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I would say there are a lot of gamblers who are self taught.And in my opinion there is only one end to that story
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Perhaps there should be a school for gamblers.
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And the teacher could advise the class on value.
example=The teacher could say something like"yes boys and girls Arsenal are great value this weekend because they are the best team in the world" |
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Gaze
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BUT then again the self taught mug gamblers would more than likely still back Liverpool.
 AND THE ROAD GOES ON ,ON AND ON,ON AND ON. |
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Shergar and the Stock Market. The former was immediate gratification, the latter took ages.
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not been in arkles days only 2 horses where people were betting blind race and non regular racegoers/punter,s
shergar and deep impact |
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Lesson 1
You can't eat value. |
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i used to go to my grandparents after middle school till my parents came back from work..grandad was a bookies runner circa 1970 ..he used to have radio 2 on at 4pm for the latest racing results..one day,haway sonna pick a horse..that started rico on the path...he died about a yr later and by 12 i was nicking 2 bob out me mams purse ev morning and getting my nanna to put 3 x tanner dubbles and a tanner treble on ev weekday.
Happy daze. |
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Self-taught is the only way to really learn how to gamble.
That means you will have many periods of failing at it, and some hard times potentially, before you finally become good at it (if that is ever achieved). |
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One story I would never believe, is a gambler who claims they were good at gambling from the moment they first started. Or any gambler who claims they have never had such a bad performance that they thought of giving it up.
All gamblers, even good currently successful ones, will have had bad experiences with it at some periods of their 'career'. |
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I have been betting on horses now for nearly 70 years and only once thought of giving it up when married, 2 children (at that point) and a new job and time forced me to be a typical recreational Saturday only bettor and losing consistently money that could have been used in a better way! I didn't though I reduced my stakes.
Certainly not a good gambler when I started but have often thought I was a lucky gambler as there were numerous occasions when a bet got me out of a poor situation, maybe deluding myself . Overall horse racing has been a massive plus in my life. |
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You've done pretty well Brian with that record!
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brains 77
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Well almost every occupation one has to serve an apprenticeship, plumbers, sparkies, etc, white collar professionals go to college for 4+ years, so why not gamblers as well.
The only ones I can think of who don't serve their time are politicians, I rest my case. |
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It shouldn't be called gambling imo, it should be called
"PLAYING THE ODDS". |
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It shouldn't be called gambling imo, it should be called
"GUESSING". |
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hi Riko
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Good Man Rico
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it costs a lot of money to learn ,thats for sure,and when you go broke 50 or 60 times you start to think about what you are doing wrong.
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If you're going to guess then guess big.
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i told Rico some one would name a horse after him,but i said they would call it SIR RICO.
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My Big Brother he used to send me to the bookies when i was about 13 to put his bets on...I used to have to stand outside and ask them to put the bets on.
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Ask complete strangers that is.
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Still learning.
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When I was fairly Young my father would allow me to have a bet in the big races.He showed me how to read the Daily Mirror racecard.The ultimate was a treble nap-Newsboy,Bouviere and Spotform.
Our punting relationship came to an abrupt end after he told me I wasn't allowed to back Ben Nevis when he won the National at 40/1.It was probably an important lesson to learn. |
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It's interesting, and in reading some people's accounts above, I think there's actually two different aspects to learning to gamble.
1/ Looking at races, events etc, and picking selections or even prices you want. 2/ Looking at your money before, after and during gambling. The first is a bit like a fun game when you are younger and first gambling. The second is a far deeper and more meaningful set of experiences that you have to go through in gambling, and is a much longer term issue to understand and deal with correctly. |
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Someone once said on this forum"the most dangerous time to gamble is just after you have had a big win"
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do you gamble just to beat the bookie
do you gamble for big win - muliple bet gamble to gamble used to gamble everyday now just TV races SAT (which my dad use to do )mainly because my health forced me to leave blackcab taxi (eyesight )my wage has halved + im getting on in age 62 |
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My father and I worked out gambling between us. He was Ukrainian, and his English was awful. He found it hard to understand the racing page in the Daily Mail, but he did like the idea of picking out horses and devising complicated multiple bets like the other blokes at work used to - he just couldn't see how to do it. So he insisted that my mother (a Londoner) taught me reading and writing and arithmetic, and that way we would crack the game together. The result was that when I started school at the age of five, I could already read and write and knew my times tables.
