Professional gambler books.
Where do they start and end? In my case, there is no particular order, rhyme or reason. For example, Enemy Number One: The Secrets of The UK’s Most Feared Professional Punter by Patrick Veitch has been sitting on my bookshelf for years.
I’ve not read a word of this well-received tome.
It sits next to me as I write this article. The dust jacket depicting a photo of a man silhouetted walking past a sash window overlooking a garden of bushes, perhaps a pine tree and hedge in the distance. I’m sure the publishers said: ‘You can’t beat a black and white photo and that classic out-of-focus man-in-a-suit look tells a story punters want to read.’
It has taken a few years, but I’m just about the open the book and start reading. This is the equivalent of an unboxing on YouTube!
Enemy Number One: The Secrets of The UK’s Most Feared Professional Punter by Patrick Veitch was published in 2009 by Racing Post.
I’m not sure why I’ve been so slow to get stuck into this book. However, over the next couple of weeks I will read it from cover to cover. One or two of my horse racing friends have said it’s a good read. In truth, most professional gambler books detail the highs and lows of a gambling life via big bets wins and losses. That’s certainly been the case with Dave Nevison’s A Bloody Good Winner & Harry Findlay’s: Gambling For Life.
Have you noticed how all these books have pretty much the same tag lines. I guess being a professional gambler puts your musing within a box that is always square.
No doubt this publication came to fruition from the successes of former worthy reads.
Very few professional gambler books detail the ‘secret sauce’ to help punters find the method to making their betting pay. That’s been the case for Messrs Nevison & Findlay. Perhaps we need to look at my old friend Nick Mordin’s Betting For A Living, published in 1992. I’ve seen that sitting on my brother’s bookshelf.
Anyway, I will soon get stuck into Mr. Veitch.
The blurb on the inside cover gives hope of something more as he made £10M in a period of just eight years. Can the Cambridge mathematician and scholar prove he is the best of all modern-day professionals?
Let’s get reading and find out.
The 2022 Cheltenham Festival was the first since the government lifted all remaining Covid-19 regulations and, as anticipated, was attended by a record total of 280,627 racegoers over the four days. On the whole, the March showpiece was fairly kind to punters, with 12, or 43%, of the 28 races won by the starting price favourite, or joint-favourite.
The winning market leaders included Honeysuckle in the Champion Hurdle, Allaho in the Ryanair Chase and A Plus Tard in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Shishkin, who was sent off marginal odds-on favourite for the Queen Mother Champion Chase, was never travelling well and was pulled up, leaving the race at the mercy of his main market rival, Energumene. Klassical Dream, favourite for the Stayers’ Hurdle, looked the likely winner at one stage, but was less than fluent over the final flight and failed as much as anticipated on the run-in, eventually finishing fifth behind Flooring Porter, who was winning the race for the second year running.
Thus, all the ‘feature’ races of the week went, more or less, as anticipated by the betting market, but the notoriously difficult Festival handicaps were, largely, as impenetrable as ever. In fact, the eight handicap races, hurdles and steeplechases, yielded just one winning favourite, subsequent multiple Grade 1 winner State Man, in the County Handicap Hurdle. The other winners included, in ascending order of starting price, Cool Cody at 22/1, Third Wind at 25/1, Global Citizen at 28/1 and Chambard at 40/1.
Top of the shop, in terms of odds of reward, though, was Commander Of Fleet, trained by Gordon Elliott, who belied odds of 50/1 when scraping home by a short head in the Coral Cup. The eight-year-old gelding had popped up at 40/1 when winning comfortably, off an 8lb lower mark, at Navan in December but, after three unsuccessful starts in Graded company, was largely unconsidered at Cheltenham.
Famously trained by the late Donald ‘Ginger’ McCain on the sands of Southport Beach on Merseyside, northwest England, Red Rum won the Grand National for the first time in 1973. On that occasion, ridden by Brian Fletcher, Red Rum overhauled long-time leader, Crisp, who had been thirty lengths clear at one stage, in the dying strides to win by three-quarters of a length in a course record time of 9 minutes and 1.9 seconds.
Red Rum and Fletcher returned to Aintree for another crack at the celebrated steeplechase in 1974 and duly won again. Despite the welter burden of twelve stone, Red Rum came home seven lengths ahead of his nearest rival, L’Escargot. In so doing, he became the first horse since Reynoldstown, in 1936, to record back-to-back wins in the Grand National and – notwithstanding subsequent reductions in the maximum weight carried – remains the only horse since World War II to carry such a weight to victory. Red Rum finished second in the 1975 and 1976 renewals of the Grand National, in 1975 under Brian Fletcher and in 1976 under Tommy Stack, who replaced Fletcher after the latter made disparaging comments to the press about Red Rum and was informed by McCain that he would not be riding the horse again.
Stack was once again aboard Red Rum when he lined up, as a twelve-year-old, for the 1977 Grand National. Generally regarded as past his prime, Red Rum was, nonetheless, saddled with top-weight once again, albeit just eleven stone and eight pounds, and was sent off joint-second favourite at 9/1. He took the lead at the twenty-second fence, Becher’s Brook on the second circuit, following the departure of favourite Andy Pandy, and stormed home to his unprecedented third win in the race, twenty-five lengths clear of his nearest rival.
