Masters of Betting

I've not read it but over four decades, I'd guess that getting on was not much of a problem for the first 30 years and then he sold tips.

How a dodgy bank loan led to nearly 40 years as a pro punter - proving old-school methods still have their place
Peter Thomas finds Steve Lewis Hamilton still battling the bookies from a punting den in Chesterfield
author image
Peter Thomas
Senior features writer

In a five-part series, we have profiled the people who strike fear in bookmakers; the ones who all punters aspire to be. They are the Masters of Betting – Don Johnson, Steve Lewis Hamilton, Phil Bull, Alan Potts and Tony Bloom – and they are about to be put under the spotlight by the Racing Post like never before.
Not a subscriber? This is the perfect time to sign up with our introductory offer of 25% off for your first six months of a monthly subscription - just click here and enter the code MASTERSOFBETTING256 at the checkout.
If you were to cut Steve Lewis Hamilton there's little doubt he'd bleed the colour of bank notes; the old paper ones, brown, purple and pink, like you used to give to the bookies on the racecourse back in the day. Chop off a leg and he'd have 'Old-School Punter' written right through him like a stick of rock.
Luckily, there's no need for such drastic measures. A couple of hours in his company are all it takes to piece together the story of a boy from south London who packed up his job at Smithfield meat market to make a go of it on the track, negotiated the bumps in the road and never looked back.
He rode the rails from course to course, when the internet was but a twinkle and the market was strong, and with a sharp mind and a flexible attitude he has reinvented himself as a player in the modern age, albeit from a garden workspace in Chesterfield these days – an honest punter in the town of the crooked spire.
He'd never claim to be any kind of master himself. At the age of 70, he'd be more likely to reflect on how crazy it feels to have made a living and raised a family from betting on the first horse past the post; but at the end of the day he's happy that he's not done bad for a Bermondsey lad who started with seven-eighths of bugger all.
His status in the punting community comes more from his longevity and resilience rather than any swashbuckling battles with the bookies. He's never been a "big player", he admits, but with a grasp of the figures and a head that's learned to be professional on shoulders that have been able to bear the load, he's survived through it all.
The start of it, though, was not so much a blaze of betting glory but a dodgy bank loan for a kitchen that never existed.
'We borrowed ten grand from Barclays to start us off'
Lewis Hamilton was bright at comprehensive school, always had an interest in horses and as a boy he often showed up at Sandown and Epsom with his dad. When his dad wasn't available, he and his underage brothers would badger strangers to take them in, and soon Lewis Hamilton developed an 'in' to the action, through betting.
"I was bright enough to realise I had to go racing to try to understand the gambling as opposed to just the form work," he explains. "I was in my early thirties when I did a year keeping proper records. My maximum bet would have been 50 quid and at the end of the year I'd shown a profit of about 50 quid a week. I thought if I could step that up and earn 500 quid a week I'd be on to something.
"We [he and wife Jayne] had no money though, so we borrowed ten grand from Barclays for a new kitchen and I started with that. We got the kitchen eventually when I had a jackpot up on Ascot Heath day which won us 22 grand, but there were a few bumps in the road along the way."
Never has a bank loan been so dishonestly or so well invested. Our man told his wife that he wanted to make a proper go of punting, starting at 5am at Smithfield, finishing at ten and then hopping on the train to wherever he needed to be that day, often in the company of inveterate rail traveller, fellow punter and racing journalist Eddie 'The Shoe' Fremantle.
Renowned racecourse judge Eddie Fremantle was a key ally in Steve Lewis Hamilton's early days at the track
Renowned racecourse judge Eddie Fremantle was a key ally in Steve Lewis Hamilton's early days at the track
Credit: Racing Post
Fremantle introduced him to the right people and he struck up friendships with the likes of renowned backer John Gough so things clicked pretty quickly.
"I started earning ten times more than when I'd done my year of practice," he recalls. "My minimum bet, all of a sudden, would be £100 and my maximum £500. I packed up at Smithfield, where I'd been getting £190 a week, and inside a month [famed old-school punter] Johnny Lights came up to me and asked me to mark his card for him and said he'd give me £200 a day, which made me realise what was possible."
What might have been the insurmountable obstacle – persuading a wife with no interest in racing that the precarious existence of professional punting was a good way to go for a young family – was overcome by early success.
"I only did jump racing – it was all on-course because you still had off-course betting tax – and I remember going down to Newton Abbot in August for the start of the season and in the first week I won four and a half grand, ready money, all cash," he remembers. "It was a bit of a false dawn, and when I only won a grand the following week it was a bit of a disappointment, but it proved to me I could make it work."
'If you don't understand the percentages, you can't make it pay'
Harking back to the bumps in the road, there was a time in the distant past when Lewis Hamilton confesses he was off the track for several months, owing money to an on-course bookie, but he bounced back, and although his longest journey these days is to the bottom of his garden, the method has remained broadly the same.
"I'm only betting now in the same amounts I was then, but back then I had to earn money to support the family and so turnover was much more than it is now," he explains.
"There were bad weeks and at the time I thought things just hadn't gone my way, but looking back it was because I wasn't betting at the right prices.
"It doesn't matter how expert you are at form study or what you know about the horses, you've got to understand the percentages. If you don't, you can't make it pay."
Steve Lewis Hamilton's ledger from his first week as a pro punter in 1989
Steve Lewis Hamilton's ledger from his first week as a pro punter in 1989
