Is there anyone on this forum...

When I were a lad you could come up with a system that would work for some time, as in the market wouldn't catch up as quickly as it does now.

I'd have been about 20 when the tax was abolished, so a good time to start in the path to serious punting really.

I lost plenty gambling on Horses in my Younger Days.....Don't loose half as much Now.

I don't remember betting tax in the 60s .

Makes it easier for everyone, so nearly everyone wins.

Yes the online books are especially famous for their wealth distribution amongst us racing enthusiasts we are reaping the benefits of muggy casino players' losses.

It was better in the days before betfair imo..granted you still got the "non trier"..but now it's rancid...i always managed with the sporting chronicle and the raceform notebook

do newspaper tipsters make a profit?

i thought they were to encourage punting

Last time I saw a level stakes profit/loss chart, over any period of time, you might get one or two tipsters the tiniest fraction ahead if you were lucky.

I, too, once had 5 winners out of 6 in the Tote Jackpot.

The one that let me down was the shortest price of them all ... it later transpired that the horse had been doped.

Easier to have a better grasp of the formbook as far less racing.   However, most of my punts these days are based on visual evidence of watching every race back.   Couldn't do that back in the day.

Sir Henry Cecil's 2 year olds were printing money back in the day.

was well worth making the effort to go racing before the tv channels and replays become available,viewing the re-run and vitally important head-on which only a small minority would see.

you could also check if a horse was fit and the on course bookies prices were much more fluid and some value prices could be obtained.

hardly worth bothering now unless it's for a day out.

Henry always put horses of simler abilty in races Mr Sparrow

It was us punters who made one better than the other

ii m o of cause

As ever very much depends on the type of player you were/are, the advent of technology has made compiling data easier but it has also given the books a massive advantage against punters, given a choice personally I would prefer to revert to days of old, at least then even when known you could still get bets on because there were always people prepared to take you on either at the course or via an independent bookie, whereas nowadays, it seems it is a book balancing exercise, nothing more, for most of the layers.

The necessity to keep abreast of everything by keeping meticulous records was and is often now ridiculed by many, but knowing where you are and how you are performing are paramount to continued success as far as I am concerned.

Years ago the majority of fellow punters that I mixed with on a regular basis use to rib me over the hours I spent logging details of what my eyes told me throughout watching a race, the bets I had on each race and an analysis and summary of how I had done, most of them would rely on their newspapers, memory and word of mouth from others, this was fine to a point, but the human memory is not programmed to collate and analyse such a volume of data that any flat or NH season produces and in conversations at later dates it was always a source of amusement to me to hear the different opinions put forward, because on most occasions they bore no resemblance to the notes I had lovingly and patiently recorded.

This was not a case of me being smarter than others, merely a lesson learn't as a child from hours of watching my parents fritter money away based on the knowledge they retained in their heads from previous runs and bets that were never recorded, strange how the facts were always altered to the ones I remembered when they were recalling or reminiscing with others about their good and bad days, suffice to say the good days were very rare in our household throughout my younger life, though like all compulsive gamblers they would attempt to convince others as well as themselves that they were well ahead of the game.

It is a wonder that I ever got involved myself really, but on reflection now many years have passed, I have come to accept that it was most probably because of my parents failure, that I had been so driven to succeed, though funnily enough at least to me anyway, my parents always viewed my success with a mixture of pride but also a fair amount of resentment, for achieving something that had always eluded them.

Racing is no different to most things in life, proportionally you get out of it a percentage of what you are prepared to put in, that percentage usually increases over time if you choose to learn from your previous mistakes.

without an edge of some kind 1% of pre race punters will win long term.

and to answer your point gray...they say that those who can do, do, and those who can't do, teach

^true in the 99% of the cases of the people you are referring to gray

That was posted before you last post wonderso...

Wondersobright. Those who can't tip.