A Professional Punter calls it quits - Open Letter

Simon  .
Looking  forward  to here what he says about  Billy  Foulkes.
Do you remember  him.
Ronnie.

Thanks for posting.

Thanks Simon, thought provoking in a very sad way.

Such a shame and a much missed contributor to the forum.

Alan is probably much less vindictive than me - but my mantra when confronted with a wall of ignorance or incompetence is "don't get mad, get even".

I think I would have been tempted to do them under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 for not recognising and providing a "service" accordingly for the deaf and hearing impaired!

I doubt you are looking in Alan (hopefully you are enjoying life) - but with your name, profile and reputation, are you not even just a little bit tempted to take "them" on and demonstrate the ridiculous oxymoron, that a winning bettor can be stopped from betting on grounds (or under the guise) of affordability?

Is that his picture?

He needs to address his health.

A sad reflection on the state of the game & only gonna get worse. "Don't go mad, get evens!" Damon Runyon stated all of life is 6 to 5 against. My experience demonstrates, like life, those odds are too short!

Good old Alan - Its crazy to think we're almost certainly the last generation in this country to have been able to punt freely to decent amounts with our own hard earned, without the State looking over our shoulder and tutting at us..

That is a sad read. I think it is well known that Alan has tinnitus because that was the reason he give up his TV slot way back. GC is a useless quango that doesn't understand horse betting but Betfair should be absolutely ashamed of their part in his decision.

If Alan is reading this enjoy your retirement and thanks for your assistance when I was thinking of earning an income from racing which I finally did in 2003 (we met in the sadly closed Labour in Vain pub on a Fontwell raceday in 1999 and a few times after).

Don't blame him. In my experience as over 50 years as a punter it's the worst  time i've ever known!!!!.Only a couple of real opportunities a year.

yeah but finding new edges to win is a different subject pipedreamer. Here we are talking about a long term "famous" winner that couldn't DEPOSIT more than £500 a month.

This should be published widely, and used in the policy discussions as a great case study.

A good start would be in the RP, but more general publication would be even better.

It should add he was literally one of the 'authors' of how to bet sensibly and profitably in his book work.

Another grail-less punter bites the dust.

^
Go & play with your box of toys.
Boring ****.

The not understanding difficulty with using the telephone is very poor.

However

"the fact that I would be willing to give details of my finances verbally, but the betting firms demand documents, which I regard as being called a liar"

is never going to be a runner - every genuinely problem gambler will claim he can afford his betting and bristle when asked to prove it.

"a consistent loser for two decades plus" - yet respected by many
Gaze loses for 5 years at 7% comm and everyone tells him to quit.

There's always the experts we can ask. I feel sorry for Matt Chapman who put up Vaughban for the Champion Hurdle the other year. As a  winner of the Triumph Hurdle what chance did the horse have ?.Since Persian War won the Triumph and Champion Hurdle in 1967,only Two horse have managed to do the same since. Kribensis and Katchit.
What a poor stat.
Don't get me started on Royal Ascot 2 year old winners going on to win an English Classic the next year,4 since 1971 ?. Still Matt Chapman can't know every stat and neither can i, or anybody else for that matter. Picking winners takes years to perfect, these days there are very few good opportunities unfortunately.

Gaze

I doubt you even know who he is, but most punters on here would; a poster with an aptly named profile name.

When you make a living from betting, own racehorses, a pundit on TV, an author of books and attain respect from many in the game, perhaps you will be considered with the same esteem, but until then, carry on with the absolute tosh you generally post. It's not surprising you are subject to ridicule on here.

There are so many "negative" and jealous punters like gaze.

I always found that the "average" joe ridiculed and hoped that someone trying something different or new would FAIL dismally. It`s sad but that`s human nature. 

Spot on Andrew.

What's his health issues Crippen u sea from photo

"a consistent loser for two decades plus" - yet respected by many
Gaze loses for 5 years at 7% comm and everyone tells him to quit.

