd bleed the colour of bank notes; the old paper ones, brown, purple and pink, like you used to give to the bookies on the racecourse back in the day. Chop off a leg and he'd have 'Old-School Punter' written right through him like a stick of rock.
Luckily, there's no need for such drastic measures. A couple of hours in his company are all it takes to piece together the story of a boy from south London who packed up his job at Smithfield meat market to make a go of it on the track, negotiated the bumps in the road and never looked back.
He rode the rails from course to course, when the internet was but a twinkle and the market was strong, and with a sharp mind and a flexible attitude he has reinvented himself as a player in the modern age, albeit from a garden workspace in Chesterfield these days – an honest punter in the town of the crooked spire.
He'd never claim to be any kind of master himself. At the age of 70, he'd be more likely to reflect on how crazy it feels to have made a living and raised a family from betting on the first horse past the post; but at the end of the day he's happy that he's not done bad for a Bermondsey lad who started with seven-eighths of bugger all.
His status in the punting community comes more from his longevity and resilience rather than any swashbuckling battles with the bookies. He's never been a "big player", he admits, but with a grasp of the figures and a head that's learned to be professional on shoulders that have been able to bear the load, he's survived through it all.
The start of it, though, was not so much a blaze of betting glory but a dodgy bank loan for a kitchen that never existed.
'We borrowed ten grand from Barclays to start us off'
Lewis Hamilton was bright at comprehensive school, always had an interest in horses and as a boy he often showed up at Sandown and Epsom with his dad. When his dad wasn't available, he and his underage brothers would badger strangers to take them in, and soon Lewis Hamilton developed an 'in' to the action, through betting.
"I was bright enough to realise I had to go racing to try to understand the gambling as opposed to just the form work," he explains. "I was in my early thirties when I did a year keeping proper records. My maximum bet would have been 50 quid and at the end of the year I'd shown a profit of about 50 quid a week. I thought if I could step that up and earn 500 quid a week I'd be on to something.
"We [he and wife Jayne] had no money though, so we borrowed ten grand from Barclays for a new kitchen and I started with that. We got the kitchen eventually when I had a jackpot up on Ascot Heath day which won us 22 grand, but there were a few bumps in the road along the way."
Never has a bank loan been so dishonestly or so well invested. Our man told his wife that he wanted to make a proper go of punting, starting at 5am at Smithfield, finishing at ten and then hopping on the train to wherever he needed to be that day, often in the company of inveterate rail traveller, fellow punter and racing journalist Eddie 'The Shoe' Fremantle.
Fremantle introduced him to the right people and he struck up friendships with the likes of renowned backer John Gough so things clicked pretty quickly.
"I started earning ten times more than when I'd done my year of practice," he recalls. "My minimum bet, all of a sudden, would be £100 and my maximum £500. I packed up at Smithfield, where I'd been getting £190 a week, and inside a month [famed old-school punter] Johnny Lights came up to me and asked me to mark his card for him and said he'd give me £200 a day, which made me realise what was possible."
What might have been the insurmountable obstacle – persuading a wife with no interest in racing that the precarious existence of professional punting was a good way to go for a young family – was overcome by early success.
"I only did jump racing – it was all on-course because you still had off-course betting tax – and I remember going down to Newton Abbot in August for the start of the season and in the first week I won four and a half grand, ready money, all cash," he remembers. "It was a bit of a false dawn, and when I only won a grand the following week it was a bit of a disappointment, but it proved to me I could make it work."
Fremantle introduced him to the right people and he struck up friendships with the likes of renowned backer John Gough so things clicked pretty quickly.
"I started earning ten times more than when I'd done my year of practice," he recalls. "My minimum bet, all of a sudden, would be £100 and my maximum £500. I packed up at Smithfield, where I'd been getting £190 a week, and inside a month [famed old-school punter] Johnny Lights came up to me and asked me to mark his card for him and said he'd give me £200 a day, which made me realise what was possible."
