Can you call yourself a full time pro

I assume you're not a Pro punter, so what's your excuse for being such a boring Tw@t?

1)  No

2)  No  3) Not Quite  4) No  5) No  6)  No

Are you a pro Thin and Crispy?

avoiding people like FAFH is reason enough to put up with all the above

What an encouraging start to the thread.
I had no idea that the world of " professional gamblers" was so riddled with delicate, precious little dears.
Unable apparently to react intelligently ( or better wittily) to any sort of criticism ( if it is or was even meant to be that).
Can I ask the following ?.
Do things become curly wurly if they are thin and crispy ?.
Who are these two plonkers ?
Are they prime examples of real pro gamblers.
Geez I hope not.

Jimmy and marky.
You are both of course totally excluded from the comments in my last post.
You are two fine gentlemen.

I think I'll have to add a firther factor.
7) Do you have to have no sense of humour or drollness at all ?

8) Do you have to be sensitive little pr!cks ?
I'm on a roll now.
Better stop. It feels too good, and so it can't to be desirable or acceptable ( on here at least ).

To the 5) you can add the fear that exchange markets become illegal. It happened to me in my previous country and it's not a funny moment to live. I feel for the Spanish who are living it right now

Do you have or did you have a job, FAFH ? If yes, how lucky you are to go to work with a big smile on your face, because apparently you are laughing to the people who work hard to make a living on here. If you know a painless way to earn money, please share.

abolo
Yre the exchane restriction point is one I missed, and surely one for certain people to worry about for sure.
No I'm not laughing at any one on here who decides to be a full time pro.
I'm more trying to point out that it is not all a bed of roses, as many innocents seem to say on here.
There are many painless ways to earn money, pro gambling may be one of them for many in fact.
It all boils down to whether you really enjoy what you are doing and cannot imagine a more fruitful and satisfying way to spend your life.
As for me I'm fortunate enough to have made my money before I came across BF,and so I suppose the most important thing for me would be to not get too carried away with the idea of gambling fulltime or too seriously, for fear of losing all or a large part of my net worth.

"--Yes the exchange---"

Abolo
To be corny and quote the old saying
" If you do what you enjoy in life, you'll never have a day's work in your life "

You are a Professional Gambler in my eyes if you make living from it. End of.

You could also be a professional gambler if you don't make a living from it.

Acquiesce
Bottom line, no dispute with that.
But my point was that do you have tick of certain boxes to do that ?
Or can it done without the sort of equipment, skills, dedication, fears and worries I summarily listed ?

Jimmy
I would be surprised if you wouldn't make a successful pro gambler, assuming you are not already.
Your contrarian streak is highly developed and I would have thought exremely exploitable.

If it's a warning to the youngsters who think you can make money on betting like by magic and not by putting some amount of work on it, so i agree with you, FAFH.
I guess it's the love of sport which bring people to betting, at least it's the case for me. When i was child and adolescent, i was crazy for football. For years, i did many satistics on the matches i was watching (and i was watching all the matches i can), just for the pleasure. How happy i was when i discovered i could use all these data and knowledge in betting. I think it's a big luck to spend all day on something you enjoy, as it's obviously not the case for 98% of workers.
And for the matter of the stress, i used to work by night in a hospital for 10 years and i was going to work with fear as i was involved with alcoholics, drug addicts and crazy people. Then i was really stressed, and there are many difficult jobs like that.

Btw where are two early plonker type posters.
Sulking ?

Abolo
You seem to have found your niche and accordingly I fully encourage you to continue in the way you are doing.
Betting intelligently and sensibly and hopefully profitably.
I sincerely wish you all the best.
You clearly carry your heart on your slevves not only on here but probably everywhere else in your like, and I admire and respect you for that.
Me ?
I'm just a rich, lazy cynic.

" You clearly carry your heart on your sleeve--- and everywhere else in your life--- "

fafh

you don't need trading software or 9 laptops and a swivel chair like the special one in football forum to be a Professional gambler, to be a professional you simply need an edge and discipline (yes that old adage), an edge that has minimal chance of deteriorating for a considerable period of time and if it it does, you find a new one, if you don't and can no longer profit long term you are no longer a professional in simple terms.

Great then there still hope for us nonswivel chair types ?
Also I couldn't bear the thought of having to go through the pain of getting and setting up yet another laptop.
Us computer illiterates are somewhat struggling these days.

Would Nevison be classed as a Professional Punter ? He works for an on-line
organisation, writes a weekly column for a trade paper, and still goes racing,
presumably betting. According to this thread he wouldn't be.

Kenny
Who is Nevison ?
Is the trade paper gambling related?
If so, I don't think you could say he is getting non gambling related income earnings from that could you ?

