track in-running punters article

they now paying for corporate hospitality buffet as opposed to bringing own butties?

hook a portacabin upto yer crane

Its a mystery to me how they watch the race AND input the bets. Like when a horse makes a mistake - they need to see the incident then judge the price and click the right button. Even if there is a few seconds delay what software do they use to do that? Look up - look down - decide and click - look up - repeat.

dustybin    Joined: 29 Dec 08
Replies: 8989 07 Jan 15 14:26 
they wear google go go gadget glasses

Quite feasible there's a lack of seats if button's in the box.

have all the trading shops gone?

how do u get in contact with him? can anyone pm me his number?

I understand Seaton Burn is still going with raw feeds.

As is Highgate and Staines plus two in the Midlands.

^that was most likely economies of scale

are you expecting that to be faster than LV thefear?

They need to read a form book,Major Muscari at 1.25 over a mile,FFS no wonder they have to slap round the country for the fast pics

if these on course players were so good they wouldnt need the time advantage to make it pay , they are there because they cant race read so have to travel up and down the motorway like zombies to earn a wage

they're just greedy,could you imagine us home players with the advantage and roles reversed

Pablo,
Button would struggle to read the Dandy,imo

pablo , they are all failed exchange shop players who couldnt make it pay on a level field thats why they travel hundreds of miles a week , they have no choice

http://www.racingpost.com/news/horse-racing/special-report-boxed-in-but-ready-to-strike/1802313/#newsArchiveTabs=last7DaysNews


Special report: Boxed in but ready to strike
Tom Kerr investigates the secretive world inhabited by in-running punters and finds the landscape may be changing

IN A hospitality box at a racecourse near you, a group of people – almost certainly male, very likely aged between 25 and 45 – will gather behind closed doors and drawn curtains this week. They will produce televisions, laptops and a tangle of cabling, arrange their workspace and settle down for a long day of in-running punting on betting exchanges.

They are there because with in-running betting, speed is everything. In the split second after a horse falls or a leader falters with the winning post in sight, thousands of pounds are won and lost on exchange sites – with whomever has the fastest pictures and the fastest fingers the one to reap the rewards.

The advent of exchange-based in-running betting turned the pursuit of faster pictures into an arms race among punters. With television pictures anywhere from one to six or more seconds behind the real-time action, the advantage of being present on course and watching near-instantaneous pictures on your own screen is enormous. On-course punters see the winning run launched first, they see the bridle merchant fail to get home first, they see the faller first.

At its most extreme, betting on course can make the punter’s wildest dream reality: in those fleeting moments between events occurring and television pictures relaying them to the watching world, it is possible to bet on something that has already happened.

A Racing Post investigation into this world revealed that, although the glory days of on-course punting – when anyone armed with a laptop and a rudimentary understanding of trading could prosper – are now over, there are still dozens of pro punters making a living by betting on course. Additional expenses, widespread awareness of time delays and faster pictures available online have all made the occupation more marginal, and may even presage a new era of in-running betting, but for now the advantage of being on course remains potent enough.

The time advantage on-course punters enjoy varies depending on which provider carries footage. Although times have fluctuated over the years, at present the slowest is At The Races with a delay of around six seconds. Channel 4 Racing follows, far slower since the digital switchover (on analogue the delay was virtually non-existent), and best of all is Racing UK, about one second behind. That is fast, but not fast enough.

In the early days of in-running, those who sought an advantage turned to trading shops, where expensive professional pictures gave punters an edge over those playing from home. Later, probably around 2007, a group of enterprising gamblers made the logical move to bet off the fastest pictures possible – those broadcast on track.

The simplest way to take advantage of the time delay home punters were competing against was to have someone relaying information by phone to an off-track office, a practice also used in other sports and sometimes known as court-siding or pitch-siding, but even the best team using this method cannot compete with those using their own kit at the racecourse.

Initially, in-running punters set up shop in bars and restaurants, but the smarter (or greedier, depending on your viewpoint) racecourses fast realised there was money to be made from these punters. For at least five years on course in-running punters have been operating from hospitality boxes, arriving with heavy bags full of TVs, computers and cables. With boxes typically costing around £150 a head, in-running betting has proved a vital source of revenue for tracks. For punters and racecourses alike, it is lucrative business.

Not surprisingly, those who have experience of this world report it is not one anyone can walk into. “You can’t just come along and say ‘oh I’d like to sit in one of your boxes and do some in-running’. The boxes are already booked out and then it’s a strange black market of sub-contracted seats from in-running kingpins,” said Sam (not his real name), a punter with experience of on-course in-running trading.

Tracks are getting good money

Some of these seats reportedly trade hands on a members-only web forum where box holders advertise availability. Access to the forum and hence to the communal boxes depends, first, on who you know and, second (perhaps more importantly), on demand – which has fluctuated over the years and is lower now than it was at the peak of the in-running gold rush.

More expensively, many racecourses sell hospitality boxes for in-running punters, although they are forbidden by the Gambling Commission from advertising hospitality boxes for that purpose. Some racecourses – particularly those with oodles of sparsely attended, low-quality fixtures and excess hospitality boxes – are delighted to welcome such easy-to-please customers and go out of their way to accommodate them.

“It’s a symbiotic relationship with the tracks,” said Sam. “[The punters] are very much accommodated by the racecourses who will make sure their internet is as fast as it can be and they’re comfortable. They’re getting good money, probably more than they can get for normal hospitality, for people who do not want hospitality. All they want to do is sit down and be left alone.”

