We've had many successful punters, trainers and jockeys on the Betting 360 podcast over the last year but today it's a special edition as it's Responsble Gambling Awareness week.

As a show that covers betting from all angles it's a topic we simply have to talk about and who better to do that with than a recovering gambling addict.

Gambling almost ruined the life of former AFL footballer Daniel Ward and he's on the show to talk about how that happened and how he managed to drag himself back up again.

Punting Insights You'll Find

How betting can go from a hobby to a problem

The warning signs to look out for

How to use futures betting to your advantage

Why reaching rock bottom can be the start of the solution

The best places to go for help

Today's Guest:

Daniel Ward who is an ambassador for Responsible Gambling Awareness Week (another important site is Gambler's Help).

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Thanks for joining me today Daniel. Could you start by giving us a bit of background on how you went from gambling for fun through to it being a problem that had such an effect on your life?

Daniel Ward: Probably when I just got past the stage of when you're setting limits and going past that, and going back to the ATM all the time. Then, for me, it probably got to a stage where I was betting way beyond my limits, and betting on credit, and borrowing money, and all that sort of stuff. Once that starts to happen, it is a bit of a slippery slope. Probably once it got past that stage, that was a bit of a drama for sure.

David Duffield: Was that a gradual thing or is it over a number of months or years?

Daniel Ward: It was probably a gradual thing, it went from the level that betting on horseracing, probably got introduced to a bookmaker. The worst thing to do there was I had a decent stretch at the start, and I think I thought, “How long has this been going on?” And then you increase your bets and all that type of stuff. Then what invariably happens, the wheel turns and you end up chasing and yeah, that was probably over maybe a 12 month period.

David Duffield: At the time, you're playing AFL and probably in those days, you had a bit more time on your hands that you would as an AFL footballer these days?

Daniel Ward: Definitely it’s a really good point. I spoke to a few clubs about that, and clubs are a lot better, and filling the days, if you like, and they’ve got a lot that they need to do throughout the day. For me, I got to a stage where I may even, if I had a couple of training sessions, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, I’d race to get my fix, if you like, in between, and get as much punting in as I could. Even to this day, it is a bit of a regret that I have because I wasn’t doing those extra things that other guys were doing, or having lunches with mates or whatever. I was going, getting the punt in as much as I could.

David Duffield: Were you betting almost every day?

Daniel Ward: At the start, yeah, for sure, and then even towards the end, on sports betting and multi bets and all that thing mostly come in. I probably couldn’t watch a sporting event without gambling on it. I had to teach myself to enjoy sport. I wasn’t going to give up watching sport, so I had to teach myself to enjoy watching sport without having anything riding on it.

David Duffield: For the horse racing, were you actually putting work into the form and expecting to win, or was it more about, you said that you got off to good start and you were doing it for fun, and then it got out of hand from there?

Daniel Ward: Yeah, good question. I’d spend a lot of time on Friday nights, and then even in recovery, the meetings or whatever you go for, going and seeing someone, in recovery, you think it takes up a lot of time, but the amount of time I was putting into researching and getting tips, and doing the form, and all that type of stuff, it was so much more than in recovery now.

Mark Cruickshank learned about the bookmaking industry from the ground up as the Racing Manager with Betchoice/Unibet and is currently the Betting Product Manager at William Hill.

Having worked closely with big betting bookies who have taken on some...

We have had a variety of professional punters on the podcast over the last 12 months, but in this edition we have someone who is working hard to get to that level.

Trent Orwin has given up his full-time accounting career so that he can develop his betting skills and experience to the point where he can be a professional punter. He is currently spending 30-40 hours each week in pursuit of that goal.

We will hear from him again at the end of 2014 to see how far he's progressed on that journey.

Punting Insights You'll Find

How he plans to beat the market

The form analysis tools he is using

Where to start when analysing a race

The skills required to frame a 100% market

What Trent has learned from mentors

Today's Guest:

Trent Orwin @themightytrent3

Get the Transcript:

David Duffield: Hi everyone, it's Dave here. I've got Trent on the line, and I'm looking forward to having a chat.

Trent Orwin: Thanks for having me Dave, and hopefully a few up-and-coming punters can learn something from this.