It was a fluke really, because my mother's spelling was atrocious - she'd left school at 14, and had missed 18 months with TB and its after-effects. But because her spelling was phonetic, it made learning English very easy. It was just badly spelled English. Which didn't matter, because it meant I could read Robin Goodfellow and the Beano, and pick up the correct spellings as I went along. Her arithmetic was even worse, if anything, but what she did have was an excellent memory. She knew her times tables - she just couldn't understand what you did with them. My father and I had one or two good wins. I remember picking out four winners on a shilling each way accumulator via Formcast ratings, and my dad picking up £48 - a massive amount in 1968. I was seven years old at the time. I think my earliest racing memory was coming out of hospital after having my tonsils out, and watching Stalbridge Colonist beat Arkle. I would have been five then, and that was my introduction to handicapping, but I never understood how it worked until I bought a Haig Racehorses annual in 1977 with my first Saturday job wages. There was a notice in it, offering a leaflet explaining how handicapping worked, if you sent an SAE to Furlong Press. That little leaflet changed everything. And because I was still only 16, it meant I made all the truly soul-destroying blunders when I didn't have much money to lose. It still took me another 13 years to work out how to win (value betting) or, more precisely, how not to lose (every other method). I wish I still had those Haig annuals, but I binned them all in 1983, along with all my racing pages and notes and betting records. I stuffed them all into a litter bin on Brighton seafront, so I wouldn't be tempted to recover them and start betting gain. I was just so ashamed of how much I'd lost and how stupid I'd been to think it could ever have been otherwise. I began again the following Saturday |
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Great story screaming
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Screaming, great post
My skill at figures, sorry for boasting, was similarily helped greatly by working out the returns on each way accas and the like for my nan back in the 60s And, as you say, with 6d and shilling stakes... Not 100p to the pound which makes the maths easier And no better place to dispose of your betting records... I wouldn't want to be bending over a litter bin in Brighton to get them back.! |
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epic post screaming
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My Grandad was a bookies clerk, there flat was like a betting shop, bets written on the back of bits of cardboard.
a shilling ew double was my bets and nan was a tanner ew trixie. My Grandad showed me how to work out odds and fractions when i was about 5, so i was always ahead in Maths, Reading the Daily Mirror racing pages helped me to read as well. I wanted to go into the betting industry when i left school but it meant i couldn't go down our caravan weekends as i'd have to work on Saturdays, so i done the next best thing and got a job as a board boy in the little betting shop on our caravan site. Then after i took Redundancy from my bank job in 1995, i opened a betting shop,2 years later i bought another one, then sold them both in 2006 when Betfair was taking over. I had shares in a few On course pitches and that was fun. But the ring got quieter and quieter, so now i'm semi retired and still work on course if people ask me to. The Game has changed a lot and not always for the better, but my love of the sport and the excitement never will. So Thanks to my Grandad Ted in 1968, i thank him for what i've got, or i rue him for what i might have had if it wasn't for gambling. But its been and still is, exciting. |
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The great thing about working out bets with 12 pennies to the shilling was that it taught you the key to fast mental arithmetic (and algebra): looking for common factors and breaking the problem down into easy bits. For instance, if you had a shilling at 15/8, you thought of the return as 15 pennies plus sevenpence halfpenny. Twenty-two and a half pennies: twelve pennies to the shilling, so, take 12 from 22.5, and you're left with the answer - one and tenpence halfpenny.
There's a reason why odds are things like 11/8 and 100/30, for the same reason that we had 12 pennies to the shilling and 12 inches to the foot: in the days before pencil and paper were readily available it made mental arithmetic easier. You can even easily make your own slide rule if things are divided by eights and twelves. That's also why the Fahrenheit scale originally ran from 0 (freezing point of sea water) to 96 (body temperature). 96 is 12 x 8, which made marking a thermometer straightforward. The decimal and metric systems can't be calibrated by a bloke in a shed. You need expensive tools to do that, hence the enthusiasm for decimalization among the wealthy men who led the French Revolution. |
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Great stuff, dambuster. And a big thank you to Grandad Ted, for making sure you've enjoyed/are enjoying a proper life.
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Many thanks SFBW
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Some fantastic anecdotes here guys and girls. Top thread.
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my dad wasnt a regular punter even on saturdays,but was surrounded by racing talk in shipyards/steelworks, and liked a day at races mostly redcar/stockton/ripon took us as kids, and loved lester pigg,when i started betting he told me BRIAN TAYLOR was a SATURDAY JOCKEY,so i was stuffed 5 days a week and completely stuffed when brian taylor retired,but backed a good few winners espically at newbury and likes of jellaby became favs of mine
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Unfortunately Brian Taylor never had a chance to retire i'm afraid.
Was a very good jockey though and Lester Piggotts best friend in the weighing room |