The Inside Track: The Professional Approach - Softcover

Potts, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1904328032 ISBN 13: 9781904328032

Publisher: Aesculus Press Limited, 2002

Synopsis

The Inside Track describes the methods Alan used to generate over $50,000 profit from his betting during 1997. The author has studied many American texts and explains how he has mixed their ideas with his own 30 years experience of British racing and betting. There are no systems, no rules and no guarantees in this book, yet anybody who likes to bet on horse racing is sure to find material here that will challenge accepted beliefs and persuade them to think in new ways about their betting. In his first book, Alan explained that to make a living it was necessary to bet Against The Crowd. This book expands on that and takes the reader inside the mind of one of the most successful professional punters operating in the country. There are separate sections covering Flat racing and Jumping, and also detailed discussions of All-weather racing and the growing world of spread betting.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Potts is a full-time professional punter and author of Against The Crowd.

He is a regular speaker at club events and has been featured on LWT Television, BBC Radio 5, The Sunday Times, Sporting Life and many other regional newspapers.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Bath racecourse, 25 September 1995. I haven't had a bet for nine days and my confidence is shot to pieces after a dreadful summer's punting that has produced a deficit of over £15,000. At the paddock prior to the 10-furlong maiden for two-year-olds, a big, rangy colt really takes my eye. When he floats to post on the fast ground, 12-1 is simply too big to resist and a bet of £3,000/240 is soon arranged. Always in the front rank, Flyfisher looks home and dry at the furlong-pole, but in the shadow of the post he's caught by the odds-on favourite Gentilhomme - the margin is a short-head.

The race epitomises the summer, a story of nearly, maybe, should have been - and biased stewards! But there was more to it than that. The methods I had used successfully for many years were no longer working. I had found my fair share of winners during the summer, but had passed on backing a good many of them because the price was too short.

Every time I found a value bet that paid off, I either messed up the staking, or gave back the profits within days. For example, a £2,700/300 on Sherman at York on May 18 was followed by a £2,900 deficit from the following three days at Newbury. Two winners on June 15, which netted a £3,250 profit, merely funded £4,000 lost on the first two days at Royal Ascot, where I found lots of big prices on the Tote, but no winners.

My first crisis of confidence came at the end of the Newmarket July meeting. On the Monday evening at Windsor, I backed the well-drawn and consistent Court Nap to the tune of £4,000/320, only to see him touched off by a whisker in a photo-finish that took the judge 15 minutes to resolve. My mood was not improved by the trainer's reported comment that Court Nap was always at a disadvantage in a photo as he had such a short neck! My first six bets at Newmarket produced three more seconds and a third, before a £2,500/500 about Twilight Patrol in the one-mile handicap run just prior to the July Cup. She also finished second, but she was carried across the width of the July Course by the winner, Nordinex, and I thought that retribution for the disqualification of Cuff Link at York in 1994 was about to arrive. But not in 1995!

The stewards accepted that interference had taken place, but decided that it hadn't affected the result. Having greeted the loudspeaker announcement of this gross injustice with a high decibel imitation of JP (McEnroe not McManus), I stomped off to the car park without even waiting to watch the feature race of the meeting.

Every punter will have experienced a week like the one I had at Newmarket, and it certainly wasn't my first. My personal remedy is to take a break and get away from racing and betting for at least a week. In fact I didn't return until the first day of the Glorious Goodwood meeting, when the apparent wisdom of the move was highlighted by a couple of winners, including a £6,000/300 on Brief Glimpse in the fillies Listed event over seven furlongs. Surely this represented the turning of the tide? Well, not exactly - my next 20 bets on the turf were all losers! The gloom was lifted during that barren period by a couple of decent wins at the Wolverhampton All-weather track, but once again the major meetings that had seen me successful in previous seasons were a disaster area.

At York in August, six bets produced the usual proportion of placings, ending with Foundry Lane's third in the Ebor Handicap (£3,500/500). My betting at the York meeting ended at that point, as, in temperatures in the 90s, I succumbed to the heat and found myself being revived in the first aid tent by a succession of maternally minded St John's Ambulance staff. Friends who had read my views on the effect of the draw on the Ebor, unkindly suggested that I had fainted at the sight of a horse drawn 21 winning the race.

Another 10-day break followed, but I arrived at Doncaster for the St Leger meeting still without a turf winner since Goodwood. I broke the sequence by backing Grey Shot on the opening day, but more seconds and thirds left me £2,000 adrift by the end of the week. And so to Flyfisher...

Having written in Against The Crowd that "nobody is immune to losing runs or to loss of confidence", I could now see those words coming back to haunt me in spades! At the end of September, I sat down to analyse what had gone wrong. The figures didn't make pretty reading. I divided the bets into categories according to price, and considered each group separately. The longshots (10-1 and over) that had provided my profits in previous years, produced a return of one winner from 30 bets. However, they would have shown a profit if either Court Nap or Flyfisher had prevailed by a short-head rather than finishing second, so that didn't seem to be a major problem. One Flat season is a short period over which to judge a type of bet that requires long-term patience.

The real damage had been done in what I called the 'everyday' group - bets at prices between 3-1 and 6-1. I would expect around a 20 per cent strike-rate at those odds, with a profit that would at least fund the stakes on the longshot bets.

Edition details

• Publisher: Aesculus Press Limited
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1904328032
• ISBN 13: 9781904328032
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 255