Almost every week our podcast guest is an expert in their field, whether that's punting, training or riding.

But in 2014 we started tracking the journey of someone who wanted to go from an enthusiastic punter to a full-time professional.

On the show we find out how that progress has been over the last 12 months.

Punting Insights:

His learning curve over the last year

How he's learned to frame his own markets

The number of races he covers each week and his expected Profit on Turnover

Why being a full-time professional is no longer his goal

Today’s Guest:

Trent Orwin

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Thanks for joining us again Trent as we follow your journey. For those that missed the chat almost a year ago now, just to give a brief rundown of your background, you were someone that was bored with your accounting job and decided you wanted to become a full-time, professional punter.

You also understood that it was going to take some time and that there was a learning curve involved. When we last spoke you were putting in pretty much the equivalent of a full-time effort of around 40 hours a week. To go from a keen punter to a semi-professional. Tell us what's been happening over the last year or so.

Trent Orwin: The past year has been a fair learning curve. I think when I spoke to you last time I was looking at Gloucester Park which is my favorite track, my strongest point. I was also looking at Melton.

Since then I've scrapped Melton for a number of reasons. I've just found it tough trying to follow two different states. The racing is a completely different style. You've got to learn all the drivers, horses, trainers. It's just too many horses to keep track of so I've just completely isolated it to WA now. I'm looking onl at Gloucester Park now.

David Duffield: I understand why you'd want to focus on one state. A lot of guys we speak to that are successful have done the same thing. Why Gloucester park? You're a Victorian, why not Victoria or even New South Wales?

Trent Orwin: One of the reasons is with WA being such an isolated state you don't get too many interstate raiders turning up to Gloucester Park to race except for some of the featured races.

A good starting point is they are the same horses that race against each other. I don't have to look at the form for a New South Wales horse, trying to gauge how does that stack up against WA. Just with Victoria I've noticed a lot that there so many Victorian horses. You get your New South Wales horses coming down. You get Tasmanian horses coming up. It was just hard trying to look at their form lines through them whereas with Gloucester Park it's the same sort of horses. You can go well horse A beat horse B. Now here's horse C and it raced horse A.

You can put a line through the form. At times, when you are looking at one track there's only a couple of distances you can actually try to match up the time. Also, one of the parts that I enjoy, which a lot of people don't is the fact that there is bias at the track. I hear a lot of casual punters will complain that another leader won, another leader won. Well, why not use that to your advantage?

David Duffield: Does that track bias have anything to do with weather conditions?

Trent Orwin: It doesn't really matter from what I've seen. There's not too many meetings that I've covered where there has been a massive downpour of rain. Even when there was one that stands out was on the Mighty Quinn. He's more known to come from behind. He led in the pouring rain and just won. It didn't deter him. It's more the track itself. How they made the track short and straight. You want to be on the peg line. It's hard to make up ground from behind. The bias is there more times than not.

David Duffield: What about pricing your market? It's part art and part science. I know you've contacted someone like Ben Krahe about how he goes about it. How's that evolved over the last few months?