The 2 decades losing were his first 2 decades straight out of school - its called learning the game.
As for '7% commission' - try having no exchange, 120-130% overround with the bookies and a 10% betting tax on top (unless you bet on course).

try having no exchange, 120-130% overround with the bookies and a 10% betting tax on top (unless you bet on course).

Yes please.

The bookies didn't have the exchange to tell them what odds to offer back then. It was a hell of a lot of easier to beat one man's personal opinion, even with a 120% overround and 10% tax, than it is now to beat the whole world with no overround but a 2% commission.

Very fair point Screaming.

>The 2 decades losing were his first 2 decades straight out of school - its called learning the game.

I know, I'm not ridiculing him. I just hate how everyone here pretends that they were born experts, consistently raking in money after a few years of betting on horses. If Alan Potts was in a betting community, losing for 20 years and telling you his luck would turn next year because he has a good system, would you have believed him? Of course not. And yet, here we are. But god forbid Gaze takes his time learning the game, he should quit. I would say I have 10k hours invested into improving my racing systems over the years. There's plenty of time to make millions, why would I quit?

Now, he can get a proper job much to the relief of his partner.

The old time pros could beat the odds compilers because they spent more time on the cards than odds compilers, the winning mentally of a successful pro gambler came at the expense of everything else that normal people enjoy, the only friends they had were on the racecourse, they are a thing of the past but many kidders are out there as per the new videos it seems every Tom is one now and they win fools gold

It's quite ridiculous and has robbed us of one of the top 5 forumites.

Who is the other 4?

.... not counting your good self SS

A sad reflection on the state of the game & only gonna get worse.

Replace Game with World

What's his health issues Crippen u sea from photo

Visceral fat, increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and lots more.

Let's just say gaze isn't one of them Mr Mac.

Well I would put you in the top 10 SS. You always talk sense and act in a respectable manner.

So many good posters have sadly disappeared.

Redundant Punter was top class with his tips.

A sad tale, a ridiculous state of affairs we're in. I'm dreading the day I'm impacted by all this nonsense.

think I would have been tempted to do them under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 for not recognising and providing a "service" accordingly for the deaf and hearing impaired!


100% the way to go here (hear!)



Good luck, it's a bugga.

Only reason pro punters are quitting is the AC on the "regular" gambler, they bet against - who might spin a few grand on the festivals, weekends etc.
Even the £800s at lowest Alan was playing would mince the poxy markets on here nowadays. Get caught out for a monkey and wait a month?
Massive free for all was done in with 2% comm to increase PC payers.
So now the sea is a swimming pool. Having to take 7/2 about 5s chances never ends well long term.
House gets the lot eventually.

Well - just to say that I have also experienced similar problems as Mr. Potts except my stakes are far lower than his. For nearly 10 years now my stakes have been held at £10 win per horse or £10 e/w on higher priced selections plus multiple bets which come to about £30 per multiple bet per day. My total daily spend is around the £80 mark . My total stakes over the last nearly 10 years has just surpassed the £250,000 mark. My total returns have been above that mark. I started off using 12 bookies and over the years with closure or heavily restricted accounts I'm now down to two remaining workable online bookies. One of them a few months ago brought in these 'Affordability Checks', but the difference between me and Mr. Potts (and perhaps the majority of punters) is that I went ahead and accepted their request to effectively positively vet me with respect to my financial situation. I was on the phone to their head office in Gibralta for at least an hour as they quizzed me about everything finacial AND some personal information as well (girlfriends/wives etc.). Following that, they wanted to see documented proof of ALL my savings PLUS proof of all my income. So, I sent all the documents that I had to them via email. The one thing that they WON'T accept are screenshots of documents or photocopies. Documents must be the originals taken from the actual financial websites (ISA and Pension Investment Platforms etc.) Anyway, the result of all this was that they imposed staking restrictions of £200 per month I think it is. Their calculation is a bit more complicated as they take into account things like gains minus losses per month.

