THE COMEBACK
SOMEHOW, I found a fresh resolve to fight my way out of trouble. It came through channelling my anger into motivation, the motivation to work really hard. I spent time reflecting on what had happened to me and used my resentment to spur me onwards. Using anger as my motivation wasn’t a sound method for the long term but, in those first few months, it was the only solution I could find.
I took on an enormous workload. Only sleep and excursions to the gym were allowed to interrupt my schedule. I was toiling away for more than 100 hours a week, watching the racing obsessively, taking notes, talking to contacts and studying the form hour after hour. Looking back, my work didn’t have nearly the same precision that it does today. Since then I’ve learned to pick my moments carefully, focusing my attention on a smaller number of horses, but at the time I chose to try to absorb everything. Each race would be watched repeatedly for the tiniest of details. I’d produce huge lists of all the horses I thought were better or worse than the bare reading of the form book. I’d update the records of every past race, noting the subsequent performance of each horse. I’d form a list of possible bets and check them endlessly and obsessively from every angle, trying to find various reasons to reject them. Only when I was sure would a bet be placed.
I divided my bets into two categories. Smaller punts, those under £1,000, were Trading Bets. They were usually instances where I lacked total conviction but felt the odds were tempting enough to take an interest. A horse might be 14-1 and, while not entirely convinced of its prospects, I would feel 10-1 was a more accurate reflection of its chance and have a bet. At that time betting tax was nine per cent, and after subtracting that I’d expect to make a profit on these bets, although not a huge one. Trading bets included some occasions when I received a ‘hot’ phone call, perhaps asking me to place a bet for someone else, and included most multiple and Tote bets. ‘Trading’ didn’t mean that I was buying and selling. This was before the days of exchanges, so the word merely meant that a bet was a routine part of my trade.
My larger investments, of £1,000 and upwards, were known as Full Bets. These were the gilt-edged opportunities where I would place much higher stakes. But how high could I afford to go? The largest bet I’d ever had was the aforementioned £20,000 on Blue Goblin in May 1997. I remembered how life had been much more fun in those days. That spring I had strayed from running my business on strictly professional lines and employed a gorgeous personal assistant called Joanna, who had become much more than that by the time we were at Newmarket watching Blue Goblin wing home. Needless to say, and it’s an old story, mixing business and pleasure didn’t last long, and I later heard of Jo when she appeared in the papers being romantically linked with Prince Harry.
So much had changed since then. Even if I ever reached that level of confidence again, I didn’t have the funds to be able to risk £10,000 on a single horse, never mind £20,000. I’d have to play smaller for the moment and hope that I could build funds up in time. The stage was set for my comeback as a professional punter. This is how I got on.
Week 1 to March 27
I enjoyed a fortunate start from only three days’ trading. I was far too nervous to try a full bet at this early stage and decided to restrict my interest to a Placepot perm on the three days of Doncaster. I’d say I was just plain lucky that I made profits of £7,856.10 and £4,070.63 on the first two days from trading stakes, but I reckoned I deserved a little luck to get me started. I had studied the cards, but my recollection of the form was so vague that I was mostly stabbing in the dark. The stress of it all was frightening. It left me feeling mentally exhausted, and by Saturday night I was shattered. Nevertheless, I kept on working through Sunday and prayed that my luck would hold.
Weekly total +£15,959.13
[Note: It may seem peculiar that my stakes were often very random-sounding amounts. A combination of betting tax and the restrictions placed on my agents meant that I frequently ended up with a stake such as £2,716 when £3,000 was intended.]
Week 2 to April 3
My first full bet, and not a very inspiring start. I placed £1,270 at evens on Tarawan in a Leicester maiden, who started at 8-11 and finished second.
Again, fortunately, the trading bets served me well. The main feature was Fallachan, where a stake of £950 at morning prices produced a profit of £4,701. The profit so far was almost exclusively derived from contacts of mine, as opposed to my own analysis. At the time, quite a number of successful punters would ring me to make use of my team of agents, but my contacts were not always successful and I wouldn’t be able to cover my expenses without producing winners of my own. In the years to come, lack of time would force me to dispense with most of the contacts business, as my own analysis became dominant.
