3 betting books all punters should read
By Stephen, www.bettingexpert.com | Published (Edited )
Twitter: @Stephenh61
Email : stephen at bettingexpert.com
With Christmas fast approaching, our racing analyst Stephen delivers us some holiday reading to help sharpen our betting minds and improve our profit and loss column in 2012.
With the festive season looming it is a good time to reflect upon the previous years betting successes and failures, and try to analyse ways of improving profitability. These three excellent reads all offer a fascinating insight into the lives of punters who often need to win to survive, and will hopefully provide new ideas and mentalities essential for anyone who enjoys a bet.
ENEMY NUMBER ONE - The Secrets of the Uk's most feared professional punter
by Patrick Veitch
This is the inside story of Patrick Veitch and how he has built up a multi million pound fortune by consistently beating the layers. The autobiography provides a clear insight into the steely mindset that is required for success in the ever-changing world of gambling. 0ver a period of eight years he documents how he won around £10m and overcame all sorts of adversity along the way, including an extortion attempt that saw him go into hiding and receiving police protection for over a year.
He details the virtual military planning that is needed to get the hefty sums on with bookmakers, often far harder than finding the winners themselves, and how he operates on a day to day basis.
Disappointingly for some there is no magic overnight system for his continued profits, he simply dedicates many hours of hard form study and video watching. Constantly recording races and watching them over and over in an attempt to find any edge that has been missed by the plethora of form services that provide the same service. That dogged pursuit of an edge, coupled with a vast range of contacts within stables that train his large string of racehorses, have seen him stay one step ahead of the game since finishing as a mathematician at Cambridge.
As a read it can get bogged down in figures a bit and Veitch's single mindedness can be overwhelming at times. However, overall it is great to read about some of the coups he has pulled off, including Exponential winning at Nottingham having been smashed down from an opening show of 100-1. I distinctly remember this win personally, as the company I was senior trader for at the time got painfully burned by a deluge of cash from new accounts on Exponential. Indeed Veitch has always had a mystical reputation in the betting industry, something he feeds off by often throwing false gambles out to disguise where the real cash is going.
For anyone interested in horse racing and the life of a true pro, this is compelling reading from the first page to the last.
Get Enemy Number One at Amazon
NO EASY MONEY - A Gamblers Diary
by Dave Nevison
Written in diary format, this chronicles a year in the betting life of the former on-course pro-punter Dave Nevison. He details very clearly the characters within the racing game and the ups and downs of a highly pressurised life, where he has to win a large sum of money every year to support his family.
This is a far more colourful account and an easier read than the Veitch style view of a life beating the layers. However, it is tempered slightly by the fact that the author is now mainly a journalist/broadcaster who no longer relies on betting to live.
That said, his journey through a calendar year of betting perfectly illustrates the torments and mental tests that any would be punter must overcome. The pressures of having a large young family, going through a divorce and trying to stay focussed on finding winners is a story well told.
Nevison has had a varied career and made a success of betting for a number of years before betfair effectively removed a massive edge. He has subsequently reinvented himself and has an excellent opinion on the form and any value still available in the fixed odds arena.
Some of his biggest wins came through spread-betting pre-betfair when the prices on offer where often wildly different from his selections true chances. Nevison's successses inevitably made "getting on" harder and harder, and some of the lengths that he and his accomplices would go to get the price they desired are very well related in this compelling diary.
Get No Easy Money at Amazon
FREUD ON COURSE - The Racing Lives of Clement Freud
by Sir Clement Freud
This is the story of the now deceased Sir Clement Freud and the amazing life he led, wrapped up totally in the worlds of betting, racing and food!.
The famous peer's lifelong devotion to betting and racing are legendary and this autobiograhy is full of tales of huge wins and more often losses, as he followed the horses he owned around the country.
As he got older he seemed to get more amusing, and his columns in any number of daily newspapers had a huge following. The anecdotes flow from page one and his unique views on some of the big names in racing provide a genuine insight.
He was not scared of having a bet and rarely a day passed in his life without a punt. Although not reliant on betting to fund his lavish lifestyle, he often threatened his numerous relations inheritance would be nothing unless a few winners could be found.
For anyone interested in a lighter hearted read over the festive season this will definitely provide plenty of amusement.
Get Freud On Course at Amazon
You can follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenh61
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