What might have been the insurmountable obstacle – persuading a wife with no interest in racing that the precarious existence of professional punting was a good way to go for a young family – was overcome by early success.
"I only did jump racing – it was all on-course because you still had off-course betting tax – and I remember going down to Newton Abbot in August for the start of the season and in the first week I won four and a half grand, ready money, all cash," he remembers. "It was a bit of a false dawn, and when I only won a grand the following week it was a bit of a disappointment, but it proved to me I could make it work."
Not everybody appreciates the noble art of the professional punter – Jayne's dad thought his son-in-law would be better off as a taxi driver and was only won over when Lewis Hamilton started appearing on the Racing Channel – but a long-running subscription-based advice service suggests enough people are on board and Lewis Hamilton works hard to keep his head in front. He's up at around 5.30am for 20 minutes of exercise and stretches, then a quick shower before starting work at six.
"I watch every jump race,” he says. “I don't think I've missed one since the advent of racing on TV, and I feel comfortable doing it. I still do my own handicapping, do my own notes and transfer them over. I get bollocked for it by my son, who wonders why I don't do it on AI, but writing my notes reinforces what I've seen and my 'go-to' are my ratings. They may not be vastly different from the official ratings or any others, but they're different enough to give me an edge, and that's my way into a race."
Today, for example, "two horses have achieved at a similar level on my figures but one is 1-3 and the other is 3-1, because the Timeform ratings have the favourite rated 10-15lb higher than me. So I can understand the discrepancy and it points me towards a bet" – a winner, in fact, although the day ends up in the category he calls "theory correct, send more money".
He admits that losing days affect him more now that his turnover is much lower, even though his outgoings have gone down in tandem.
"I used to sit in the car for three hours and have six bets on a day. Sometimes now it's five or six bets a week, but I don't have those expenses to pay and the psychology hasn't really changed."
With his form work for the day done, it's time to get down to the nuts and bolts on Betfair.
"I try to highlight any discrepancies within the markets – in my opinion – going through each race one by one, pricing them, trying not to look at the prices before I do my own.
"After that, I'm not looking to earn a certain figure, so I play what I feel comfortable with and I do things that mentally I'm happy with, which I think is very important in the long term."
'Unless there's an error in the prices I can't get involved'
The tipping service is still going strong after 25 years, although honesty and phone lines aren't always easy bedfellows.
"I'd never be told what to say and I wouldn't fabricate things – maybe if I'd done that I'd have got a bit more out of it," shrugs Lewis Hamilton, adding: “These days people can access so much information for free and think they know what they're doing. Too many people don't care that you've done hours of form work to come up with a bet; they just want to know you've spoken to connections and have some inside information."
What Lewis Hamilton still offers is bets that represent value, working strictly on available prices, although a lot has changed from the halcyon days of the on-course punter.
"In the old days there were ricks made on the boards and that was the edge you had," he explains, "but now the markets are pretty accurate and unless I think there's an error in the prices I can't get involved.
"The thing is, you don't know on the exchanges who you're betting with and what the angles are, whereas on the track you could see who was playing and it gave you an understanding of the market.
"I just play the way I've always played: back horses that are overpriced and lay horses that are underpriced, and over the years I've managed to level off the profit and loss line by being thorough and not making, in theory, too many ricks."
'Money's never been the driving force'
Have the decades of seeing her husband chipping away at the punting coalface – since the days when the couple ran pubs at King's Cross and on the Old Kent Road – given Jayne a fascination for the turf, or at least inured her to its unforgiving nature?
"I can't be interested in it, otherwise it'd cripple me; I'd go crazy," she says. "I've got a thing about money, which is the exact opposite to Steve."
"I got her to come and watch a race once, one that stood to make us a fair bit, and turning into the home straight I thought we'd win," says hubby, "so I turned to look at Jayne and she had her thumbs in her ears and her hands over her eyes. She just couldn't hack it.