Not everybody appreciates the noble art of the professional punter – Jayne's dad thought his son-in-law would be better off as a taxi driver and was only won over when Lewis Hamilton started appearing on the Racing Channel – but a long-running subscription-based advice service suggests enough people are on board and Lewis Hamilton works hard to keep his head in front. He's up at around 5.30am for 20 minutes of exercise and stretches, then a quick shower before starting work at six.
"I watch every jump race,” he says. “I don't think I've missed one since the advent of racing on TV, and I feel comfortable doing it. I still do my own handicapping, do my own notes and transfer them over. I get bollocked for it by my son, who wonders why I don't do it on AI, but writing my notes reinforces what I've seen and my 'go-to' are my ratings. They may not be vastly different from the official ratings or any others, but they're different enough to give me an edge, and that's my way into a race."
Today, for example, "two horses have achieved at a similar level on my figures but one is 1-3 and the other is 3-1, because the Timeform ratings have the favourite rated 10-15lb higher than me. So I can understand the discrepancy and it points me towards a bet" – a winner, in fact, although the day ends up in the category he calls "theory correct, send more money".
He admits that losing days affect him more now that his turnover is much lower, even though his outgoings have gone down in tandem.
"I used to sit in the car for three hours and have six bets on a day. Sometimes now it's five or six bets a week, but I don't have those expenses to pay and the psychology hasn't really changed."
With his form work for the day done, it's time to get down to the nuts and bolts on Betfair.
"I try to highlight any discrepancies within the markets – in my opinion – going through each race one by one, pricing them, trying not to look at the prices before I do my own.
"After that, I'm not looking to earn a certain figure, so I play what I feel comfortable with and I do things that mentally I'm happy with, which I think is very important in the long term."
'Unless there's an error in the prices I can't get involved'
The tipping service is still going strong after 25 years, although honesty and phone lines aren't always easy bedfellows.
"I'd never be told what to say and I wouldn't fabricate things – maybe if I'd done that I'd have got a bit more out of it," shrugs Lewis Hamilton, adding: “These days people can access so much information for free and think they know what they're doing. Too many people don't care that you've done hours of form work to come up with a bet; they just want to know you've spoken to connections and have some inside information."
What Lewis Hamilton still offers is bets that represent value, working strictly on available prices, although a lot has changed from the halcyon days of the on-course punter.
"In the old days there were ricks made on the boards and that was the edge you had," he explains, "but now the markets are pretty accurate and unless I think there's an error in the prices I can't get involved.
"The thing is, you don't know on the exchanges who you're betting with and what the angles are, whereas on the track you could see who was playing and it gave you an understanding of the market.
"I just play the way I've always played: back horses that are overpriced and lay horses that are underpriced, and over the years I've managed to level off the profit and loss line by being thorough and not making, in theory, too many ricks."
Steve Lewis Hamilton yyyyy
Steve Lewis Hamilton has been at the betting coalface for nearly 40 years
'Money's never been the driving force'
Have the decades of seeing her husband chipping away at the punting coalface – since the days when the couple ran pubs at King's Cross and on the Old Kent Road – given Jayne a fascination for the turf, or at least inured her to its unforgiving nature?
"I can't be interested in it, otherwise it'd cripple me; I'd go crazy," she says. "I've got a thing about money, which is the exact opposite to Steve."
"I got her to come and watch a race once, one that stood to make us a fair bit, and turning into the home straight I thought we'd win," says hubby, "so I turned to look at Jayne and she had her thumbs in her ears and her hands over her eyes. She just couldn't hack it.
"As a punter you have a different mindset and money's never been the driving force. If I thought about what I was winning or losing it would be too much for me to handle, but I've learned to manage it.
"The whole thing's crackers, I know, and that's Jayne's point, but it's what I do."
For Lewis Hamilton, the best bets have been about satisfaction rather than huge sums bet or won. He recalls a day at Towcester: “I bet £1,000 to £30 three times on course on a horse I had in at 5-1, so I couldn't let it run unbacked, purely on price. It won and it was pleasing knowing I'd got it right."
As the game has developed, he's followed the line that "you adapt because you have to; you have to move on to survive".
Does he have regrets about the game he's played for so long?
"The social side is dead and buried and I do miss that, but I still get the buzz out of what I do," he says. "I question it, the hours I'm putting in and what the job involves, but both kids have learned to accept what I do and what I'm like.
"I remember on our granddaughter's fifth birthday, I couldn't go because I was working. I look back and wonder if I should have gone, but that's my life, it's given the family a lot and we're all still very tight together. That's how I justify it and I've no intention of stopping, although Jayne would like me to retire."
Does he believe there is a future for the serious punter, or is the job on its way out? On this subject he has strong views.
"The trouble is, life is a million shades of grey but these days people want black or white and if you're middle of the road, trying to be objective, you're ****ed,” he says.
"Very few people really understand the gambling aspect of racing and on the TV I never hear anybody talk about it. You try to offer some perspective but people's eyes glaze over. They just want to do their football accumulator, even though there's no value in it.
"If it's just recreational, that's fine, but if anybody thinks they can make it pay without understanding the percentages, they need to be told."
It's an old-school message that still stands firm in the modern age, and Steve Lewis Hamilton is living, breathing, punting proof that it makes sense.
Racing Post+ Ultimate subscribers can read part three in Masters of Betting, in which we remember the godfather of modern-day betting, Phil Bull, from 6pm on Tuesday
Read

