Ben Krahe spent many years on the 'dark side' as a bookmaker, initially on course and then framing markets for the corporates right from the early days.

But a little more than 3 years ago he went full-time as a professional harness racing punter and hasn't looked back since.

On the podcast this week we ask him the same questions we pitched to Nick Pinkerton. These are questions from our listeners keen to learn more about the skills and lifestyle of a successful professional.

Punting Insights:

How did he get started?

What is the biggest key to long-term success?

Why Ben turns Sky Channel off for most of the day

The importance of a proven staking plan

How he handles losing runs and maintains a work/life balance

Today’s Guest:

Ben Krahe

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Our last podcast episode was based around listener questions so I wanted to repeat the dose for yourself. What I'll do is run through the questions that we received which were, "What would you ask if you sat down for a quiet beer with a professional punter?" You're right to run through those?

Ben Krahe: Well, there's no such thing as a quiet beer with me, but sure.

David Duffield: Alright, well the first set of questions, you could broadly categorise it as getting started. How did you gain the confidence when starting out? I know you've got the bookmaking background, but how did you get any confidence to basically go solo as a professional punter?

Ben Krahe: Well, Dave, to put it bluntly, I had been to some bookmakers. I've been in around the traps and I take a lot of knowledge from all the bookmakers and even the professional punters that punted with me. I like to put all that in the memory bank hopefully. One day, I decided to leave the bookmaking side of it and had a little bit of a bankroll behind me and decided, "Let's give it a go for real this time." I've always thought I was good enough to do it, but I didn't have the discipline to do it. We gave it a go, and 3 1/2 years later or whatever it is, we're still doing it. Something's going okay.

David Duffield: In terms of getting started and then the ongoing stuff, well, I know you’re pretty meticulously do records, did you already have the mindset and also the ... I'm not sure of what the exact word is. Did you do that consistently, the record keeping side of things before you went professional, or only once you got started?

Ben Krahe: I probably did it for about 6 months before. That was another thing that influenced my decision to be able to go out by myself. I just decided we've got to make sure you can do it.

But keeping records is the main way to do it. Now as you've outlined, I keep a record of every bet I've had, every track it's at. I can tell you where I win and where I don't, and that's pretty much how we narrow down where we do a bit.

David Duffield: So we had a question. It's probably not as relevant for you being a ratings based punter. It says, "What is regarded as an acceptable strike rate for a serious punter to aim for, or is there another measure that should guide a punter?”

Ben Krahe: Well, as you said, I don't really go on strike rates and I don't think anyone really does. I mean for a start, you got to make a profit that's obvious. If you can make somewhere above ... I would say somewhere above bank interest. If you can make 7% or 8% or 10%, you're flying in my books.

There wouldn't be 1% of punters that they even win, let alone get close to winning. If you can make somewhere around that just under 10%, by the time you think of all the turnover you're doing in a year, that's quite a lot. You can make six figures out of it. I'm not a millionaire and never will be but we don’t big enough to do that. But as long as we're getting by and that's the way I look at it.

David Duffield: You might be a millionaire if there was a bookie who’d take your bets.

Ben Krahe: No. Maybe a million baht but that's about it.