"As a punter you have a different mindset and money's never been the driving force. If I thought about what I was winning or losing it would be too much for me to handle, but I've learned to manage it.
"The whole thing's crackers, I know, and that's Jayne's point, but it's what I do."
For Lewis Hamilton, the best bets have been about satisfaction rather than huge sums bet or won. He recalls a day at Towcester: “I bet £1,000 to £30 three times on course on a horse I had in at 5-1, so I couldn't let it run unbacked, purely on price. It won and it was pleasing knowing I'd got it right."
As the game has developed, he's followed the line that "you adapt because you have to; you have to move on to survive".
Does he have regrets about the game he's played for so long?
"The social side is dead and buried and I do miss that, but I still get the buzz out of what I do," he says. "I question it, the hours I'm putting in and what the job involves, but both kids have learned to accept what I do and what I'm like.
"I remember on our granddaughter's fifth birthday, I couldn't go because I was working. I look back and wonder if I should have gone, but that's my life, it's given the family a lot and we're all still very tight together. That's how I justify it and I've no intention of stopping, although Jayne would like me to retire."
Does he believe there is a future for the serious punter, or is the job on its way out? On this subject he has strong views.
"The trouble is, life is a million shades of grey but these days people want black or white and if you're middle of the road, trying to be objective, you're ****ed,” he says.
"Very few people really understand the gambling aspect of racing and on the TV I never hear anybody talk about it. You try to offer some perspective but people's eyes glaze over. They just want to do their football accumulator, even though there's no value in it.
"If it's just recreational, that's fine, but if anybody thinks they can make it pay without understanding the percentages, they need to be told."
It's an old-school message that still stands firm in the modern age, and Steve Lewis Hamilton is living, breathing, punting proof that it makes sense.
"I started earning ten times more than when I'd done my year of practice," he recalls. "My minimum bet, all of a sudden, would be £100 and my maximum £500. I packed up at Smithfield, where I'd been getting £190 a week, and inside a month [famed old-school punter] Johnny Lights came up to me and asked me to mark his card for him and said he'd give me £200 a day, which made me realise what was possible."
What might have been the insurmountable obstacle – persuading a wife with no interest in racing that the precarious existence of professional punting was a good way to go for a young family – was overcome by early success.
"I only did jump racing – it was all on-course because you still had off-course betting tax – and I remember going down to Newton Abbot in August for the start of the season and in the first week I won four and a half grand, ready money, all cash," he remembers. "It was a bit of a false dawn, and when I only won a grand the following week it was a bit of a disappointment, but it proved to me I could make it work."
Not everybody appreciates the noble art of the professional punter – Jayne's dad thought his son-in-law would be better off as a taxi driver and was only won over when Lewis Hamilton started appearing on the Racing Channel – but a long-running subscription-based advice service suggests enough people are on board and Lewis Hamilton works hard to keep his head in front. He's up at around 5.30am for 20 minutes of exercise and stretches, then a quick shower before starting work at six.
"I watch every jump race,” he says. “I don't think I've missed one since the advent of racing on TV, and I feel comfortable doing it. I still do my own handicapping, do my own notes and transfer them over. I get bollocked for it by my son, who wonders why I don't do it on AI, but writing my notes reinforces what I've seen and my 'go-to' are my ratings. They may not be vastly different from the official ratings or any others, but they're different enough to give me an edge, and that's my way into a race."
Today, for example, "two horses have achieved at a similar level on my figures but one is 1-3 and the other is 3-1, because the Timeform ratings have the favourite rated 10-15lb higher than me. So I can understand the discrepancy and it points me towards a bet" – a winner, in fact, although the day ends up in the category he calls "theory correct, send more money".
He admits that losing days affect him more now that his turnover is much lower, even though his outgoings have gone down in tandem.
"I used to sit in the car for three hours and have six bets on a day. Sometimes now it's five or six bets a week, but I don't have those expenses to pay and the psychology hasn't really changed."