Weekly total: +£9,911.55
Running profit: £25,870.68
Trading bets again did well, but without any highlights. You might imagine that I was in long-deferred high spirits after winning more than £30,000 in three weeks, but I kept the lid on my emotions, all too aware that I was still reliant on the success of hot phone calls from my contacts.
Weekly total: +£6,389.98
Running profit: £32,260.66
Week 4 to April 17
A busy but disturbing week. Despite working almost every waking hour, my full bets were not yet hitting the target, having produced just one winner in four weeks.
Candleriggs, trained by Ed Dunlop, was by far my largest bet of the week with a stake of £7,608.20. I had been very impressed with his win at Kempton that month and received a very strong word for him to follow up in a six-furlong handicap at Newmarket. I averaged better than 4-1 from the morning prices, which seemed fine when he started at 9-4, but he could do no better than sixth. I have never been a fan of Dunlop as a trainer, although my losses on this occasion were a drop in the ocean compared to the sums a runner from his stable would later cost me.
Weekly total: -£6,469.55
Running profit: £25,791.11
Week 5 to April 24
By the end of this week I was beside myself, for a combination of reasons. The overall profit figure looked good but was highly misleading, as it failed to take account of £15,000 expenses since the start of the campaign, let alone the huge costs of the winter. After expenses I was up £8,000, but this included two lucky Placepots and good returns from my contacts. My own selections had produced losses.
Then there were my agents who placed bets for me. They’d all put plenty of time into preparing for the season. Not many of them were involved in the Placepots and they probably tended to fare slightly worse than me on the trading bets, perhaps feeling that I should receive the very best of the prices obtained. As most of them had made no money from betting since June, I could hardly blame them for starting to get twitchy. One reported that his right-hand man had phoned to say that he was putting his cue in the rack.
Finding reliable people to put bets on for me has not been easy. I’ve never had a formal recruitment process, there are no cards in job centres advertising vacancies and I don’t really do interviews. Over the years, I’ve met many people in and out of the business who had an interest in gambling. I’ve just relied on my instincts and a little research as to who to trust with my money and my confidential betting information. Initially, I’ll make a few background inquiries if someone suggests that they become involved. If I receive positive references, I’ll try them out with the odd bet here and there, and then check that they have carried out my instructions to the letter. If all progresses satisfactorily they will become occasional agents. Then, if they continue to do things exactly as requested, they may be promoted to full agents.
None of my agents, either part-time or full-time, are paid by me, nor do they receive expenses. They all work on the basis that they will earn enough by betting for themselves alongside my business. I tend to receive a sizeable share of the business done, but expect the agents to make a healthy profit by the end of the year. The number of agents has grown steadily and I’ve probably used as many as 200 down the years, although most only infrequently. At any one time I’ll be able to call on between five or ten for serious business, with 30 to 40 I can turn to occasionally. In time, main agents usually take on their own team of sub-agents, so that the number of people placing a bet will far exceed the group I deal with directly.
I’ve often been asked if ensuring my winnings are paid has been a problem. Happily, that’s rarely been the case, and with good reason. Once someone’s betting fortunes have been transformed from the red into the black, it goes without saying that they are usually pretty keen not to rock the boat.
However, over the years I have had to relieve a number of my agents of their duties. It came as a major surprise to me that after our hugely profitable association, they were willing to queer their pitches by placing bets with banned outlets, the term I use for people or firms who join in with big feet and cause a huge market move or deduce that the bet is mine and leak this to the betting world. I’ve always been very strict in banning bets to such quarters, yet some agents continued to use them, evidently assuming I wouldn’t find out. I invariably did, and that was that as far as they were concerned.
Although only a minority of bets have been placed by my agents through betting shops, they have produced some of the more bizarre incidents. Those in authority at bookmakers’ trading centres tend to understand their rules fairly well, whereas sometimes a local shop manager will get a little carried away and try to overstep the mark.