David Duffield: Yeah, that's the plan. We've had a few professional punters on the show over the last year, but I thought it was time to get someone on who is aspiring to get to that level, and just keep in touch with them, as they go on that journey. You've put your hand up to be that person.

Trent Orwin: Yes, I have.

David Duffield: You may know, there's a documentary series ... it might be a little bit old for yourself ... the Seven Up! documentary series. What they do, they focus on a bunch of kids at aged 7, then again at 14 and 21 and so on and just keep an eye on them, and assess how they've developed throughout their lives. This will be similar in a way. I'll check in with you once or twice a year, and see how you're going in achieving that goal of being full-time. How does that sound?

Trent Orwin: It sounds good Dave. It's definitely something I haven't heard of, so it's probably something I can look into.

David Duffield: Tell us about your background as a punter and also professionally?

Trent Orwin: I'm just like everyone else out there. Started off watching a couple of races, and you fall in love with it over time. Although, for me it was more harness racing that took my interest. I did grow up ... You watch the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops a nation, but for me it's just harness racing.

David Duffield: What is it about harness racing that particularly attracts your interest, because it's not really a growth sport amongst the younger crowd. More people enjoy and there’s just a lot more interest in thoroughbred racing.

Trent Orwin: That's right. For me, it's the driving tactics that I find very intriguing. It's always interesting to see how drivers will drive their horse. Some horses can do it from the front. They like to roll along at a very good speed, while others like to play the enforcer role, and they'll grind the opposition into the ground from the death's seat. Then there's the likes of say a sprinter, who'll just sit back, watch it unfold, and then unleash a devastating sprint that'll hopefully run over the top of them. For me, that's the most intriguing part about harness racing. But I also enjoy the consistency. I've found when I'm doing the form analysis prior to a meeting, it's pretty consistent with the speed maps. You know the horses that will go forward, the horses that will go back, and the one's that'll be driven on the pegs for luck.

David Duffield: We'll talk more about harness racing in a moment. Before we do that, what was your background, university or professionally, what have you been doing? Again, how has that transferred or translated into what you want to do in the punting side of things?

Trent Orwin: I'm actually a former accountant so I went to university, Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in accounting, worked as an accountant for a couple of years, for a couple of firms. It just wasn't for me. I found it pretty boring, to be honest,

Our special guest this week is a professional punter who focuses exclusively on harness racing. Ben Krahe's background as an on-course and corporate bookmaker plus his pro punting experience means that he has some excellent points to share with everyone who listens in (or reads the full transcript).

Punting Insights You'll Find

The evolution of on-course and corporate bookmakers.

What he learned from some of the smartest players in the industry.

Where to start when analysing a race

How and why he uses a special technique to bring his market back to 100%

Why 3 years of stats led him to focusing on certain tracks

Today's Guest:

Ben Krahe who provides the ratings for our Harness Power package.

Ben's Parting Advice:

" To be honest I learned pretty much everything I know from him."

 

Get the Transcript:

David: Hi, this is Dave Duffield and I’d like to welcome Ben Krahe to the show, how are you Ben?

Ben: I’m very well thank you Dave, yourself?

David: Going really well thanks and I might as well start at the start… tell us about your early background and your interest in betting.

Ben: Well, like many of us I was probably conceived actually at Harold Park I would imagine on a Friday night at the trots. My interest started very early and I was just a punter myself. I really wanted to get into the bookmaking side of things so about 12 years ago I got my own bookmaking license and I started fielding at various New South Wales country greyhound tracks such as Cessnock and Singleton which are actually now defunct but that’s where I learnt the trade.

David: At those tracks at that time was it a thriving on course bookmaking scene?

Ben: It was probably the end of it then, it was just getting to the end of it. I was actually the only bookmaker on track so obviously the prices had to be pretty accurate. There was still the smart punters on track back then and unlike now I had to bet someone to win $2000 on track back then. You had probably 100 to 150 people on track and I was the only bookmaker, there was probably 20 guys that were smart and the rest were $5 punters. It was the end of the country bookmaking, I suppose.

David: We’ll get to the corporate scene in a moment but you must laugh looking back at what little money most of the corporates will take now when you had to bet them $2K on course.