With his form work for the day done, it's time to get down to the nuts and bolts on Betfair.
"I try to highlight any discrepancies within the markets – in my opinion – going through each race one by one, pricing them, trying not to look at the prices before I do my own.
"After that, I'm not looking to earn a certain figure, so I play what I feel comfortable with and I do things that mentally I'm happy with, which I think is very important in the long term."
'Unless there's an error in the prices I can't get involved'
The tipping service is still going strong after 25 years, although honesty and phone lines aren't always easy bedfellows.
"I'd never be told what to say and I wouldn't fabricate things – maybe if I'd done that I'd have got a bit more out of it," shrugs Lewis Hamilton, adding: “These days people can access so much information for free and think they know what they're doing. Too many people don't care that you've done hours of form work to come up with a bet; they just want to know you've spoken to connections and have some inside information."
What Lewis Hamilton still offers is bets that represent value, working strictly on available prices, although a lot has changed from the halcyon days of the on-course punter.
"In the old days there were ricks made on the boards and that was the edge you had," he explains, "but now the markets are pretty accurate and unless I think there's an error in the prices I can't get involved.
"The thing is, you don't know on the exchanges who you're betting with and what the angles are, whereas on the track you could see who was playing and it gave you an understanding of the market.
"I just play the way I've always played: back horses that are overpriced and lay horses that are underpriced, and over the years I've managed to level off the profit and loss line by being thorough and not making, in theory, too many ricks."
'Money's never been the driving force'
Have the decades of seeing her husband chipping away at the punting coalface – since the days when the couple ran pubs at King's Cross and on the Old Kent Road – given Jayne a fascination for the turf, or at least inured her to its unforgiving nature?
"I can't be interested in it, otherwise it'd cripple me; I'd go crazy," she says. "I've got a thing about money, which is the exact opposite to Steve."
"I got her to come and watch a race once, one that stood to make us a fair bit, and turning into the home straight I thought we'd win," says hubby, "so I turned to look at Jayne and she had her thumbs in her ears and her hands over her eyes. She just couldn't hack it.
"As a punter you have a different mindset and money's never been the driving force. If I thought about what I was winning or losing it would be too much for me to handle, but I've learned to manage it.
"The whole thing's crackers, I know, and that's Jayne's point, but it's what I do."
For Lewis Hamilton, the best bets have been about satisfaction rather than huge sums bet or won. He recalls a day at Towcester: “I bet £1,000 to £30 three times on course on a horse I had in at 5-1, so I couldn't let it run unbacked, purely on price. It won and it was pleasing knowing I'd got it right."
As the game has developed, he's followed the line that "you adapt because you have to; you have to move on to survive".
Does he have regrets about the game he's played for so long?
"The social side is dead and buried and I do miss that, but I still get the buzz out of what I do," he says. "I question it, the hours I'm putting in and what the job involves, but both kids have learned to accept what I do and what I'm like.
"I remember on our granddaughter's fifth birthday, I couldn't go because I was working. I look back and wonder if I should have gone, but that's my life, it's given the family a lot and we're all still very tight together. That's how I justify it and I've no intention of stopping, although Jayne would like me to retire."
Does he believe there is a future for the serious punter, or is the job on its way out? On this subject he has strong views.
"The trouble is, life is a million shades of grey but these days people want black or white and if you're middle of the road, trying to be objective, you're ****ed,” he says.
"Very few people really understand the gambling aspect of racing and on the TV I never hear anybody talk about it. You try to offer some perspective but people's eyes glaze over. They just want to do their football accumulator, even though there's no value in it.
"If it's just recreational, that's fine, but if anybody thinks they can make it pay without understanding the percentages, they need to be told."
It's an old-school message that still stands firm in the modern age, and Steve Lewis Hamilton is living, breathing, punting proof that it makes sense.
Greatlife
Amateur Rider
It has been several years since I last wagered with a bookmaker. Eventually I reluctantly accepted the fact that the only viable option for serious horse-race bettors was the betting exchanges. I am not at all optimistic about any future improvement in this situation.