The one thing it seems that they are NOT interested in is your total savings. You can be a multi-billionaire (I'm not by the way .... just thought I would add that), but I don't think that they take that into account at all. I don't know if that is actually true, but it just seemed that way to me. What they ARE interested in is your annual income. Their restrictions seem to be based around that and that only.

Looking at the future, if I lose these last two remaining bookies, then I will just have to rely on the exchanges in which case I will have to say goodbye to any multiple bet choices which would be a great shame as they have been a not insignificant part of my total profits over the years. Just to add that the frequency of any major multiple bet wins have been one or two per year with daily betting on those multiples.

I thought that I would write this article here as punters may find it interesting.

.... " And some personal information as well ( girlfriends/ wives etc ) "  !!!!!!!


If you sat on a phone for an hour to a complete stranger giving out such details you need your head examining and I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. Unbelievable.

Agree with glasgow.  Completely ridiculous spending all that time and divulging all that personal information for the sake of a bookmakers account.

Yes, I have been expecting comments like that. They asked about personal stuff because I guess that they wanted to know if I had any dependents who I had financial responsibilities towards. I don't as it happens! So I had nothing to tell them on that front really even though they asked. They did explain to me why they wewre asking all these questions.

Just to add that I'm prepared to take some stick for what I did, because I wanted to know the extent of what the procedures involved were. I knew that almost no one would do what I did, so I wanted to be a bit of a guinea pig as far as this goes and let punters be aware of my experiences.

There clearly is an opportunity for an entrepreneur here eg employ a group of trusted people with good cv and vouched for them; charge a standard fee for the service eg £50 per client (like a stockbroker); accept a deposit prior and place bets for the clients on tracks. I think this will suit a retiree. a day-out with a bit of pocket money.

Thanks for your post Moke

@mrcombustible - no problem

@mrcombustible - I did add a slightly smiley faced emoji to my last message to you, but it appears that emojis are not allowed on this forum.

So here's this instead! :)

@sparrow - ah, so you can leave emojis then. Hmm - wonder why it doesn't work with my PC. Could be the browser that I'm using (Microsoft Edge), Maybe I'll try a different browser next time! Otherwise, I don't know.

Moke, works on all browsers and I am using edge.

Ok - so I'll have to look elsewhere for the problem then.

Thanks, moke. I think it's been pretty explicit ever since this all started that they were going to ignore all savings ("he's using his savings to gamble - we must save him, and his family!"), but it's useful to have it confirmed.

If someone is a genuine pro, with no income, there's no point engaging with this process at all. At the first whiff of an investigation, just withdraw your balance, and don't give them a chance to freeze that balance in the name of anti-money laundering.

Then batten down the hatches - cancel subscriptions, don't renew memberships, that sort of thing - and use those savings for the reason you (hopefully) accumulated them in the first place - in case something unforeseen like this ever happened. It might be possible to work something using racecourse bookmakers again, but it wouldn't be easy. Then again, punting for a living was never supposed to be easy, or there wouldn't be anybody to win  money off in the first place.

Thanks 'screaming'. Another problem with this forum is the fact that one can't edit or delete messages once posted. With places like Patreon and others, one CAN do that which can be quite useful!

So I think you're saying 'take the money and run' which sounds like good advice to me (insert laughing emoji here), Well I'm relatively new to this Exchange malarky, so I'm still sort of getting used to it. If I do come to rely on it completely, then I'll have to change tactics from my 'normal' way of betting but us old geysers hate change! For a start I'm definitely NOT a layer, so backing to win only.

It's fascinating really as the person who was judging you is not remotely qualified to do so. How this behaviour is not properly regulated is beyond belief.

This is exactly the type of criteria that would be used to obtain an unsecured personal loan (but automated algorithms, not remote extended fireside chats). So it appears the underlying objective is to treat betting as permitted losses out of regular income. eg you could not ordinarily get a bone fide loan if you had no regular income, even if you demonstrably have access to plenty of liquid assets. Two take outs (which was obvious anyway), long term winning is not even considered to be a possibility. And betting losses are to be extracted from future earnings, so pre-existing wealth is judged to be irrelevant.