"and money's never been the driving force."

"I question it, the hours I'm putting in and what the job involves,

the couple ran pubs at King's Cross and on the Old Kent Road

Take my advise:don't subscribe to his,or any tipping service: you will not make money.
The racing post have a vested self-interest in writing these articles on a regular basis;if they were genuine journalists,they'd be asking difficult questions from these so-called pro punters,as I've pointed out above.

Sound advise

The post has to fill its pages somehow and theres not much else you can expect

Without even the dismal journalsim they couldnt justify £5.50 for what amounts to computer generated data

Sort of

They all say its much harder now and they are not doing as well as they had. And they are on-course so restrictions don't apply as much

I know none of them but I do know a couple of books on the m25 circuit and they will attest to the veracity of most of it

In unison they all say Toby is the greatest of all

Was it the Alan Potts episode in yesterday's post ? if so could somebody please put it up on the thread.thanks,

Cheers, uptheirons.

Havent these tales been told before?

Post must be desperate to fill space. Cant even be arsed going out to nick it

Many of these older punter stories are basically a bit like time travel back to 70s, 80s, 90s

'Beating the bookies' roy of the rovers, jumpers for goalposts etc etc

He mentions exchanges once in a backhanded way - you don't know who you are betting with.

Yes, but at least you can get your money on your selections!

I don't fully go with that criticism irons, it's fine to run a tipping service alongside your own betting if profitable - that's just another income stream, why not.

Pressure stu…..

of course, that is an IF

yesterdays RP article a lot to unpick especially the reference to Betfair
it is the sort of scene that would work perfectly in a blockbuster movie. The only living soul in that scene could just as easily be the movie's hero.

On a scorching hot afternoon a Ford Explorer travels down an otherwise deserted desert highway somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix. In the driver's seat is an exquisitely tanned man who wears expensive jewellery, a suit and sunglasses. He is the epitome of cool. He is also one of the world's biggest, most successful and wealthiest gamblers.

Over the coming days our Masters of Betting series will feature legendary punters of the past and present. You will read about exceptionally shrewd individuals from whom some valuable lessons can be learned. These are extraordinary people who are living or lived extraordinary lives. Quite rightly leading the way is Don Johnson.

It's a good name for someone whose story feels ripe for a Hollywood portrayal. Johnson is a former jockey and racecourse manager who in a five-month spell won $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos. The 63-year-old is good at blackjack and not bad at racing, either, which is handy as he is part of a computer-assisted wagering syndicate that regularly pumps millions of dollars into pari-mutuel pools. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the Miami Vice star's namesake knows a lot of famous people.

"I have some friends who happen to be actors or actresses, people like Paris Hilton, Kevin Dillon and Charlie Sheen," says Johnson from behind the Explorer's steering wheel. "Some of those guys love the ponies. They don't have to pay Kevin to show up for horseracing. He loves it."