When science met punting: the godfather of modern-day betting and his golden rules that remain valid to this day
Peter Thomas remembers the legendary Phil Bull, who was reputed to have won around £7.4m in today’s money in his heyday
Down the decades, Phil Bull has gained the status of an 'untouchable'. In what he liked to refer to as the "great triviality" of horseracing, he became known during his most productive period as one of the greatest gamblers of all time.
Not that he liked being called a gambler. Pure gambling, he argued, was roulette and bingo, games of chance that offered no prospect of pecuniary gain for the shrewd investor.
“Racing is different," he explained. "It’s a continuing play, with a fresh set of individual characters every year. Not a whodunnit, but a who’ll-do-it. There’s a challenge to solve, and success or failure is reflected in one’s bank balance. A fascinating challenge to one’s skills.”
His name was made as a pioneering punter whose rules – shared as a set of Ten Commandments – helped him relieve the bookmakers of a fortune that set up this avowed communist as a new member of Britain's landed gentry, a racehorse owner and breeder whose grand estate played host to the great and good, toffs and celebrities, of the age.
Perhaps in the interests of some politically motivated redistribution of wealth, Bull was reputed to have won from the bookies, in his heyday from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, around £7.4 million in today's money (although the figure varies), much of it from judicious use of his own time figures – soon incorporated into the long-running Timeform stable that made his name in the world of publishing.
His methodology was ground-breaking, an education for the ambitious gambler in the finer points of the art, from paddock inspection to spotting value in the markets. If he were operating in the modern age, the Sage of Halifax would surely have been nominated if not the GOAT, certainly one of the GOATs, a ginger-bearded cross between Dick Turpin and Fidel Castro, running amok in a world of unearned privilege and status.
To understand his motivations and methods, however, we must go back to his humble roots, where the committed atheist began to devote his life to the intellectual pursuit of profit. To say he made enemies along the way would be to understate the case by a factor even his own mathematical expertise would struggle to calculate.
‘The first genuine application of science to racing’
Bull was born in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire in 1910, won a scholarship to the local grammar school and gained a degree in maths from Leeds University.
His mother was a schoolteacher, his father a miner until an industrial accident forced him to repurpose himself as a sanitary inspector. Bill Bull was a moderate punter but a fervent union man and an avid reader of classics, and his beliefs rubbed off on the young Phil, who even tried his hand as a playwright as a socio-cultural sideline.
He went reluctantly into a career as a schoolteacher in London but left it as soon as he could when, thanks partly to the statistical analysis of race times (in relation to other times recorded on the same day at the same track) that he had started work on at Leeds, he graduated from shilling bets as a schoolboy to "a good bet" on Blenheim in the 1930 Derby, and on to the kind of investment (chiefly on Pont L'Eveque's 1940 Derby win) that enabled him to move from the house in Balham where he lived with his first wife Doris to a smart place in Putney where he lived with his second wife Nell.
He would go on to accumulate two more wives, three children and a fortune that enabled him to buy a magnificent country home, The Hollins, back in Yorkshire, and establish himself as the breeder, from a growing band of broodmares, of such horses as Sussex Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes winner Romulus and Gimcrack and Champagne Stakes winner Eudaemon, and the owner-breeder or owner of many more.
Along the way, he would establish his legacy as the founder of Timeform. Bull would take care of the time side of the operation – starting out as the Temple Racetime Analysis, under the nom de plume William K Temple – while his colleague Dick Whitford later began to add the form element, and the pairing produced results that proved much in demand from postal subscribers.
Although Bull later fell out with Whitford, who felt he received scant recognition for his part in the evolving venture, the ethos of it from the beginning was sound and uncomplicated. As the late Howard Wright documented in his excellent work Bull: The Biography, "the main purpose was putting betting on a business basis with a certain and reliable income at the end of it".