Along with all of this absurdity, it's palpably obvious how useful this information is to the operators. No doubt these are dry runs and the plan is for it to be all done via algorithms/ai. You won't be able to discuss it with a decision maker, it will be a 'frictionless' computer says no.

If it were just a case of having a deposit limit of £100 or £500 per month being slapped on you, but otherwise carry on regardless, well, that wouldn't be the end of the world. It's a hell of a lot easier to win to small stakes, and it would just be a case of building your bank up again until you can return to normal. Very annoying, completely unjustified, and all that, but I could swallow it.

The problem, as Potts discovered, is that it's coupled with a demand that you telephone them, with a threat of account suspension if you don't. No access to your money, just at the moment you need that money.

If you know you're going to fail that telephone interrogation, then you need to withdraw your money forthwith. Otherwise you're going to have to go through what you (mokegibboni) did just to get your own money back. And if you're an incomeless propunter, you'll probably have lost even that £100/month deposit limit by the end of it.

So, yes. If they come for you, just take the money and run.

Bit harsh on the chap's physique, how many ripped racing punters are there?

These are just trial runs, screaming. Perhaps picking out the most unprofitable accounts (to them). No chance they will waste money interrogating each customer on their books that gets flagged up on an annual basis or whatever. What they are identifying now will be used to shape the software (imo).

So before all this nonsense came in, I used to keep a float of about £250 with the bookie in question and anything over and above that at the end of each calendar month I used to cream off into my bank account. I had been doing that for years with no questions asked. If I had a bad run and the bookie float went down to zero during a particular bad month, then I would just top it back up to £250 using the usual debit card method.

All that changed about 6 months ago with these checks when I had a few very poor months and I had about 2 months I think when I had to top up my account by about £500. That's when I was suddenly made aware that I had passed my monthly deposit limit. What monthly limit I asked myself and that's when all the haggling with the bookie occurred and then there was 'THAT' phone call to Gibralta followed by all the hassle of collating all the requireed documentation ...... just to get a deposit allowance of a measly £200 per month as it's turned out!

So, the situation now is that more recently I've had one or two purple patches which has pushed my balance up to about £450. I'm intending for the moment to build that up to at least £1,000 (results permitting) and anything over and above that, I will cream off to my main bank account. Hopefully that'll mean that any deposit limit becomes less of an issue and hopefully my betting can continue as it used to. They may still restrict or close my account however, but that's a different issue and there's absolutely nothing I can do about that, apart from moving all my single betting over to the exchanges!

My point from the start of this was and is "who are the people making the decisions and how are they qualified". How many bookmaker employees would you trust not to sell your address, bank details etc to the nearest criminal who is prepared to pay for them? That goes for junior bank staff as well. I never leave more than £100 in any account apart from savings accounts at a bank. I once lost £4000 in a business account with an electricity supplier that went bust so I am very cautious. Monthly direct debits can soon add up.

If anyone loses money from their account,as long as you haven’t engineered the transaction,the bank just refunds you.so there’s no risk if people get your details.

Something that I forgot to mention and that is that when these deposit restrictions were first applied to my account with this bookie they would only allow me a maximum deposit of £100 per month. Following my 'interrogation' (for want of a better word), it was increased to £200 and it remained at that level ever since. I really wanted a minimum of £500 per month, but they wouldn't entertain that.

@sageform - that's a risk that I'm prepared to take. I guess if the bookie goes under, then I'll lose my £1,000 float with them. I'm gambolling that that won't happen and I'm gambolling that the person in the bookie's office won't steal my money either!

I spoke to Potts at Salisbury this afternoon. He's happily betting in cash, with the racecourse books. The biggest problem is folding up these new plastic notes into £100 bundles. He says that backing winners can be annoying, because you always end up investigating what price it was on here, and it invariably turns out to have been bigger. But he had a £600 to £200 the Middleton Stakes winner at York, and left early with a spring in his step (it was raining steadily by than), so all's well.

