Packed in work 4 years ago to do this full time did it for 12 months and made a decent living but bored me rigid.Decided to go back to work and just do this at w/ends and night meetings much happier in my head.One other point if you lay only you pay a lot in commission over the year Last 2 yrs £33,000 gross profit £10,000 commission makes a big dent and thats without premium charge.

Yeah,the only way.

I agree with Stake & Chips but disagree with Slicer


Discipline is the key (For me).


Only bet on what you know - and only bet if it's boring.

If you're bored it's work. Which it should be.

And watch the pace market. Most telling thing on Betfair.


If that fails marry someone called Winston and become a layer of short priced favourites.

Be careful not to spatter your keyboard with shot if you don't want it to stick. imo

I think you have to use the place betting market as a saver bet

I use this approach: 1 pt win bet, 2 pt place bet

if the minimum odds I take for a place bet are 1.5, if I do a $50 win / $100 place, as long as the horse runs a place, I don't lose, this way you don't need as many winners but obviously you need the horse to run well, I don't bet unless i'm supremely confident it will run a place at the very least

I make a good ammount of money

but I also use a reverse of that as in 100w 50 place just to recover stakes, its all about the price of your selection though and your confidence level in it...

Back Fit Fantasist has got it all sewn up:

bf_fananatic • June 18, 2012 9:04 PM BST
Let me explain something about betting which will explain that all these tipping firms and most punters have an extremely difficult task in front of them, not because we get bad days which you do, not because we cant pick good runners which we can, but because of, and in spite of the MARKET.

When a horse is fancied to win it stands a risk of shortening in the market and at worst becoming the clear favorite which then puts it in the dead zone for trying to profit from because
on average you will return less money then you will invest and bookmakers have made empires this way.

Now if you can rate horses reasonably well or you want to use the BHA, RP or any other ratings available you will find that the higher a horse is rated the smaller price on average it will become so its a constant game of cat and mouse finding good horses at good prices and the MARKET compounds this problem by being over-dynamic in that a price can change now in an instant and was was good value one minute becomes useless ten minutes later and trying to estimate what a price will be on event start is just as difficult to forecast as the chances of all the runners.

So when a say tipster says this horse is worth backing he/she does so without trully knowing if this will be a profitable venture as anything can happen before the race and the constant shifting in prices will destroy and create many profits in a matter of minutes on an exchange or on a bookmakers monitor.

When a horse suddenly gets backed down to half its price it doesn't mean you are going to be quids in , it means all the value has disappeared from that selection on an average basis unless you were lucky enough to get matched or take a better price much earlier.

Ok so if your with me this far then you must be asking your self "what point is this guy making"

Well the above problem means that I find it incredibly difficult to offer profitable advices when I cant accurately predict prices and Time-form seems to be much more "off the mark" than the racing post whom have a foot in the door, so to speak as they supply all the shops around the land with the price guides and thus have great influence on the bookmakers and punters decision
making process's in terms of powering markets.

The best I can do is use timeform price guides to find runners with prices expected between 8.6 and 16 BSP using my ratings which return 135-140 ROI% on average, but this isn't the beat approach as what you would really do in a professional betting environment using an exchange is use an auto-betting program or make your own using API calls and checking the price before you clear a betting event otherwise you are wasting your money and investment.

http://community.betfair.com/horse_racing/go/thread/view/94102/29185381/10000-target-profit-bal-271-day-2-mon-18-06-12

You can't even spell,let alone make money,you fool of a man.

People who lack intelligence LOSE,90% of the fools on here.

STOP STALKING ME FFS IM A PRO AND YOU ARE A MUG

I'm with TRD.Racing. You have to take the opportunities when they arise. Equally, if you don't see anything good, don't bet. Sure you have to keep tight control, but that doesn't mean missing out on a good bet just because you've already had a good win.
Say for example you spot three really good bets on Monday, one on Tuesday, and the rest of the week is utter crap. Your first bet on Monday wins. Are you not going to bet the other two? And then are you going to maker bets on Wednesday onwards when there is nothing good? Surely not. Make your four bets, level stakes, and take the rest of the week off.

5. don't listen to tips/advice - only play what you want and don't involve anyone else.

agree wiv most of that apart from this one, if you know where to look know who specializes in what on here, and wade through the shyte there are some gems on here.

ok it has its irish are luckys sootys and zorros but the forum also has many nuggets of gold.

be lucky

The main thing that you will need,is the ability to cope with all human emotions.

Meltdown is the biggest problem
You could be doing well with a good sized bank (I have) and then just when you think you have cracked it you could hit a bad run and lose lose lose,unless you are a very calm person that does not flinch at heavy losses you will go into meltdown mode and lose more by chasing
I am calm cool and collected and can afford a good size bank (£4000),I went into meltdown mode and lost heavily,I screamed at my cat and myself and everything and everyone
Meltdown is the biggest problem
I got lucky and won it back yet I could have lost more

You cannot substitute experience Steamship. I've done all of the 'silly' things but I told myself I must learn from that.
I remember my first day as a 'pro'. A friend and I were convinced we could make if set off on the first day of the flat when you paid tax on your bets. We drove all round the country and kept going for about 5 months. Great experience but we lost our bank.

With that behind me I know the pitfalls. I served the apprenticeship now I mean to cash in on it. Now I stick to certain races I can have days off and go on holidays. I do have losing days but they only average about 3 a month.

Thirsk has 6 handicaps, a seller and a novice stakes. Stay away it's a bookies benefit I wouldn't even look at it.

cheers lads for all the replies, i know I won't know the problems until I hit them myself but some really great rules and pitfalls and as I say

thanks very much

So how do you do it brigust?

i agree telldel. daily targets works for me. the argument i have against the statement personally is that i can find good bets on a daily basis, so missing a couple i fancied doesn't matter much. so in that case having a daily target works for me or i'd just be on here all day and i have too many interests for that.

absolutely. there isn't anyone who doesnt or hasnt had discipline issues. gaining control of that is essential for any kind of long term profit.

the only way to win is to buy a system from ebay