Ben: Yeah, it’s becoming a bit of a farce but hey, we do our best and hopefully we can do our best for everyone here.

David: So when you were on course bookmaker and if you’re the only one there how would you go about pricing up the race to try and have it as a pretty good set of prices so you’re not getting stung?

Ben: It’s pretty much the same as the way I price a race now, I always do that … Being a punter … Even a bookmaker’s market for me … I still like to approach it in a punting way. Most of the races I think have only got a few chances and we’ll talk about that later, they are the races that we like to focus on and really aim at and these type of meetings. I think myself and even when I moved into the corporate world I don’t like to throw something up 20-1 if it’s really a 200-1 chance, I think that’s a waste of some percentage in your market and a waste of making some money somewhere else.

David: We’ll definitely cover that in a bit more detail later on. From the on-course bookmaking scene what was the next step in your involvement in the industry from there?

Ben: Well, the bookmaking, I learnt a lot on track and I think that’s the best place to learn anywhere. It wasn’t that we were losing money but we weren’t making a huge amount of money for the commitment we were putting in and I saw a job advertised in Darwin and that was with Alan Eskander and that was with Betstar. Basically there was myself and three other guys that were already working for him. The four of us pretty much opened the offices in Darwin. That was a good ten years ago now or eight or nine years ago,

Vince Accardi from Daily Sectionals is back for the second and final instalment of answering questions submitted by 'Drewfus'.

If you missed last week's show you can listen here or read the full transcript.

Punting Insights You'll Find

Lead...

This week we welcome regular guest Vince Accardi from Daily Sectionals back on to the show. This is the first of a two-part series in which Vince is going to be answering some great questions submitted by 'Drewfus'.

Punting Insights You'll Find

What the daily summary is and who can benefit from that information.

What explains the discrepancies between Timeform and Daily Sectionals.

Why acceleration and deceleration are so reliant on race pace.

What the study of sectional time date indicates about horses that love or loathe wet tracks.

Using benchmark standards to assess performance.

Today's Guest:

Vince Accardi

Vince's Parting Advice:

" You have to be very careful what you take away when there is a discussion about benchmark time."

 

Get the Transcript:

Episode 41 : Answering Listener Questions with Vince Accardi

Welcome to Betting 360, your number one source for horse racing and sports betting insights. Coming around the bend is your host David Duffield, with another expert view to give you the winning edge.

David Duffield: Good day Vince and welcome back to the show.

Vince Accardi: Fantastic. I’m always happy to be on the show, Dave.

David: This one’s a little bit different. Most of our listeners will have heard of Drewfus. He was a very prolific and thorough contributor to the blog and had a bunch of questions for Rick that we covered in an earlier episode. He’s done the same for you. So if you don’t mind, we’re going to run through those today.

Vince: Yeah. Happy to run through it. Let’s hope that we can answer all the questions.

David: All right. Question number 1. On your website, the sample IVR report contains sectional times for the winner and leader for each race of the meeting in question. Explicit velocities, so speeds are not listed nor is anything I would call a rating. It is understood that velocity and rating data is probably stated elsewhere in a report. However, for the sake of clarity and completeness, could you please give the official definition of the copyright term ‘incremental velocity rating’ and describe how the term refers to the data in a daily sectionals report.

Vince: Well, I think the first thing is what I believe Drewfus is talking about is talking about the daily summary sheet. This is what by and large the majority of people use. That’s the raw sectionals that are incorporated to be used in conjunction with people that from a serious form student point of view like to use it in comparison with their video analysis work.

It also then extends itself to that second line which is that they can use that as a par table process which every individual has their own strategies in terms of how they like to collect data to create pars and also the last part of it is to give them a completeness in terms of what the official time was versus what the digitally internal time was or as I state the IVR time. That’s what the daily summary is. There is nothing to do with velocity ratings or anything like that. It is a service that goes to the industry. People like the RVL like to use it through their stewards in terms of, as you are aware, we’ve provided audit service for their final times. If they’re out by more than a certain point, they get adjusted. Also, it assists them in getting a gauge on various speed analysis that happens from a raw sectional point of view. I know that many people build their own tables. That’s what they do with it.