Johnson loves it, too, and always has done, right back to when he was spending his childhood in Oregon on a thoroughbred farm and then earning a living riding races, generally at a level some way removed from the Triple Crown or Breeders' Cup.
Don Johnson (third from left) has a number of celebrity friends, including actor Kevin Dillon (far left)
Don Johnson (third from left) has a number of celebrity friends, including actor Kevin Dillon (far left)

"I was born into the racing industry," says Johnson. "I fell in love with it and I've never had to leave. I've flourished in this industry because I enjoy it.

"I loved being a jockey and probably rode around 100 winners but I'm 6ft 1in, so I was starving myself just to make the weight. I rode in Oregon, Idaho, Washington and northern California but a lot of those circuits I rode on weren't even printed in the Daily Racing Form, so there is no record of many of my races.

"After I finished riding I transitioned over to officiating on racing and then kept looking up, trying to get the next position. I was a junior racing official, a steward, a racing judge and then ran a racing commission. I moved on to managing tracks and ultimately wound up at Philadelphia Park."

It was while working at the Pennsylvania track that Johnson's life changed. His interest was sparked by groups of punters – known as 'handicappers' in the US – who repeatedly turned up at the track and consistently seemed to win. Supported by two British bosses, Bob Green and Bill Hogwood, who shared his enthusiasm for using data, he made a point of supplying the punters with all the information he could muster, knowing that the more they bet, the more it would increase the track's betting handle and therefore also its profits. Johnson watched and learned.

"It was obvious they weren't degenerates or addicts," he recalls. "They knew what they were doing because they were making money – and they were all using additional information.

"It was clear to me they had an edge. There was a science behind what they were doing. That made me think about transitioning that science across to other areas of gaming. That's when I got the blackjack idea. I was lucky to meet the right maths guys at the right time. It gave me the confidence to put some real dollars behind it and to start building up a bankroll."
Don Johnson won $15 million from Atlantic City casinos across a five-month period
Don Johnson won $15 million from Atlantic City casinos across a five-month period

The bankroll quickly got bigger and bigger. At the same time, casinos hammered by the financial crash became desperate to attract high rollers, offering an array of perks and concessions in an effort to bring vast sums of money into their halls.

"If your edge is big enough, it doesn't take a lot to get going," says Johnson. "At the time, Atlantic City were giving away too many advantages. I don't think even they realised they were giving away their house edge. You can't give somebody a 20 to 25 per cent rebate on their losses per trip and expect to win. I never bet to lose more than the maximum rebate. All I had to do was play perfect strategy."

In one jaw-dropping period he played that perfect strategy perfectly. Between December 2010 and April 2011, Johnson won $4m from Caesars, $5m from the Borgata and $6m from the Tropicana, where he staked in the region of $60m.

"Everyone asks me how I felt but it really wasn't emotional," he says. "It was mechanical to me. I don't ever remember high-fiving anyone. It wasn't like that. It wasn't an emotional ride. I just carried on playing because I had enough confidence in the edge.

"It was a bit surreal but there wasn't any celebrating between hands, even after the largest hand I ever played, which was $800,000. At some point I knew the game was going to end – and in one of the games that was after I'd won the $6m. It wasn't like I had any plan of stopping at that point but I didn't realise the regulations stipulated they weren't allowed to put more chips on the floor than they had cash in the cage to cover their liability. I had already taken all the cash. I do remember at that point thinking I was awfully tired and wanted to take a nap."

Johnson adds: "I was very good at the execution. I figured out clever ways to get the money down but at some point the casinos decide they just can't take bets from someone winning so much money. Pool betting on racing is different. A winning punter can be a good partner to the racing industry.

"Even during those Atlantic City days I was still working on trying to figure out an analytics model that would work for betting on racing. It's all about always trying to come up with new data. You don't always know where the data is going to come from but then you test it and find it has value."
Don Johnson: "A winning punter can be a good partner to the racing industry"
Don Johnson: "A winning punter can be a good partner to the racing industry"

Following a brief stop on the road, Johnson resumes his journey towards Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and then on to his Pennsylvania home. Behind him is an awful lot of sage brush and a University of Arizona symposium, at which he attended a session assessing the value to racing of computer-assisted wagering (CAW), the betting approach that uses algorithms and advanced technology to assess form, odds and real-time betting data before automatically placing large numbers of bets in the final moments before a race. Johnson is now a prominent member of the CAW scene. Indeed, his turnover, prowess and profits earn him a lofty position in a table of the world's biggest gamblers, at which the number-one spot goes to the publicity-shy London-based Australian Zeljko Ranogajec.