From its inception in 1938, the Racetime service claimed six winning years in the first seven, trumpeting the success of "the first genuine application of science to racing", eschewing newspaper tips, inside information and excuses, stressing the "fundamental difference between picking winners and following the exceptionally fast horses", with the prescient advice to "split your bets between several bookmakers" to avoid likely account closures – even then.
The Annual Reviews followed and gathered pace, with the 1942 edition being accompanied by Bull's now highly sought-after manual, The Mathematics of Betting, which condensed his logic and method into a dozen chapters, debunking what he believed to be punting myths that could only hinder the turning of a profit.
He wasn't the only disciple of time, but his service, "scientifically calculating a race figure from a horse's race performance, taking into account the course and distance, going, wind speed and direction, weight carried by the horse and its age", proved the most successful and enduring.
"Unless all these things are taken into account, the bare time itself is meaningless,” he argued, but, "since a moderate horse can never record a really fast race figure, only one such race figure is necessary to establish a horse as a first-class animal".
‘Punters as a whole must lose substantially, but not all punters’
Bull, short, squat and whiskery, was not a modest man and was quite happy to treat all and sundry to his opinions at great length, either in print or verbally, through his whitening beard and in spite of the ubiquitous cigar gripped between his gums (the last of his teeth were removed in 1952).
Sometimes these seemed more like rants than scientific analysis; he had many bees in his bonnet, about the British class system and the governance of racing, but many of his ideas for the improvement of the sport, including starting stalls, overnight declarations, photo-finishes and centralised stewarding, would eventually bear fruit.
He is well known for his Ten Commandments, compiled in 1970 and based on the biblical version, but less frivolously, at more characteristic length and more useful for the purposes of the modern-day punter, Bull also laid out the rudiment and theory of his betting, the Golden Rules if you will, for a piece in The People in March 1965. Below is the abridged version, featuring advice that remains pertinent and perhaps wasn't popular currency when written.
Observation on racecourse: Attend to the horses and not to people.
Watch the horses in the paddock: Look at every horse, for signs of fitness, at its muscles, its coat and skin, how it carries itself, not listlessly but with purpose and enthusiasm.
The canter to the post: Never miss this. It can be frequently highly informative, particularly when the going is firm. Action, lithe, fluent, strong and purposeful or cramped, short, scratchy, laboured.
Betting for profit: Punters as a whole must lose substantially, but not necessarily all punters. Backers are not betting against the bookmakers or the Tote, they're betting against one another, but the rake-off is so big that only a few can win. The question is how to be one of the few.
Value: You bet only when the odds available are greater than they should be. This is the crux of the whole thing. The game of horseracing presents enormous opportunities for the exercise of skill and judgement. That's what makes it possible to win.
Weighting of the odds: It is the overall odds about all the runners taken together that are heavily weighted against the backer; not necessarily the odds against each individual horse.
Fitness: Early in the year, back end of season.
Jockeyship: Plays a big part. Apprentice allowance well worth allowing for in long-distance races, very valuable on occasions with a very good boy.
Draw: I have never paid so much attention to it as others.
Going considerations: Most important of all. Mostly a matter of action, also build and body weight.
Distance considerations: Very important with two-year-olds. Important with three-year-olds early on. Breeding is far and away the best guide.
Merit of the horse: Not a mathematical exercise or a jigsaw puzzle. Detective work (removing other variables).
Each-way betting: Mug punters' idea – bookies welcome it.
Advice: Importance of self-control.
Putting theory into practice, Bull was soon the owner of several Rolls-Royces and many of the other trappings of wealth, as well as a regular speaker – often at huge length – at racing functions, although not always greatly appreciated by the powers-that-be.
His finances were up and down, and Whitford recalled that in the late 1940s there were times when one or other of his prized broodmares came close to being sold to settle his debts. Bookmakers were always paid, though, and the overriding trend was upwards.