I am a part time pro and tick only one box :p

Dave Nevison is one of Britain’s best known and most respected serious
gamblers. Like all successful gamblers he considers that finding a
“value” bet is the most important thing in allowing him to win money
every year.
He finds his value in different ways to other successful punters but the
fundamental principle that all the greats operate on is to find a horse that
has a better chance of winning than its present odds would suggest.
Patrick Veitch would call this, finding horses that are “under-estimated”.
Dave Nevison uses his own knowledge and carefully examines all
variables to arrive at his own tissue price for a race. If he has priced a
horse up at 2/1 and the market has it at 4/1 he will bet this as a value
horse, where he has estimated that it has a far greater chance of winning
than the odds on offer would suggest.
If you get a chance to buy and read Dave Nevison’s recent book: “A
Bloody Good Winner”, then do so. It is highly entertaining but more
importantly, for users of Racing Synergy, it is often very re-assuring to
know that a guy who has operated as a professional punter for the last 15
years very successfully, has an enormous amount of regard for the
exchanges as the arbiter of true probability. Any serious bettor worth
their salt will want nothing more than to know what the probability
of an event taking place is.
In effect, Betfair represents the very best tissue price of all!
In this regard, I have picked out a few quotes from Dave Nevison’s recent
book that should interest you:
P77: “Recently I’ve hardly been playing on Betfair at all………The
markets are now dictated by the betting exchanges, which means they are
set by some of the cleverest people in the game, so they are likely to be
more accurate predictors of the results than the traditional market.”
P167: “It would be wrong to say that I never lay horses on Betfair, but I
haven’t won money by laying horses and am definitely a backer rather
than a layer.”
P254: “Betfair was a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed, but betting on
betting exchanges increasingly reminds me of trading on currency
markets. You are betting against some of the best betting brains in the
world. You can’t see the people you are betting against, some of whom
have information you don’t have. As a result, the market on Betfair now
provides a more accurate picture of the true winning chance of each
horse than ever before. You have a near-perfect market in which I can
still make a profit, but I have to turn over a lot of money to do so because
the margins are small. I think it will end up as a market in which no one
will win a lot of money, apart from Betfair itself, from its commission
charges.”
P258: “Now, Betfair lets everyone know what price each horse should be
and bookmakers don’t set their own prices any more. The last career you
would want to pursue now is that of a horserace odds-compiler. Who
needs them, when there is Betfair?”
There was an initial euphoria over the betting exchanges at their inception
and no doubt the likes of Dave Nevison were originally rubbing their
hands at the prospect of this new betting medium. However, if the truth
be known, even the greatest of the modern day bettors have had trouble
consistently making money by using the exchanges.
This all became clearly evident when Betfair reported to The
Parliamentary Select Committee in 2004:
“According to recent information from betfair.com, only around 0.7 per
cent of its customers made a profit of over £15,000 over the last year.
Given approximately 200,000 users worldwide, that equates to 1,400
people, many of which will be outside the UK. Of those remaining some
are likely to have won through chance, and are unlikely to win over a
longer period of time, so the number who are subject to UK taxation
laws, and likely to win enough money to live on is likely to be in the mid
hundreds.”
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/jt200304/jtselect/jtgamb/63/63we82.htm
What we at Betting Automation suggest, however, is not to cut your nose
off to spite your face. Learn from the professionals’ gems of
information! Take massive re-assurance from these comments. Where
your “colleagues” will continue to waste their time betting with an
exchange which represents a near perfect market and a true arbiter of
probability, you start using this market to determine your own tissue
prices and find those bookies that, for one reason or another, are out of
line with these true prices!

To quote you jimmy " wtf ".

Dave Nevison, well known racecourse visitor, does a column for
Racing and Football Outlook, consultant for an on-line betting
site.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Would a Racing Post columnist who bets, be classed as a professional
punter ?
If not, why not ?
------------------------------------------------
Can we not have part time professional punters ?

Here’s a lesson from Dave Nevison straightaway: Learn to enjoy your betting, especially when you win. Laugh and be happy and enjoy the moment. Those winning moments may be few and far between; best to use them as enjoyably as you can!

We all have to bet in the way that suits us best, but in my view, if you make only 10,000 pounds a year from betting (about $22,500), then you are not really a professional punter because you would be considerably better off doing almost anything else for a living. You have not beaten the system and must be living a pretty quiet life, probably in a bus shelter.

Interesting points Frog, for me....


1 No, but BF is my main income and I make about 1k from other activities per year.
2 No, hell no :)
3 Value calculations for me.
4 It's not exactly fun sat here all day (even though I have a swivel chair) it's a lonely job, but at least I get down the pub every night for an hour or so :)
5 What happens happens, I'll deal with it as and when.
6 I worked in the building trade (carpenter) for 25 years so am not afraid of real work, but I would take doing this over doing that without question! I spose I feel pretty privileged to be able to make a living sat at home.

jimmy, what kind of dollar is it that you get 22,500
for only £10,000 ?

That was something Nevison wrote in 2005.

nice quotes Jimmy. what did you do to earn your nest egg Frog?