Well it’s good to be part of the team at Strategic Betting. Some of you know me already but for those who don’t, here’s the promised introduction……..

I first started betting – sorry gambling! – 25 years ago when working in my first job after leaving university. I was a buyer at a small company that had a chain of seven jeans shops and our main supplier bought a racehorse which turned out to be rather good………..during his first season he raced 11 times and won 9 races. The boss would frequently raid the petty cash tin and dispatch me across the road to put something on. Needless to say, I too started putting some of my own money on and was truly hooked. He ended up having quite an illustrious career winning a couple of Welsh Nationals and a somewhat memorable Racing Post Chase (Bonanza Boy).

Of course the reality was very much different and I soon found myself on the “tipster chase” in search of that elusive tipster who could help me make money. I was a typical gambler in that I didn’t keep records initially, I certainly didn’t have a betting bank per se, instead using the spare cash in my wallet and I naively felt that the next runner would be a winner……..

After reading a few books I started to keep records and exert a little more discipline, which mainly meant sticking with one tipster, who although provided the odd winner the monthly profits if I were lucky were little more than £50 having invested a princely sum of over £1000 during the course of the month. Many months the profit was in fact a small loss and it seemed unlikely that I would ever find myself in a position where I could do this for a living.

The arrival of the betting exchanges 13 years ago changed all that. I first realized the potential during the Euro championships in 2000 when the application of a bit of logic (teams need to win a match if they are to progress, therefore they need to score a goal, therefore laying the draw at the start of the match and backing the draw after the first goal should guarantee a profit) yielded around £50 profit per game. I soon found the necessity to have a few savers to ensure I didn’t come unstuck in 0-0 matches, but overall that tournament was my “Road To Damascus” moment and I embarked on finding a way to transfer the same logic to horse racing.

The end result was a realization that, although a helpful part in building profits, selections were only a small part of the equation. Far more important was how they were staked. If I were achieving a strike rate of 25% finding winners then it followed I was wrong 75% of the time. Therefore, every time I won I needed to ensure I won enough to cover the stakes lost on the losers. The logical conclusion to that train of thought is devastatingly simple – try to break even on horses that lose and collect a small profit on those that win: that way the betting bank should slowly grow.

In theory, staking 20 horses to break even should they lose and win £5 profit should they win will yield a £25 profit if a quarter of them are successful.

This ultra cautious approach to staking results in what appears to be really quite small profits but, with no large lost stakes to recover that is all that is needed. With a few different strategies it has also been possible to implement this approach with a reduced betting bank – I now keep no more than £250 in my Betfair account.

I felt confident to give up the day job in 2002 and ever since have been using the above approach. Initially I used to post a lot on the Betfair forum – in the early days it was actually quite a nice place to spend the afternoon when having a bet, but it soon became populated with arrogant and abusive trolls so I confined myself to posting on the Mathematician Betting Forum and my own blog.

The way I approach my betting fits very well with Strategic Betting’s ethos and hopefully over time I can introduce you to some of the techniques I use to ensure a profit is made from a race even if my selection performs like Ernie’s cart horse.

Perhaps it was the wrong weekend to start off last week and I was bitterly disappointed not to get off on a winning note, but with hindsight that may not have been such a bad thing……….it is always important to remember in this game that we are wrong more often than we are right. Achieving a profit therefore is how we manage our betting banks to ensure we lose as little as possible when that happens.

Those who wish to browse through some of the things I have said about races over the last few years will find a lot of what I have written on my old blog http://smallpunter.posterous.com – it’s a bit disorganized and I’m currently in the process of moving it to a different platform, but it should provide a flavour of the sort of things I say……