AJAX WENT OVER AT 40/1 ON IN A THREE HORSE RACE NOW THE BRONCOS GO OVER AT $1.01 IN A TWO HORSE RACE WHICH ALL PROVES YET AGAIN THAT “IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN ON THE PUNT LONG TERM”

01/07/14

Over the 17 years that this website has been operating I’ve written numerous articles advising punters that it’s “impossible to win on the punt long term”. The odd professional punter assures me that they win on the punt, so even if I concede that “the odd professional punter” may win over a calendar year, I reiterate that 99.9% of punters will not win in the long term. Put simply, every possible variable in racing, or gambling in general, is designed to ambush the punters.

So you can take it from me that it’s “impossible to win on the punt long term”. That’s not being negative, that’s just being blatantly honest. Any other person in the media who tells you that I’m wrong would have to have two – put simply they couldn’t get that silly playing with only one.

To exemplify how impossible the punt is – and so it’s not ancient history – we only have to cast our minds back to a game of rugby league that was played last Friday night at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. At half time the short price pre-match favourites, the Broncos, were leading a pathetic Sharks outfit by 22 points to nil. Speaking on RadioTAB on Saturday morning about 11am, Gerard Daffy advised that Tattsbet put up $1.01 about the Broncos at half time and $14 the Sharks, with no takers, “so we actually took the market down” as the game was considered over.

It’s history now that the Cronulla Sharks finished up winning the match 24-22 and in the process left punters and even betting outlets aghast. At $1.01, any reasonable thinking person would have fairly considered the game as good as over. It wasn’t – as they say in the classics “the show’s not over till the fat lady sings”. So therein lies the problem for punters. A multi-millionaire punter watching the match in their heated lounge room surely wouldn’t hesitate to have $100,000 on the Broncos at $1.01 to win a lousy $1,000. He (a woman wouldn’t be that stupid) would have lost his $100,000.

The aforesaid shows how you can present a punter with a two-horse race, so one of the two must win, yet the winner is still impossible to determine. To exacerbate the problem, in today’s sad world of sports betting, the scenario unfolds all the time whereby both teams are quoted at odds-on. How can the punter possibly win “long term” when both teams are odds-on? In short he’s no hope.

So after the Broncos had got rolled at $1.01 after leading 22-0 on Friday night, Saturday dawned a new day and more odds-on favourites went over like flies the following day in racing. The Chris Waller trained Winx did get home in the first race at Rosehill at $1.45 after taking about an hour-and-a-half to sprint on straightening. Anyone who took the $1.45 wouldn’t have been happy at the 300 and would have gone to the bar for a stiff scotch or reached for an angina tablet. All that stress for a possible small profit is simply not worth the trouble. It’s no wonder blokes die prematurely, the body can only cope with so much stress. Down at Flemington just the one odds-on favourite was dished up when Charmed Harmony stepped out at $1.70 in the fifth race. The SES is still looking for him after he clocked in fifth – beaten just 6.25 lengths. At the TAB meeting at the Gold Coast last Saturday afternoon two odds-on favourites headed off to the barrier – Starocity in Race 5 at $1.70 and Navelina at $1.90. Both got rolled – in fact Navelina couldn’t even run a place. Head up the Toowoomba Range for the twilight meeting and again two odds-on favourites stepped out at the meeting. Leaps and Bounds got home easily in Race 3 at $1.80, but then two races later, punters buttered up to the Michael Nolan trained Rosco and the horse jumped as the prohibitive $1.65 favourite. The horse ran fifth of seven beaten officially over 20 (in words so there’s no confusion that’s twenty) lengths.

So backing odds-on chances in either racing or sports betting “in the long term” is nothing more than a quick way to the poor house.

I fancy many punters have moved away from betting on racing to take up sports betting thinking it’s easier to back a winner in a two-horse race like a game of rugby league, AFL, soccer or the like. After Friday night I sincerely hope that sports betting devotees learned a valuable lesson, but you can bet your bottom dollar they didn’t. You can’t breed brains into humans.