They have good reason for wanting to be left alone. Some punters have made fortunes on track – another pro punter told the Racing Post six-figure incomes were common in the early days – and although earnings of that size are rare today, good money can still be made.

However, there are downsides. As punters are taking advantage of a time delay some see the profession as immoral, while a job that involves taking in hundreds of meetings at the likes of Wolverhampton and Lingfield is far from glamorous.

“You are on the road all the time, looking at the same faces all the time, carrying a bag with a television and a laptop, staying in Travelodges,” said Sam. “For me it didn’t seem a very balanced way of living life as it becomes a more naked pursuit of money than being a punter.”

That money is harder to come by these days. In-running can be compared to the difficult trajectory of online poker: in the early days someone with a basic knowledge could expect to make decent money playing against total newcomers, but today competition is fierce. Punters wise up, or cash out.

“I think a lot of people think you can just turn up, click a few buttons and you’re going to win money, but nothing could be further from the truth,” said another pro punter who is writing a book on in-running under the pseudonym Alex King. “People evolve, they get more clever. We’re in competition with other in-running punters and people are going to do everything to give themselves as many advantages as they can.”

Punters turn to DIY solutions

Some have gone further than others in pursuit of an advantage. The dream for in-running punters is not to bet on course but to have as-live pictures at home, where they can play multiple meetings at once – trading 30 or 40 races instead of six or seven. In pursuit of that goal some have turned to DIY solutions, using technology like Apple’s FaceTime to illegally transmit live pictures to a colleague operating at home.

According to rumour within in-running circles, the recording of races was one of the reasons behind the removal of live pictures from Wolverhampton’s on-course Holiday Inn hotel. A legendary venue during its in-running heyday, the Holiday Inn was regularly packed out with punters, many of whom would quietly slip out past bemused staff as soon as the races were over. (A spokeswoman for owners Arena Racing Company said pictures had been removed because the hotel was not licensed to carry the on-course feed provided by RaceTech).

Others have gone to extremes in their attempts to film races; one man’s attempts at Perth reached comical levels. Racecourse manager Sam Morshead said: “He did go to great extremes: we first had him in the centre of the course, then we had him on the ambulance route which was obviously totally unsatisfactory, then he hired a cherry picker from across the Tay which must be 300 yards away and was able to get a good enough view of the racecourse.

“He was obviously making so much money he decided he’d have a drone and that did frighten us because if it died and came down during a race it could be quite serious, so we got the police involved and I don’t think the drone ever appeared, thankfully.”

It’s not just the tracks who object to this sort of behaviour. Those who invest in hospitality boxes have also been known to send people out on to the course to check whether anyone is illicitly recording footage. When a second can mean all the difference between winning and losing, those who have an advantage – and pay handsomely for it – are going to protect it.

Despite that, there is nothing preventing anyone who wishes to give the on-course, in-running game a shot other than access to a hospitality box. Turn up without proper preparation and equipment, however, and unwary punters could lose their shirt.

The most basic mistake any in-running punter could make is to bet via Betfair or ****’s website. The most important weapon in the budding in-running punter’s armoury is an API, a programme that interfaces with the exchange and allows punters to monitor prices and place one-click bets. “Betting in-running with manual Betfair is the equivalent of turning up to a gun fight with a spud gun when your opponent has an AK-47,” said King.

On-course era may be coming to a close

Almost as important, pro punters report, is a decent knowledge of the form book. While the simplest, and most obvious, way of making money using the advantage of on-course pictures is to lay fallers or back certain winners, there is little easy money available and plenty of competition for it. Smarter on-course players utilise their knowledge of form and trading records which, combined with the on-course advantage, can prove a potent strategy.

As an example, King names the Laura Mongan-trained Skidby Mill, a horse with a record of threatening but rarely getting home. When we spoke in mid-November Skidby Mill had a 100 per cent record of trading at 50 per cent shorter odds than its Betfair SP in ten races at Lingfield, yet had only won twice.

“I tend to treat it now as like dealing on the stock exchange,” King said. “I see horses now as like individual share prices and all I’m trying to anticipate is how the market is going to react, because I still feel there are enough in-running players who don’t actually know a horse’s trading record.”

Methods like King’s are less reliant on fast pictures and hint at where the future of in-running may lie. A combination of factors has led some to believe the era of on-course trading may be coming to a close.

The Betfair premium charge, an extra levy big-winning punters must pay, and improved access to quick pictures at home in particular are feeding this change. The video feeds provided by many online bookies, for example, are just one to two seconds behind the action and only getting faster.

Few who are not part of the on-course crowd, thought to be just 100 strong, will shed a tear at that news. The easy money that was once available in hospitality boxes came at the expense of those playing off slower pictures. While those who took advantage of quick pictures cannot be blamed for seeing an opportunity and grabbing it, they also undermined the entire concept of in-running.

The pro punters who the Racing Post spoke to all agreed quicker pictures would be a good thing. A levelling of the playing field would return in-running to what it should be: a contest of skill and wits, open to all, to each their merited rewards.

Yet for now, the on-course punter is still just about king. In the world of in-running trading, time really is money.

Betting in-running with manual Betfair is the equivalent of turning up to a gun fight with a spud gun when your opponent has an AK-47


My spud gun has served me alright thus far chief.

Cheers Jack.

Thanks Jack interesting read.