Dante's Derby win – predicted as early as the colt's two-year-old season – was an early source of pride and considerable profit (ante-post successes were a major contributor to his gains, although his carefully orchestrated coups, a la Barney Curley, often proved anything but), and he stepped back gradually from the writing of the annuals to focus on the publication of his groundbreaking Timeform ratings – and the making of money.
Longtime Timeform managing director Reg Griffin described his boss as "a very good professional punter" and his carefully recorded results bore out the tribute. The ledger showed that between 1943 and 1974 he made a profit for 11 consecutive years and had only one losing year in the first 17. The more information he sold on to the public, however, the more his own position was weakened, and as the 1960s wore on and the government's new betting tax took its toll, Bull's profits became more modest, to the point where his interest seemed to wane.
The changing landscape of the breeding business – notably the steep rise in fees for the top stallions – meant he was unable to maintain the success of that side of his operation. He continued as an enthusiastic letter writer to the racing press and dabbled briefly in racing politics, but his attention span was short once he met resistance to his arguments.
His private life was complicated. He employed young, female personal assistants and married two of them, one of whom then had an affair with one of his sons, another of whom left him for a jump jockey. His daughter Anne took her own life in 1985, at the age of 43, and in his final years Bull cut a lonely figure by his own admission, disillusioned with betting, distanced from Timeform and only a rare visitor to the racecourse. He died in 1989, aged 79.
Bull was an unusual character, sometimes playful and humorous, but often opinionated and abrasive. He was, however, an undisputed pioneer in the field of horserace betting and the force behind so much of what we now take for granted.
His methods could be seen today, somewhat inevitably, as rather old school, but, as we’ve already discovered in this series, there’s certainly still a place for that in this modern world and Bull’s golden rules remain a blueprint for anyone taking their betting seriously.
Putting theory into practice, Bull was soon the owner of several Rolls-Royces and many of the other trappings of wealth, as well as a regular speaker – often at huge length – at racing functions, although not always greatly appreciated by the powers-that-be.
His finances were up and down, and Whitford recalled that in the late 1940s there were times when one or other of his prized broodmares came close to being sold to settle his debts. Bookmakers were always paid, though, and the overriding trend was upwards.
Dante's Derby win – predicted as early as the colt's two-year-old season – was an early source of pride and considerable profit (ante-post successes were a major contributor to his gains, although his carefully orchestrated coups, a la Barney Curley, often proved anything but), and he stepped back gradually from the writing of the annuals to focus on the publication of his groundbreaking Timeform ratings – and the making of money.
Longtime Timeform managing director Reg Griffin described his boss as "a very good professional punter" and his carefully recorded results bore out the tribute. The ledger showed that between 1943 and 1974 he made a profit for 11 consecutive years and had only one losing year in the first 17. The more information he sold on to the public, however, the more his own position was weakened, and as the 1960s wore on and the government's new betting tax took its toll, Bull's profits became more modest, to the point where his interest seemed to wane.
The changing landscape of the breeding business – notably the steep rise in fees for the top stallions – meant he was unable to maintain the success of that side of his operation. He continued as an enthusiastic letter writer to the racing press and dabbled briefly in racing politics, but his attention span was short once he met resistance to his arguments.
His private life was complicated. He employed young, female personal assistants and married two of them, one of whom then had an affair with one of his sons, another of whom left him for a jump jockey. His daughter Anne took her own life in 1985, at the age of 43, and in his final years Bull cut a lonely figure by his own admission, disillusioned with betting, distanced from Timeform and only a rare visitor to the racecourse. He died in 1989, aged 79.
Bull was an unusual character, sometimes playful and humorous, but often opinionated and abrasive. He was, however, an undisputed pioneer in the field of horserace betting and the force behind so much of what we now take for granted.
His methods could be seen today, somewhat inevitably, as rather old school, but, as we’ve already discovered in this series, there’s certainly still a place for that in this modern world and Bull’s golden rules remain a blueprint for anyone taking their betting seriously.