Stressing that he does not work alone, Johnson says: "The largest team in the business has north of 2,000 people working for them and they're doing in the ballpark of $6 billion a year. The smaller groups are doing maybe $100m a year. Our syndicate is somewhere in between, although we're definitely at the higher end of the food chain, rather than the lower end.

"Not everyone in the group appreciates the exposure but, for me, the exposure is already out there because my blackjack endeavours were written about years ago.

"The architect of our group is the maths genius who did the modelling and wrote the mathematical code. I call him Good Will Hunting because he never went to university and started what he's doing now in high school. He then perfected it and made it better and better over a number of years. I've now been working with him for a little over 20 years, which shows you this didn't just happen overnight."

It could be said that 'overnight' is practically the only time that Johnson and his crew are not consumed by racing and the quest to find winners and new winning systems.

"I watch racing every day," he says. "Everyone like me does that. To us, watching racing is like breathing or drinking water. We look at every pool type in every race every day. Everything gets handicapped because you don't always know where your edge is going to come from. You also don't know what the betting public is going to do. Someone could cause an outlier anomaly in a pool that drives up a price and makes a horse undervalued.

"I don't ever get tired of it but I could never have envisaged this happening at this level. Even now, there are days when I'm astounded by the turnover numbers. It's crazy how big they can be. There are days when we're betting in the millions. If it's a day with a few big races around the globe, we can certainly bet $5m in a single day. That would not be inconceivable.

"We've knocked down a few of the big Pick6 pools, winning anywhere from $1m to $2.5m. You're not hitting all of them, though, and there's a lot of variance. When a 99-1 shot wins people say the CAW players are bound to have backed him. There's no guarantee of that. We still have to handicap a horse, like everyone else, and there's no reason we should have the extreme outliers. You're dumping big dollars into those pools, and it's great when you hit the big numbers, but sometimes you blank."

Money is also pumped into British and Irish racing pools and markets, although their attractiveness may be fading.

"Betfair has got increasingly difficult because there is less liquidity," says Johnson. "For me, the UK Tote is also a bit problematic because it's well known they bet into their own pools. As a former regulator, I have a problem with that. If you're the custodian of a market and you bet into that pool, it looks like you're competing with your own customers. It also says to me that you lack liquidity."
Ethical Diamond beats Rebel's Romance in the Breeders' Cup Turf
Don Johnson enjoyed a big win when Ethical Diamond landed the Breeders' Cup TurfCredit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

Having developed software that better assesses the merits of horses trained outside the US, Johnson is now increasingly comfortable backing European-trained runners in his home country. That proved profitable when his syndicate aligned itself with the Willie Mullins-trained 27-1 Breeders' Cup Turf winner Ethical Diamond.

"It was really something for me to be backing an Irish jumps trainer," says Johnson. "It was mostly to do with the fact the class of jumps horses he had been competing against was similar to the quality of horse he could have been racing against in Grade 1 Flat races in the US. He was a phenomenal grass horse and we could see the trainer was very good with jumps horses going on to the Flat.

"The week after the race I was in Melbourne for the Cup and went to a breakfast hosted by Robbie Waterhouse. Ethical Diamond's trainer showed up for that, which was a real treat for me.

"I actually went with Robbie to Cheltenham a few years ago. I loved it, although it was confusing at first. I couldn't work out how the hell the jockeys knew where to go. It looked like they were jumping a hedge, then a moat, doing a loop-the-loop and then running up a hill."

While the intricacies of jump racing remain something of a mystery to Johnson, gambling does not. He made headlines when winning millions of dollars from vast casinos that were forced to wave white flags of surrender. Since then he has focused his skills on his first love, horseracing, embracing a method of betting that has proved controversial, not least for its tendency to pour huge sums of money into pools less than a minute before races start. Indeed, a class action was last year filed against a number of leading American racecourse groups and featured allegations of collusion, a **** system and 'no risk, no loss' wagering.
Don Johnson, pictured in Melbourne with partner Kyla Nicole Healey and Willie Mullins in Melbourne last November
Don Johnson, pictured in Melbourne with partner Kyla Nicole Healey and Willie Mullins in Melbourne last November

Johnson – now a racehorse owner and successful in numerous big races – refutes the accusations and argues his preferred method of betting will aid, not damage, the sport.

"We did a study through Southampton University in the UK that highlighted how much recreational players benefit from the informed trading pros," says Johnson. "Recreational punters all get sized up when the pros miss – and they miss more often than people think.

