Bets and Pieces

There may be many things you associate with Uri Geller but probably not being a horse tipster.

To fair, this story isn’t so much about tipping a horse to win a race as buying a horse to own and win. Now Uri Geller is the kind of man who could put his mind to anything with a mystical, sparkly touch of magic.

I’m sure Geller would be horrified to see his Wikipedia page saying the Isreali-British citizen is an illusionist, magician, television presenter and self-proclaimed psychic.

What about the pure magic?

Unfortunately, you don’t see Geller on TV as much as he used to back in the 1990s. I guess he’s fallen out of fashion. However, I’ve seen him do some impressive things with spoons. He once started a broken clock which sat on the mantelpiece for years, while he did a turn on some program on television. In fact, he has published many books including Uri Geller’s Little Book of Mind Power by Robson Book (1999).

He has telepathic powers gifted to him by extraterrestrials. In fact, Geller said he was send to Earth from a spaceship 53,000 light years away although later denied the space fantasy claims. Also, his friend Andrija Puharich claimed Geller had teleported a dog through the walls of his house.

Anyway, this is the longest introduction, unknown to many, Uri Geller had an association with Sir Clement Freud which he detailed in his book Freud On Course: The Racing Lives Of Clement Freud, published in 2009 by the Racing Post.

Freud, a Liberal Member of Parliament, met Geller on the 27^th October 1999 at a fete in his constituency. Geller refused to buy a raffle ticket because he said he always won and people didn’t like it. Freud bullied him into buying one ticket, out of 2,500, and he won.

No doubt feeling Geller had the touch of the Gods, he asked him to look at a horse sales catalogue to buy a yearling. Freud had a long history of owning race horses and Winter Fair, Grunty Fen, Weareagrandmother and Nagnagnag all won races.

He said: ‘I liked finding them names, enjoyed seeing my colours carried in races, had the occasional win and much fun.’

Geller chose the horse of which they went into partnership. The filly was called Spoonbender.

She didn’t win a race. Apparently Gellars skillset can only get you so far at the races. I prefer to have faith in freebetsuk.uk and the like as that’s the definition of a true no lose gamble in my view.

Freud continued: ‘Uri came up with some quite impressive reasons why she run so badly.’

I wish Geller was back on TV as for entertainment value alone he certainly has something.

Gambling can be a bad idea.

In fact, if you don’t have a very good reason to gamble it is advisable not to bet. Ever. You know the only good reason to bet? Because you are convinced you will win. You have the knowledge to outwit the layers with brains rather than brawn.

The only time you need both is if you are betting on an arm wrestle!

For most punters the hope, ambition, goal (whatever the story) of achieving that lofty level of knowledge and skill is remote. If your dream is simply based on making easy money without much work then you will soon find out you are mistaken. In fact, if you have the thought and belief you can somehow ‘magically’ win money without being exceptional at what you do, you are foolishly naive.

You can’t see the competition but it is there in all its guises.

Yes, I’m a would-be pro gambler bubble popper.

Not to say people don’t make money from gambling. They say 2% of gamblers make a profit. Traders on the stock market are no different in their aim to make money. The only different is that they don’t usually bet with their own money. So to conclude no one can make money gambling is ridiculous.

Every financial transaction is a gamble whichever way you want to dress it up. Knowledge isn’t simply ascribed to someone who walks around wearing a trench coat, carries a briefcase and has a Financial Time under their arm.

People make money from selling toilet rolls while others arms dealers.

Your everyday professional gambling sits somewhere in between.

[Thoughts of someone stricken on the bog dropping a couple of bombs after a bet went south.]

Gambling for a living can be very stressful. Losing money is never the best feeling and no one fancies working all week and finding themselves in the red.

That’s why being a professional gambler it’s important to create a gambling life that works for you. It needs to be a pleasurable experience, if not relaxed. This may sound impossible but it’s not. Because you have the option to make your working life work for you. This will take some thought and action but it is possible. You have the opportunity to make your gambling life whatever you wish.

An act of freewill over determinism.

I’ve had this conversation with my brother and one of the most important aspects of professional gambling is having an approach, method and process that incorporates within it a pleasurable experience. Ultimately, a working day that works for you.

Reading many professional gambler books the journey of most successful gambler is one of ultimate stress.

This often comes from betting a bigger stake than they can cope with emotionally. It is a very personal thing and while some people can literally bet millions others find it difficult to bet a couple of hundred, even though they can easily afford the lesser loss.

Your success or not as a gambler comes down to your skill and understanding finding value and working within the limits of your human condition.

However, an important part of being a successful gambler isn’t just about your knowledge and betting power but finding a way of working which is pleasurable and stress-free.

It is a decision you need to make.

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.

By its very nature professional gambling is a mysterious business.

Unsurprisingly, few gamblers are interested in revealing their secret to success. How are they different to the everyday punter and show a profit? Think back to the likes of modern-day pro gambler Patrick Veitch who was reputed to have won £10M in less than ten years. In fact, he had years where he won £2M+.

Something tells me he never bet on the outcome of a photo finish.

Year’s ago, I read Alex Bird’s book Life and Secrets of a Professional Punter published by Queen Anne Press in 1985.

This publication covered his years of gambling from 1946 – 1985.

Bird was a significant figure in the betting ring and very professional. His book details many stories of Grand National ante-post punts and even recounted being visited by the taxman to verify his income was truly from gambling. Bird showed his a ledger of every bet. It was accepted as fact.

However, there has always been one aspect of Alex Bird’s gambling success which just didn’t make any sense to me and made me question his ability to outwit the bookmakers. You may have questioned this ‘fact’ too.

It relates to his profitable strategy of betting on photo-finishes. As a gambler in this modern era, I’ve seem hundreds of photo-finishes on live streaming. The action stops with the horses on the line. It’s a photo-finish but who has won? Even when there is a still of the photo they are often impossible to judge. You only have to watch the betting on the exchanges to see a horse which is odds on to win is often beaten.

So how was it possible for Alex Bird to amazingly bet and win on the outcome of 500 photo finishes in a row?

Something just doesn’t ring true.

Bird must have had a bionic eye akin to the Six Million Dollar Man. Perhaps he was in fact the British version of Steve Austin, Six Million Pound Man. Bird was said to have stood at a certain angle to the finishing line, closed one eye, (said a prayer) and simply found the winner. By all accounts it was a never ending run of winners.

How or why bookmakers would be interesting in taking the bets from someone who simply never lost, I don’t know. I guess that bionic eye put them in some kind of hypnotic trance. Or he dazzled them with a highly polished spoon from Uri Geller’s draw.

Yes, it was a bent spoon.

Perhaps he spread the bets around so no one twigged that his bionic eye could spot the difference between a pixel or two even before pixels had been invented.

I like to think the best of people but how could someone pick the winner of 500 photo-finishes at a crowded racecourse? I doubt anyone would have an 80% strike rate looking at stills today given an hour or so to make a decision let alone at a racecourse with all its distractions.

Well, it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn that some people have questioned his success by saying he was actually given the nod before the stewards’ announcement.

I have no idea whether this is true or not.

However, if something sounds too good to be true it probably is.

I imagine instead of Bird looking at the finishing line, he was more likely looking in a different direction altogether.

Alex Bird died in December 1991.