Further to that, it assists them in terms of whether they’re going to upgrade or downgrade tracks as well. Their internal point of view on what they have. Not only that, the last 600 metres that are presented in those daily summaries are also posted on all the RVL non-metropolitan tracks. That’s what that is. There’s nothing to do with ratings or anything like that.

David: Yep. What you mentioned explicit velocities (speeds are not listed) nor is anything I would call a rating …

Vince: That’s correct.

This week we welcome to the show an expert golf bettor and former Touring Pro, Peter Fenton . Peter uses statistics alongside his own golfing experience to come up with solid value selections. He explains the ins and outs of golf betting and shares the techniques he uses to achieve success.

Punting Insights You'll Find

Reasons why golf is a good sport to bet on.

What is the Professional Golfers’ Competitive Index and how to use it for betting.

How Peter uses statistics to give him an edge over other punters.

The differing importance of recent form versus course form.

The differences between golf betting in the U.S. and Europe.

Betting service packages available from Swingform.

Today's Guest:

Peter Fenton

Peter's Parting Advice:

" Your wins get you profits, but your places get you cash flow."

Get More Betting 360

Make sure you don't miss our punting tips to come! Subscribe on:

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RSS

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or you can directly download this episode by right-clicking, Save As Here.

What Do You Think of the Show?

Drop by iTunes and leave a review

Share your thoughts as a comment below

Get connected via Facebook

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Rather than a special guest, this week I wanted to talk about some of the key information that you can find in our free Better Betting ebook that is made available to all newsletter subscribers. It is a compilation of a lot of the articles I have written over a number of years and there is a considerable amount of punting insight to help improve your results.

Punting Insights You'll Find

The number one reason why most punters lose.

Why it is risky to put all of your eggs in one basket.

Identifying false favourites from true favourites.

Form analysis, staking and mindset.

A ton of valuable betting lessons that you can learn from my free e-book.

David's Closing Tip:

" There's a million myths out there.  A lot of what's been passed down generation to generation doesn't apply, it's just repeated over and over but that doesn't make it fact.  "

Get the Transcript:

Episode 39 : Horse Racing Tips, Ebook Highlights and Top Takeaways

Welcome to Betting 360, your number one source for horse racing and sports betting insights. Coming around the bend is your host David Duffield, with another expert view to give you the winning edge.

 

David Duffield: Hi, this is David Duffield, and welcome to another episode of the Betting 360 Podcast. Rather than have a special guest on today, I wanted to run through some of the key takeaways from the e-book. It's been around for a couple of years now, and a compilation of a lot of articles I've written over a number of years. There's some pretty important pointers to take away from it, so for those that don't want to sit down and read more than 100 pages worth, maybe it's worth a few minutes of your time to listen in.

The first article refers to the number one reason why most punters lose, and that is to only bet when you're getting value. A lot of people are a lot more focused on trying to find the most likely winner of the race, rather than spending as much time worrying to find the best value in the race. Only bet when you're getting value is obviously a key ingredient in winning long term.

Making every effort to get the best available odds doesn't sound too exciting, but it's vitally important. Also, the third thing: balancing risk versus reward in the way you manage your money. A lot of people consider the upside, how much they'd like to win on a bet, but they don't really consider the downside.

Next was Paul Makin, a super successful multimillionaire. There's a lot of the points he's put out in the past that still resonate today. A few of those are: don't count your winnings by the day; the price must be right, you just have to keep taking value; if you want to win, you've got to have a professional approach; there's a whole number of punting tips he's put out, and they're well worth taking a closer look at.

“Avoiding an Expensive Mistake”: that's again to do with bankroll management. It relates to the example of someone that we had where basically by their bank being too small to begin with, or they were betting too large a percentage of their bank to begin with, they missed out on a massive winner.

“Don't overlook the T in Profit on Turnover”: a lot of people get excited if they hear say a 10% profit on turnover, or a 20%, but they don't spend enough time worrying about the actual turnover amount. By that I mean a 10% profit on turnover sounds great, a lot of pros would be very happy with that, but if you're having ... to exaggerate, if you're having three bets a month, 10% profit on turnover, well you're going to have to have some exceptionally large bets to pay the bills; whereas if you're having four bets a day and you're doing 10% on turnover, that's fantastic.