I used to have an agent called George Riding, who toured betting shops for me in various towns and cities. In one town George had taken to flitting between a succession of William Hill shops to avoid detection. After a string of sizeable wins, he was ushered into the back room by one of the managers, who was presumably keen to protect his bonus. He sat the slightly built George in the corner and handed over his winnings with a very stern warning that he was becoming seriously upset with him. He then issued a final warning accompanied with much wagging of fingers. George didn’t visit that betting shop again, but I know a few men who did.
Another agent, Richard Lamb, spotted a notice displaying his photo behind the counter of another William Hill shop. They had concluded that he was the most unprofitable customer in the area and circulated what almost amounted to a ‘wanted’ poster, warning the staff not to accept his bets. It was a little surprising that they failed to place the notice out of sight and, once again, we made the appropriate changes to the team.
Stranger still, one Ladbrokes shop manager chose to make up his own rules after we backed a 14-1 winner in one of their shops. He informed my agent that they were going to settle at the SP of 8-1. It was time for me to take over and have a word with customer services at head office, as this stance had no hope of success if we chose to go to arbitration. I decided to adopt a light-hearted approach. “You’re not by any chance a betting man, are you?” I asked. “Because I’m willing to bet you one million pounds against a tenner that this bet will be paid out at 14-1. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, with lots of bad publicity for Ladbrokes. We can also involve the authorities, but let me assure you, your manager is a buffoon and the bet will be paid out at 14-1.”
The customer services manager said that he would look into it further and asked for my name. “You can call me Mr Smith, Mr John Smith,” I replied, in a tone that indicated they should not expect me to help them any more than necessary. Mr Smith was to call back the next day and find that Ladbrokes had seen sense and would indeed pay out at 14-1.
The redoubtable Mr Smith also sprang into action to deal with an area manager of the Tote, who had not been impressed to find two winning £500 bets at 10-1 placed at different shops in the same town. He seemed to be contemplating a similar course of action to the Ladbrokes manager by paying out at shorter odds. When I reminded him of the rules, he confirmed that the correct payment would follow, but added that he didn’t want any more bets from ‘you and your people’. Mr Smith’s reply was borrowed from a nursery rhyme. I told him: “Well, be advised that I also know the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker – and I’ll be the one who decides when I’ve finished betting with you.”
Fred Done made a name for himself with a rapidly expanding betting shop empire now called Betfred, and also a telephone betting business. This was launched in the racing papers by large adverts adorned with Fred’s beaming smile. His initially brave approach to telephone betting caused speculation in our office as to how long it would take to wipe that smile off his face. No-one predicted a long campaign. Sure enough, inside a year, Fred became more cautious about his telephone operation, and advertisements began appearing featuring a glum-faced proprietor. The smile had disappeared, although this, of course, might just have been coincidence.
We had profitable dealings in one of Fred’s Manchester shops, that my agent Derek Brearley targeted with some rather successful multiple bets. Having initially gone behind in his dealings, Derek collected close on £100,000 in a short spree of winners that led to his being moved on as a customer and losing his privileges of tea and toast served by the staff.
When Derek moved house, it seemed an ideal opportunity to reignite his relationship with Fred. However, I thought it wise to alter Derek’s appearance, as even in another shop many miles away a high-staking, chubby little bloke would inevitably stand out, and might well be recognised as the man who had already inflicted punishment on Fred in Manchester. So I asked Derek to dye his hair, on the basis that if staff rang head office with news of a guy with bright blonde hair, it wouldn’t match up with his previous description. To ensure that Derek chose the right shade, I suggested that he switch on BBC TV’s tennis coverage at Wimbledon that fortnight.
“There, you see Sue Barker, you want to go every bit as blonde as that,” I suggested, and within hours, his new strikingly blonde hairstyle made him resemble a chubby version of Eminem. But, sadly, the new association bore smaller fruits a little too quickly in that betting shop, and Derek never reached ‘high staking, tea and toast’ status there. Eventually his hair colour returned to normal, via a streaky stage. Some agents are willing to go beyond the call of duty if the profits are rolling in.
And although profit is always the key objective, occasionally I still take a decision for pure entertainment. What’s life without a bit of fun? Derek’s first name is actually Stephan. Derek is his middle name, but we felt he looked a lot more like a Derek than a Stephan and his name was changed accordingly within the ranks. We tried to be helpful by ensuring that all post was addressed to Derek Brearley and we would even take time out to ensure that his phone’s voicemail message was kept up to date.