The other thing that punters seem to totally misinterpret is that most so called “experts” at tipping racehorses and/or sports teams have no idea. If a punter backed any “experts” publicly published tips at the races each Saturday, that punter would go broke. Similarly if a punter listened to what team the “experts” tip in two-horse race rugby league matches, the punter would have no option but to lose in the long term.

So if it is taken as read that it’s “impossible to win on the punt long term”, then the best a punter can do is to try to limit their losses”.

Obviously there’s a key criteria to help punters “limit their losses” and the first one would be to exercise severe restraint in terms of the number of bets they have. The more bets a punter has, the more chance he or she is of losing. As an analogy if a person walked up to a poker machine and for a $1 bet won $50 on the first spin, that person will, on the balance of probability, lose the $50 if they continue to play those horrid poker machines. Yet you see some fools sitting there playing poker machines for $5 a spin. It doesn’t matter whether the punter is betting only 25 cents a spin, or $5 a spin, they are no hope of winning in the long term – as the variables remember are all working against the punter, so the house will always win in the long term.

In thoroughbred racing, I’ve always found it amazing how pathetically the punters are treated. Last Saturday week at the Moonee Valley meeting in Melbourne, the track was officially put out as a “dead 5”. Tracks rated dead, not slow, engender enthusiasm in “the mug punter,” so he or she feels that every horse is going to get its chance at victory, so happily bets up. The problem is that the Moonee Valley track was never ever any better than “slow” between the “800 and the 400” on the day according to the relevant stewards report and racecaller Grey Miles did tell punters before Race 1 on the day, but not everyone can sit at home and listen to Sky Channel in clubs and pubs as you nearly have to beg the staff to turn the sound up so that you can hear anything, so many thousands of punters miss vital information like that, so finish up betting oblivious to that fact all afternoon. At Moonee Valley, due to the very short home straight of officially 178 metres, the pressure regularly goes on from well before the 600-metre mark, meaning that every starter has no option but to navigate the “slow track”. Sadly though, the poor old “mug punter” is told from as early as 6.35am on race day by the racing radio and racing television stations that the track is a dead 5. Since I was a kid a half century ago, racetracks have been rated on their worst part. Nowadays it’s obviously Rafferty’s rules. In essence as far as I’m concerned, not rating a racetrack on its worst part from the 1000-metre mark to the finish line (as all horses in Saturday city meetings will have to run at least 1000 metres) is simply deceptive conduct because the punter who walks into a TAB anytime from noon to 4.30pm on Saturday afternoon, to have a bet at Moonee Valley after his son has played football or his daughter netball, looks up at the screen and sees the track is a “dead 5”. That information is deceptive, as it doesn’t give him the accurate picture, namely that the track is actually slow between the 800 and the 400.

Racing officials in this country are overseeing the disaster that is declining TAB turnover, but in reality the punter is treated as nothing more than a total mug almost at every turn.

That the punter cannot win long term is bad enough, but racing officials and racing radio and racing television stations speed up the losing process via such strategies as allowing incorrect track ratings to be issued without question and having patronising interviews with every licensee ever born. They also very rarely – if ever – do anything constructive for their listening or watching audience to educate them on any topic in racing, so the punter just keeps donating to the cause. With track bias, one trainer accepting with six horses in one race last Saturday at Rosehill, football teams leading 22-0 and getting rolled, it’s the wonder the gambling industry even exists? For any business to be successful, it surely has to have some redeeming features which make it attractive? There aren’t many “redeeming features” that I can see for punters in 2014 – even for existing punters – let alone the industry trying to bring new people into the punting arena.

To be continued …….tomorrow.

In exclusive news, the educated drum around the traps early this morning is that one of South-East Queensland’s biggest trainers has made the decision to suddenly pull the pin on the industry and is going to walk away from his busy stable. More on that will come out later today or tomorrow I’m sure. And for Brisbane and surrounds people, the great pacer and dual Inter Dominion winner Im Themightyquinn will be in action in a trial at Albion Park at 3.50pm this afternoon, prior to him starting Saturday night in the Group 2 $60,000 Garrards Sunshine Sprint.

Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there’s the popular What’s In A Name segment from last Saturday. On www.sydneyracing.com.au David Clarkson has been to Ireland and reports in on the country that he says have “amongst the friendliest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet”, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au Victorian racing is perused.

 

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