He did better than me. I had all the benefits of Betfair prices and the ability to lay horses, and finished £118 up by the end of the afternoon, and wet with it. So which of us really has the better deal at the moment?

At last a sensible punter who like Alan bothered to get off his backside and found no restrictions on bets. I owe Screaming an apology from many years past but the fact is he and Alan have not " Retired " just because of alleged restrictions online?

Cagliari the guy with ten faces…..ffs

Explain that comment Quixall?

1.01 you cannot and no offers any bets at the price!!!!?

You’ve been digging them for years now they are the risen

Is that supposed to mean something?

Maybe you are clueless on this as you normally are?

Well let’s put it this way you weren’t flavour of the month on AIS thread I remember A Potts giving you grief….

Alan did what he had to do on a Sociopathic thread so what is your accusation about 10 Faces?

Alan never forgave me for being Dave Nevisons mate despite years apart?

You claim you knew Dave but could never answer a simple question in what he always carried?

When did I say I knew him  ? I sat a table away when he was signing his book at Musselburgh one day……ffs

Noticed him on course at Ayr and York a few time but never imposed once…..

No problems with affordability checks for me so far. Just the usual problem of having no off-course bookmaker accounts left. And SP only in my town's betting shops.

But you have to make the best of what you've got. Being restricted to the exchange means I almost exclusively lay horses these days. Laying isn't something you tend to take seriously if you still have bookmaker accounts, with all the prices available to back horses. But I like this laying game a lot. If nothing else, I don't get those confidence sapping losing runs any more - the ones that used to go on for literally months sometimes.

I'd find it hard to return to backing horses now, for that reason. I used to grind my way through those losing runs back in the 1990s, and eventually come out on top on the other side. But I was talking about this with Fremantle the other day. How on earth did we used to stick it out? Day after day, travelling up and down the country to do another grand?

I suppose the answer was that we had no other option but to persevere. Eddie went on to talk about how his stakes (mostly backing) have declined these days. He says he looks back at his records, and sees how he used to aggressively follow the price out on a drifter, ending up having four or six hundred quid on it. He just doesn't seem to do that any more, he said, and put it down to getting old. He's only a couple of months or so older than me, and if he's old, then by definition so am I, so I wasn't going to let him get away with that.

I put it down to two things. Firstly that there isn't actually any point in being so aggressive these days, because the price of anything you'd like to buy has risen so far out of reach that you could never win enough to buy it any longer. I mean, I won enough in the 1991-2 season to buy a house. That's completely unfeasible now. (I mentioned that to Potts this afternoon, and, as he said, he paid off his mortgage when he got the Jackpot up one day; you'd never buy a house with a mortgage small enough to be paid off with a line on the Jackpot these days).

And that's the second thing. The stakes you can get on, at the prices you want, simply have not risen in line with inflation. It's true even right at the bottom of the market. My dad used to do shilling each way yankees in the 1970s, yet if you go into a shop now, punters are still doing 5p each way Lucky 15s.

Eddie mentioned that coup in Ireland the other day, with the two 100/1 Queally winners netting half a million on the double. As Eddie pointed out, that's only a 50 euro stake on the double. A century ago the Druid's Lodge Confederacy was having 200 times that on. In nominal terms!

Yet it's now that we're getting affordability checks!

FOS QuixALL, like too many on here who forget their BULL but accuse others with no actual substance, not even a cut & paste?

Or do you have any lies from me to cut and thrust?

I don’t tell lies Cagliari….not my style…..

So why do tell so many lies if not your style, told a few just on this thread, never mind your sister being shot in Belfast?

I knew you were lying btw when you said " I don't lie" as do most on here or are you "Hibby" on this?

good post screaming

Another thread ruined

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13427521/Charity-concerns-gambler-s...

no more legislation until after the general election. everything 'in progress' is now canned.