May 2024

Professional Gambler: No Excuses

For just about all of my life I’ve been working to achieve my goal of becoming a professional gambler. I started taking an interest in two-year-old horse racing back in 1986. It seems like an eternity in some ways but time has flown by in others.

I can hear you say: ‘You should be good after 37 years.’

To be fair, I should be Bill Benter. If you don’t know who he is, then he’s an American professional gambler who bet on the horses and made almost a billion dollars. He did this by developing analysis computer software programs and is often considered the most successful gambler of all time.

Perhaps these days he’d be wrestling with Tony Bloom for that title.

Anyway, I’m not a billionaire or a millionaire but I have plans to get to the later before my life has been concluded.

Being a professional gambler is one of those mysterious ‘jobs’ that people don’t really understand. It’s difficult if impossible to have a conversation about or succinctly put into words. Not that it matters what others think about your occupation.

You can only measure your own standing: success or failure by comparing it to yourself. We often wish we were someone else or if only I had the life of so and so. But, in truth, we have no idea what they have done to get this far and we don’t really know their lived life or how their future will unfold.

There’s no doubt we live in a competitive world.

With gambling on the exchanges or even at the course you can’t really imagine the level of competition you are facing. All you see is a horse’s name and betting odds. But those betting odds encapsulate the winning and losing in life. Incorporated within that data is the wisdom (or lack of it) of every punter.

You take 5/1 on a horse in the first race at Yarmouth. You bet on Betfair betting exchange. For all you know, you may be pitting your wits against a professional gambler. Akin to sitting next to them in a room and them saying: ‘I’ll take that bet!’

Should you be worried?

It comes down to what you know. If you put the work into being exceptional you’d bet against anyone. Sure, you won’t be winning all the time for the simple reason no one wins all the time.

But if you know more than most you will show a profit and that details you are a winner.

Gambling can be a lonely business. Yes, you may have friends who you talk to and they may have some understanding of the highs and lows but if you lose your cash there’s no one who wants to help you out.

You made your bed, you lie in it.

So often you have a losing bet and you are looking to blame something, someone, anything. It may be justified.

‘The dog has been barking all day long and it’s a distraction.’

‘Someone knocked on the door at the wrong time!’

‘The sun didn’t shine today.’

The point I am making is that there will always be something but perhaps it is simply our problem. I got it wrong. I wasn’t quite disciplined enough. I didn’t follow the correct method or process.

Whatever the situation there are no excuses.

If you have to learn a lesson then it is best learned and move forward making sure you don’t create bad habits.

Sometimes value lies in those losing bets.