Today is the first of our For and Against series where will get successful punters on the Betting 360 podcast to detail exactly how they go about winning long-term. You will soon see that while there are many common traits amongst the professionals, no two punters operate the same way.

In fact many come at it from very different angles yet each of them are successful in their own right.

Punting Insights:

In this series we will discuss aspects of the form such as:

Database vs. instinct and experience

On-speed vs. backmarkers

Big vs. small markets

Specialising vs. diversifying

We will also get their take on a number of different betting, staking and money management methods including:

Level vs. proportionate staking

Standard bet size vs. confidence levels

Market intelligence vs market ignorance

Early vs late betting

Favourites vs long shots

Each way (or place only) vs straight out.

Static vs dynamic banks

Profit on Turnover % vs Profit only

Today’s Guest:

Ben Krahe

David Duffield: Hi Ben I wanted to get you on as the first part of a series with most of the guys in our team. That's because there's some similarities in the way people operate, and then there's also some pretty key differences.

I wanted to run through a few different things, and just find out your take on how you approach it, and whether that's changed over the years from the bookmaking that you did right through to punting.

Ben Krahe: Sure, let's go.

David Duffield: The first one was in terms of the staking. I've always said I've never come across anyone that level stakes and has been really successful, but in recent times I have. There is one guy who is heavily data driven and is happy to level stake and ride out the peaks and troughs there. You're like most though, you're from the other side of things, where you've always bet proportionately.

Ben Krahe: Yeah, that's right. I believe the reason we bet is because we have an edge. When we price things, we give certain percentage to those horses. The reason we price things is because we want to find value. If we find more value in a horse, for me, it makes sense that we bet more according to that value. So I always bet according to what I've priced a horse. If I get even money, and I'm betting to five units, then obviously we'll bet to collect five units on that horse, irrespective of whether it's paying $2.50 or if it's actually paying $10. The more value we get, the better return for what we've come up with.

That's the reason I don't bet level stakes. I just believe that the reason we are betting is because we've got an edge and some value, so let's really exploit that value.

David Duffield: One thing that has changed from earlier this year, though, was you went from outlaying the same amount per race, or having the same unit value assigned, to having different confidence levels. How did that come about, and how has it gone?

Ben Krahe: I did a bit of research. What I've basically done is, in effect an A, B, and C race, or a one race, or a half unit race, or maybe even just a one and a quarter or one and a half times unit race.

At one stage there I wouldn't price every race, I might leave a couple of races out if I just wasn't confident. But the service that I'm giving the people is that they want to have a bet. Most guys want to have a bet in most races. I've priced every race. If I'm not too confident on the race, but I've still priced it, and I believe that I've got those prices right, we might only assign that a half unit staking race.

There might be other reasons for that. There might be a change of trainer, or a whole heap of first data that we haven't seen any vision of the trials. There might be various reasons why we're still interested in having a bit of a bet, but we mightn't be as confident in the race.

On the other side, sometimes I get up there, and I am just super confident that I've got that race right.