"The computer-assisted wagering acronym was created 20 years ago when they were calling it robotic wagering. The reality is none of this is robotic. This isn't about Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's not The Terminator and the machines aren't taking over. It's not Armageddon. None of this runs itself. It all has armies of humans working behind the scenes to keep improving the software.

"People talk about CAW players but everyone is a computer-assisted wagering player. Everyone is now using a hand-held device that is more powerful than computers were 20 years ago. We also all know young people want to use data. It was true 20 years ago, it was true ten years ago and it's just as true today. As technology improves, if you want to attract a younger generation to racing, you have to let them use the toolkits they're accustomed to using. That's what turns them on."

It's what turns him on, too. It is also central to the piece of advice he offers regular punters.

"There is a lot of data out there that you can use in your own handicapping that will make you a better player," says Johnson.

Cell 1	Cell 2
Cell 3	Cell 4

Coming from one of the very best players in the world, it must be a tip worth taking.

Well at least that article is a bit more relevant.

BTW, thanks both above for posting these.

yep thanks. Now Bull please

"It was mostly to do with the fact the class of jumps horses he had been competing against was similar to the quality of horse he could have been racing against in Grade 1 Flat races in the US"


Mostly to do with being a Royal Ascot winner and gagging up in the Ebor under a big weight. Then getting a super trip on ground he loves against European horses that weren't quite as good as many thought.

Good morning Ronnie hope your well I don’t suppose you know how to post today’s article as I’m out of the country and can’t buy a racing post .

Potts interview  ... long but doesnt say much
An ideal midwinter tonic is to spend an afternoon at the races with Alan Potts, punter, author and owner, listening to tales of 90s racing and chewing over thorny issues like the problems facing modern gamblers and whether the old ways still work.

Champagne corks can be heard popping in the rooms around us as we wander through Newbury's grandstand, but it seems unlikely that any of those betting here will ever have as many occasions to celebrate as this unassuming man, who worked hard to leave his mug punting days behind and make the game pay.

There's nothing flash about Potts or his methods and he long ago sought to dispel any romantic notions that people might have about betting for a living. In the preface to his 1995 book Against The Crowd, he assured us that professional punters do not have "a year-long suntan, expensive clothes and a top-of-the-range BMW in the car park" and nor yet are they "perpetually down to their last ten quid, ducking and diving from one shady deal to another". Well, not all of them.

I could claim that racecourse bookmakers were scared of Potts when he was at his most successful, a period he identifies as being the last decade of the last century and the first decade of this one. He certainly extracted a huge amount of money from the ring over that period and has the ledgers to prove it, so it's tempting to imagine the layers as nervous bunnies, thumping on the ground at the sight of him to warn each other a predator was approaching.

It wasn't like that. I know because Potts tells me, and also because he shows me footage from a 1996 TV show, Tales Of The Turf, in which his moustached younger self is shown collecting a total of £2,700 from three Sandown bookmakers on a fruitful, sunny afternoon. The mood is relaxed, affable, as you'd expect from people who do business with each other every day.

"I was always polite and friendly," says Potts. "Probably key, I wasn't backing favourites, quite the opposite. I always used to say that I would win on the days that the bookies won, and lose when they lost. Because we were both taking on the favourites."

'It was David's nature to explain things'

With rare exceptions, we probably all start out as mug punters. The main question is whether we're happy to stick with carefree, unprofitable habits or make the necessary effort to grow up a bit.

Potts remembers those days, which, for him, were back in the 70s at a time when he was working as a computer operator.

"If I was watching on TV, I'd do a Yankee, or if I didn't have enough cash to hand for that, just the six doubles. If I went racing, I'd chase losses, bet every race, and drink between races rather than go to the paddock. I always bet the last race, where the stake would be whatever I had left in my wallet."

Unsurprisingly, such behaviour did not lead to sustainable, long-term profit – and, in fairness, Potts had never expected that it would. But the possibility began to nag at him as he learned about the game and then, in 1978, the chance to break with those habits came in the form of a job in the Middle East.

Along with a couple of other Brits, Potts was hired to work as a consultant in the Kuwait government computer centre, earning £1,000 a month (the equivalent of around £5,500 now), tax free.

It was a posting that eventually allowed him to enter low-level ownership in partnership with a couple of friends, and thereby gain a mass of new insights into how racing works. One of the friends lived just outside Salisbury, so the budding owners signed up with the locally based David Elsworth, then only a couple of years into his training career.
David Elsworth gave a young Alan Potts invaluable lessons about the sport
David Elsworth gave a young Alan Potts invaluable lessons about the sportCredit: Chris Bourchier

"That was just one of the great pieces of luck," reflects Potts.