For some reason, Derek didn’t seem a big fan of this arrangement, and was forever using the phrase ‘Don’t call me Derek’. When I bought a yearling by Sri Pekan for only 5,000gns, it seemed a cheap enough price to take a chance on security and allow a name that might be traceable to me. We registered the name Dont Call Me Derek, ensuring that the man himself was unaware of our little plot. When the horse made his debut, we made sure that Derek was on the phone on some spurious pretext. Suddenly, with commentary on full volume, there were all sorts of expletives coming down the phone – some I’d never heard before. We decided on a policy of blanket denial and protested our innocence vehemently, even phoning him back to claim we had checked with the stable that the owner had been referring to another Derek altogether. However, our Derek didn’t seem completely convinced.
The following spring, he raised the subject again while a number of agents were having dinner after a day at the breeze-ups. I tried a total bluff and offered Derek a bet of £500 at 4-1 that I had any connection with the horse. I even placed the £2,000 on the table in front of me. Fortunately, Derek assumed that I wouldn’t have offered the bet if I was going to lose and turned the bet down, so we were able to prolong the joke. Later in the season, we decided it was time to put him out of his misery. As Derek is a very likeable guy and has a fairly thick Northern accent, we changed his nickname to The Chummy Northerner. After Derek the racehorse won his first race, we changed the partnership name to ‘The Chummy Northerners’, after which further denials of our involvement were pointless!
Another agent, Bill McClymont, was only part way to recovering a decade of losses when Ronnie, his friendly local bookmaker, who had promised him an account for life, moved him to SP bets only. This seemed harsh, so a plan was devised to supplement recent winnings. I noticed that the August Bank Holiday Monday cards were unusually full of races with long odds-on favourites, so I put together an each-way accumulator, picking a second- or third-favourite that seemed sure to be placed in each race. As long as every selection was indeed placed, the winnings would come to many thousands.
The hapless Ronnie, who happened to be out when the bet was placed, returned from his day trip with one leg of the bet to go, and phoned Bill up to vent his frustration. With a red-hot favourite at 1-4, the reliable-looking 5-1 second-favourite was about 95 per cent certain to be placed, but would pay out at even money for the first three. After it finished second, as expected, Bill’s account had hit the front and was then closed down for good. This type of each-way betting can be profitable on occasions but is hated by bookmakers. Given that the objective is not just to win but to take each outlet for the maximum amount possible before they run scared, it is not something I do very often.
Returning to my present problems, though, the worst part of it was sheer exhaustion, as I had a work schedule that couldn’t be sustained for long. The intensity of my work was getting to me, but I had to keep it up. I worked from waking until sleeping on the Sunday, determined to fight back.
Weekly total: -£2,754.95
Running profit: £23,036.16
Week 6 to May 1
Guineas week at Newmarket. After a quiet Monday, I got cracking on the Tuesday with three full bets. One of them, Petit Palais, provided the first five-figure win of the year. I collected £16,461.60 from a stake of £1,863.90. The race he won was only a Nottingham seller but it made a huge difference to my state of mind. You see more horses needing longer distances than shorter when watching racing, but Petit Palais had run a nice race over a mile a week earlier and just looked as if he might win a tiny race back at a sprint distance. So it proved. It was the only race he ever won.
After a few minor setbacks, I had my second decent touch of the week with Achilles Star at Newmarket on the Friday. I’d liked his run at Windsor a couple of weeks earlier, a race that looked very solid, especially as I’d seen hot money for two of the main contenders. I felt he was overpriced at 14-1 and won £23,865 from a stake of £1,635.
Although the trading bets had a week that was both hectic and disappointing, I felt a lot better and a lot more capable, so to speak, because I’d made more than £20,000 from my own selections, with two good-priced winners from ten full bets. However, the wins could do nothing for my exhaustion levels, and I knew that continuing at such an unforgiving pace could last only for weeks rather than months.
Weekly total: +£11,975.06
Running profit: £35,011.22