Then we talk about place betting: if you're doing it on the TAB and you can … basically if you're complacent enough, or naive enough, to just do it via the TAB, and you don't consider the round down or the take out you've got to beat in the round down,

This week we welcome Vince Accardi from Daily Sectionals back to the show. Vince is a valued contributor to the Champion Picks team and in this podcast he runs through last week's Rosehill meeting race-by-race, how the track played and the best horses to follow from the meeting.

Punting Insights You'll Find

Which runners were advantaged by the way the track played.

What we learned from each race and which horses we should be following for the rest of Autumn.

Where the "sweet spot" is for a horse to get the maximum advantage.

Why you shouldn't be too harsh on backmarkers from this meeting.

Today's Guest:

Vince Accardi 

Vince's Closing Tip:

" If you've had money on some of these backmarkers, absolutely give them the figurative run."

 

Get More Betting 360

Make sure you don't miss our punting tips to come! Subscribe on:

iTunes

RSS

Stitcher

or you can directly download this episode by right-clicking, Save As Here.

What Do You Think of the Show?

Drop by iTunes and leave a review

Share your thoughts as a comment below

Get connected via Facebook

Stay up to date via Twitter

Reach out personally via Email

Our Senior Form Analyst is back on the podcast to answer some great questions from a very keen punter.

Listen in:

Drewfus posted the following on our blog and Rick answers them all in this episode:

1) In assessing a runner’s chance, do you place most weight on current form, or historical ability and peak career runs? Does the betting public overrate current form versus proven ability?

2) You mention that you punt off a market. Do you convert your ratings for each runner into a price using a formula, or does judgement play a role in generating your prices?

3) Are your ratings convertible to relative lengths and vice-versa? If yes, assume a 2 horse race where you have rated one runner exactly 1 length stronger than the other. What price would you require in a 100% market to regard the weaker runner as good value?

4) How do you modify your ratings for horses early in a campaign who may or may not have reached peak racing fitness?

5) What rule do you use for the effect of handicapping weight on lengths gained/lost? Does the effect of weight depend on race distance or the horses body weight?

6) What is the most important consideration – absolute weight, or relative weight changes? Does the public and racing media get this right or wrong?

7) When assessing runners form, to what extent are you influenced or place weight on strong form-lines? By ‘strong form-line’, I mean a race in which several prior start winners met, and/or from which two or three and preferably more runners won or nearly won their subsequent race.

8) To what extent do different tracks influence a horse’s performance? Are strong/weak track stats; a) statistically significant? b) due to a preference for/against a particular track, or only for similar tracks in terms of things like tightness of turns and length of front and back straights? Do some horses race ungenerously at their home track (as though they treated their home track races as training runs)?

9) How would you summarize the benefits of sectional time data over the traditionally available total race time and last 600m time?

10) Do you use sectional data to calculate split times – the times for the 1st and 2nd halves of the race distance? If yes, what generalisations can be made?

Of two winners running the same track/distance/going in equal time but in separate races, which winner if any would be regarded as the strongest – the negative split winner, or the even split winner?

11) In generating a market for a race, how do you deal with uncertainties such as a runner that has never been tried at the distance, or run on a slow or heavy track? In general, are you avoiding punting on races in which the uncertainty level of your shortest priced runners is relatively high, or do you simply require higher odds to compensate for the uncertainties? If the later, how much higher?

12) How much do jockeys affect your assessment of a runner’s chances? Can you express a better-than-average jockey’s superiority in numerical terms, such as lengths? Does the betting public under-or-overrate the better jockeys?

Generalizing and from a punters point-of-view, are the weight claims for apprentices satisfactory compensation for their lesser ability?

13) How do you assess the quality of a run in which any one or more of the following have occurred? a) slowly away or jumped awkwardly b) blocked or disappointed for a run c) checked or bumped hard d) raced wide in parts or throughout e) pulled hard/did not settle f) pulled-up lame or mildly lame g) poor post-race recovery h) suffered from heat stress.

14) How would you compare the differences between professional versus semi-serious punters in terms of a) time available for form analysis b) form analysis ability c) access to sectional data, race videos and other resources d) money management e) self-discipline f) ability to pick the right and wrong races for betting g) knowledge of the maths and stats relevant to racing?