"David was a great people person, as well as being absolutely fantastic with the animals. It was just his nature to explain things. The number of things I learned from him – about horses with back problems or breathing problems, horses with bad feet.

"He was the first person ever to take me out on to the course and make me watch a steeplechase by the last fence. It was at Hereford one afternoon. Talk about a different experience from watching racing in the stand.

"The noise, the jockeys shouting at each other, the sheer physicality of the whole thing. It came as a complete shock."

On a tour of Elsworth's yard, Potts and pals saw "a scrawny little three-year-old filly". The trainer told them: "That'll win the seller at Brighton on Tuesday."

"Not 'might' or 'hope'," emphasises Potts. "He said, 'Will win'. I got the paper on Tuesday, her form figures were 000000. I thought, 'I'd better go to Brighton.'"

After the filly came home seven lengths clear, Potts and Elsworth found themselves in the owners' and trainers' bar, seeking gin and tonics ("David wasn't a champagne man"). The trainer offered to pay, on the grounds that he'd had £50 at 5-1.

"Like an idiot, I said I'd had £100 at 11-2," says Potts. "Whereupon, David shouts at the barman, 'Make those doubles, he's paying!' I don't think I got another tip off him for any horse I didn't own."

'I never questioned myself – is that confidence or arrogance?'

Time to sober up because the mood has briefly turned severe as Potts points out one of the differences between those who can do what he did and those who can't. We're looking through his ledger of bets from 2004 – he has one for every year from 1983 to 2009, after which he moved to spreadsheets.

"Great start in January and then, whoosh, all downhill. I just wasn't picking winners," he says.

A finger stabs at the cumulative figure next to June and he says: "Halfway through the year, I'm £11,000 down. You add the exes to that and the fact I was probably maintaining three racehorses at that point."

Yikes, and yikes again. I express my dismay for the Potts of 21 years ago, but it might have been better to keep a blank face because the response is insistent.

"You cannot let that alter what you do," he says. "You've either got a method which you stick to, or you haven't and you shouldn't be doing this in the first place."

But surely, when you go on a bad run that stretches into months, you're bound to question yourself or your approach?

"Well, I never did," he answers. "Is that confidence or arrogance?"

Potts's year was turned around by Alkaased, who would achieve lasting fame in the Japan Cup 18 months later but at this point was the winner only of a Ripon maiden.

The punter, seeking bargains for his Golden Anorak partnership, had been surprised to see the unexposed youngster up for sale at the end of his three-year-old season and was pretty sure the new owner had got a bargain at 42,000gns.
Alkaased: beat Heart's Cry in a thrilling finish to the 2005 Japan Cup
Alkaased turned around Alan Potts's year in 2004Credit: Mark Cranham 9racingpost.com/photos)

"I'd got this horse pencilled in as the absolute number one horse to follow," he says.

But how often do such insights reap their just rewards? Not often enough and he had lost £1,400 in early June when Alkaased, having his first run for Luca Cumani, was beaten a head by Wunderwood at Newmarket.

Two weeks later, Wunderwood followed up in the Duke of Edinburgh at Royal Ascot.

"I thought, 'That's blown it,'" says Potts. "Everyone now is gonna know about Alkaased."

We obviously should have done, but somehow those of us who were betting on racing in 2004 collectively blew the assignment. In the Old Newton Cup, run on the day Refuse To Bend won the Coral-Eclipse, Alkaased was allowed to start at 7-1.

"Hmmm, £900, I don't know why I didn't have more on," reflects Potts. "Perhaps you're right, perhaps I was losing confidence. He won by four lengths when it could have been seven or eight. He was being eased down all the way through the final furlong. That was the start of a month where I couldn't do much wrong."

A series of successes included £100 on the Tote when Indian Trail scored at Newbury, the win dividend being £20.80.

Potts was hot and perhaps there really were bookmakers who tried to avoid meeting his eye at Glorious Goodwood. We all know what can go wrong on the Sussex Downs and indeed some of those things had befallen him the previous year, when he had 14 bets during the meeting and didn't get a single winner.

This time, though, the racing gods were smiling on him as, from 16 bets, nine won, including Ringmoor Down at 10-1. Those successes were all the sweeter because they were being shared as tips with a small number of subscribers.

