Everyone else must suffer because you’re a weak minded tosser?

Close all pubs and bars because alcoholics.
No Off sales either.
No betting shops because gamblers.
No pizza / McDonalds / KFC because lard arses.
No tobacco because smokers.
No moslems because suicide bombers (actually, I’ll go with that one).

Recognise YOU have the problem and deal with it….. ‘Ere ‘ang on, that might be a bit too close to home…..

I’ve been punting for a living for 32 years now, and until the last year my assumption (along with other full-timers I know) is that the thing which would finally put an end to our activities is being banned for winning too consistently. We would simply run out of bookmakers or exchanges willing to take our bets.

What has actually happened is bizarre: so-called affordability checks quasi-mandated by the Gambling Commission are resulting in long-term winners (who don’t have any official or regular income) being barred from betting in case we lose (savings or assets are deliberately excluded from the affordability checks – only income from employment is counted).

It’s extraordinary the way the anti-gambling lobby has taken over the Gambling Commission and quangoed its way to power in such a short period.

And now it seems that the ECB might have an issue with their Kiwi coach and his appearance in a gambling ad.

Same logic Mayor Bloomberg used to attempt a large soda ban in NYC.

Jim: “Are you saying that if you are not employed you can’t bet in the UK? Whats stopping you walking into a bookmakers with a stack of £20s?”

You’ll be asked questions about the provenance of the £20 notes for money-laundering regulations, then be asked to provide a P60 and bank statements for affordability checks.

“Punters are increasingly finding themselves denied entrance to betting shops if failing to provide bookmakers with detailed personal financial information, shining further light on the growing reach of intrusive affordability and source-of-funds checks.

Online gamblers have increasingly faced requests from bookmakers, under pressure from the industry regulator, the Gambling Commission, for personal documents such as payslips and bank statements to allow them to continue betting, with accounts closed or heavily restricted if these requests are denied.

However, bettors placing wagers in retail outlets are also being hit with demands for proof they can afford to bet, while one betting shop employee spoken to by the Racing Post said staff were under increased pressure over the past 12 months to seek information from their customers.”

https://www.racingpost.com/news/gambling-review/punters-barred-from-betting-shops-after-failing-to-meet-affordability-demands-a7QaX2U32oeq/

“A fool and his money are easily parted.” If you really think it’s that easy, there’s more than a chance that you might turn out to be the fool who gets parted from his money! (Not you personally, just a general observation.)

If I could give one piece of advice from three decades surviving in the betting ring, it’s that you’re never as good as you think you are when you get things right (and you’re never as bad as you think you are when things are going wrong). It’s a phenomenally difficult piece of advice to follow though.

It’s not really a question you can answer, philip, because you’re never betting against one book. You’re looking for the best price from a range of books.

In the ring’s heyday, during the nineties, when it became possible for new bookmakers to buy pitches rather than have to wait for ‘dead man’s shoes’, you could look at thirty boards each betting to 115%, but by taking the best prices they would be betting overbroke (less than 100%). The newcomers didn’t understand how to calculate the percentages in the pre-computer days. They thought you just stood there and a profit would come. I would happily make a ‘backer’s book’, betting half a dozen horses in a race if I thought they were all value. So it’s hard to put a figure on it.

It’s different now, and much harder, with betting exchanges such as Betfair offering bookmakers the best price guide they’ve ever had. A lot of them basically act as commission agents, offering a fractionally lower price than the exchange, and laying off any bets they take at the bigger exchange price. From the point of view of the punter, if you bet directly into the exchange, you’re essentially taking on the combined wisdom of the whole world, plus a 2% commission for the exchange on winning events.

But twenty or thirty years ago you were taking on individual men, often independently wealthy, who were taking thousands of pounds worth of bets on the basis of half an hour glancing through the Sporting Life in the car park before racing. Some of them would be offering over the odds to get money in the hod to pay out the winners from the last race. Some had ‘stickers-in’ offering big prices against horses they thought they knew could not win. Others fancied themselves as paddock judges, and would push out the price of anything looking wintry in its coat. Some were just gamblers who happened to have a pitch. Dorset dairy farmer Ivor Perry was a lovely man, and a good bookmaker, but he did let his opinions run away with him sometimes, wandering off and laying horses independently of the book. I remember a conversation one day at Newton Abbot between Ivor and his clerk (“How’s the book doing, Robert?” “The book’s doing all right, but that’s not the question, is it.”)

In a nutshell, there were a lot of men who took up bookmaking back then because they believed that fools and their money were soon parted. Plenty ended up skint.

I seem to remember reading that the rise of betting exchanges and online bookies had meant that it was actually easier to beat the house, because it became possible for the punter to know more about a given sporting market than those making the book on it, and thus able to spot lucrative odds. For example Angus Loughran (Statto of Fantasy Football fame) made a killing on a world cup tournament because he bet on the number of red and yellow cards that would be issued during it. He knew that FIFA had issued new guidelines to referees about what constituted a yellow card, and thus that the spreads being offered by the bookies were ludicrously low. He took the over on the spread and cleaned up. The friend of a friend used to make a decent profit betting on cricket, he was very knowledgeable on the game and was able to spot when people were offering odds that were outside statistical historical outcomes.

It looks like the bookies have managed to get the State to do their dirty work for them and exclude the knowledgeable punters from of the market and just retain the fools who are easily parted from their cash.

It looks like the bookies have managed to get the State to do their dirty work for them and exclude the knowledgeable punters from of the market and just retain the fools who are easily parted from their cash.

The current affordability checks are not an excuse being used by bookmakers to exclude winning punters.

But it does make it easier.

The desire of men (mostly) to make money exciting. If they ban betting on horse races the price of lasagna will crater, and interest in stuff like CFDs, cryptos, SIPPS and so on will soar.

Boddicker, Paul
Good for you. Buy a shop, or a pub, or a land fill site and launder the profit.

I can’t really speak for Boddicker, but the problem now is that we’re running out of mugs to win off. The heroes who used to make the markets by wading in out of their depth are falling foul of affordability checks too!