"By this stage, they all knew you weren't going to get a winner every week or every month, you had to be patient," says Potts. "But something like this might happen at any time. The total winning margin for those nine winners was about six and a half lengths."

Did that make for a stressful week's viewing?

"Not at all, I never get that wound up," he replies.

Potts netted almost £40,000 from his bets that month and the losses from the previous half-year no longer mattered.

'The big edge for me on the Flat is watching horses go to post'

So how did the mug punter of the mid-70s morph into this wizard with subscribers who were being so thoroughly well rewarded?

"That process of recording every bet was key – no longer just ignoring the losses, starting to see patterns," he says.

"Ownership taught me a lot about placing, handicapping, physical issues with horses, all learned from David. I learned about the sport, rather than just seeing it as a betting medium."

Potts is quick to point out the bits of good luck he's had along the way, like the Kuwait job. When, in 1991, he was pondering the leap towards full-time betting and thinking he might leave it another ten years, he was given a hearty shove towards change by being made redundant at a time when suitable jobs were hard to find.

"I suppose I never really had anything to spend the money on, being single," he says. "I didn't have a wife or kids; not from choice, it was just the way life turned out. I was married once but it didn't work.

"I had a big Jackpot win 15 months after I'd set up as a full-time punter; that paid off my mortgage. So the things that might have impinged on your life and required money, a roof over your head, supporting your family, those things weren't there."

He mentions trying to "use the money sensibly" after a big win, by helping younger members of his extended family get on the property ladder or by making donations to the Injured Jockeys Fund. Being sheltered from some of the pressures that affect others must have been an advantage in a line of work where mental resilience seems crucial.

"I think it was Nick Mordin who wrote somewhere that, to be a big winner, you have to get used to losing," he says.

Has he seen others being affected by the pressure to keep up with the bills?

"I have to be honest with you, professional punters who get together on a racecourse don't talk about those sorts of things," he says. "It's very difficult to know what we do talk about. Mostly, it's the horses or the card. You don't know how much they're betting, you don't know how much they're winning or losing."
Alan Potts is still a regular on course
Alan Potts is still a regular on course

We talk about how few people have ever managed to make a consistent living from betting on horses, enduring changes in the game and in their own circumstances.

"I could name 20, maybe, that I've known over the past 35 years, who have sustained it," he says.

Some of their names come up in conversation: John Noakes (not that one), Beardy Alan and Deaf Paul. The spirit of Damon Runyon lives on.

Potts enjoys seeing them and is still a regular at the races but, now 78, says: "I no longer need to bet. I'm not betting to make a living any more. This is just fun. This is my hobby."

Which is just as well because, when I ask whether someone could hope to have the same career if they started out now, the answer is emphatic: "No chance."

From 1987, there was no tax on betting at the races. Betfair did not appear until June 2000. In between was a golden period for betting on-course.

"Bookmakers were working to their own tissues and they made ricks," says Potts. "There were prices you could take that were very generous, to your eye. It didn't matter what any other pro said to me, or any other person. If I decided to back a horse at 3-1, that's what I was gonna do."

What advice would he give to anyone setting out now to make a living from betting?

"I think you've got to be realistic," he says. "I've compared the staking I was doing in the 90s with what the average male income was at that time. If you scale it up by the rate of inflation since then, where I was having to win £17,000 or £20,000, now you're talking £40,000 to £42,000. And to win that much, you've got to turn over more.

"How the hell do you get those bets on? I was betting £400 or £600 on a horse in the mid-90s. Now, it would have to be something like £1,500 to produce a similar level of income."

He agrees with my suggestion that the business of 'getting on' is harder than ever.

"Starting out now, I don't understand how anyone would do it," he says. "You could have done it on Betfair in the first ten years of this century, but there's no liquidity on Betfair now. I presume the guys who do it now don't bet only on horseracing. They'd have to bet on other things."

It's a downbeat note, but we don't have to end there because Potts reckons that, even in these high-tech times, punters who show up at the races can still hope to gain an advantage.

"The big edge for me on the Flat is watching horses go to post," he says. "Nobody else does it. It's me and Kenny [Pitterson] and that's it.

"There are others, but I don't think many have the skill. You have to learn it over a very long time, to be able to watch horses go down to the start [and reach useful conclusions]. I got help on this from David Elsworth, what to look for. Particularly on fast ground in the summer, I'm looking to see if the horse is stretching out. Is he willing to stride? You see short, choppy strides; that's not a good sign."

Over the years, Potts has met a few readers of Against The Crowd who have set out to follow his example. It's good to know there are still edges for them to work with.

That’s very kind of you gambas thank you and good luck.