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Apologies in advance for the long post.
Drone,
Reading the NH paragraph I posted last night was the key factor which stopped me betting on jumps.
Up till that point, I was happy as larry backing horses like Cybrandian, Forgive & Forget and Burrough Hill Lad and, of course, the great Desert Orchid. The paragraph seemed to make sense to me and since 1990, I have had just eight bets or so worth talking about over the sticks.
Yet I have friends who consider jump racing a licence to print money and don’t touch the flat.
Simpson makes a further point following that paragraph – a point also made by Dave Nevison more recently – what can be more soul destroying than travelling to the races to back one horse only to see it fall, slip up and stumble at the last!
You get the impression he’ll watch the winter sports – as do I, it’s horse racing after all – but the flat is more straightforward and suitable for his mindset.
I’m more than aware, as you know, of your great passion for the NH game – and that, generally, of the board – and put the quote up to demonstrate Simpson’s logic and style.
The second quote, which you’ve commented upon before, is just something that appeals to me as a person. The whole book is full of epithets, wise vignettes and clever little motifs like that. I guess it’s one of those quotes which is as meaningful or as meaningless as you want it to be.
As I said to Wallace, it’s on my wall of honour next to blown up photographs of SP, DB and, you may be surprised to know, Flakey Dove, winner of the 1993 Champion Hurdle.
Whoever wrote “Always Back Winners” in 1979 – and like, “Raymond Van Der Wheil”, there’s an interesting literary mystery worth investigating there, which I believe centres around the nineteen seventies’ Raceform Handicap Book – appears to be didactic, dogmatic, arrogant and determined. My way, or the highway, in other words.
His method of selection (picking a notebook of horses which can quicken, backing top weights on turning tracks),never really paid dividends for me and the book is an aftertimer’s paradise which would be utterly destroyed by today’s venomous cyber-critics, but the book is still potent for his unavailing belief that you can make the game pay.
It’s chock full of unbreakable confidence in every sentence. There’s a brilliant demonstration of the mindset of a professional using the example of the hapless winner of fifty quid in a bookies one Saturday afternoon, who loses the lot – not to the bookies, but to the grabbing hands around him – an interlude which ascends to the status of a moral fable.
There is plenty of other dogma (like the NH paragraph), weaving its way through the book. Never back each way, don’t drink and bet, avoid any racing under a mile and stick to the top trainers, each evidenced and explained.
There is also an utterly brilliant diary where (like the bizarre wonders of compound interest) he demonstrates the importance of sound bankroll management as well as taking the reader on a tour of the sights and sounds of racing in the seventies.
Most of all, Drone, I love his <i>joie de vivre.</i> Simpson is always at the races, always at a party, he treats the Pattern as a travelling circus, he wouldn’t miss a Festival and he doesn’t take life too seriously.
Isn’t that what everyone in the game wants? I could never take salaried work seriously after reading the book – something which, I have to admit, has proved both a boon and a curse.
I love both of Alan’s books, “A Licence to Print Money” by Jamie Read, and to a lesser extent, Mark Coton’s nippy little manuals, but whoever wrote “Always Back Winners” somehow touched the essence. There are so, so many writers today who make a living from the game who can write like Booker Prize winners but who actually can’t express what that game is really about.
“Stewart Simpson” could – and did.
Cheers and best of luck with the Open tomorrow. <!– s:D –>
<!– s:D –>Cheers
Max
As ever Max a
joie de vivre
courses through your post. Compare and contrast to the increasingly drab world-weary heard-it-all-before tones that litter mine
I read ‘Always back winners’ sometime in the ’80s and found it worthwhile enough and quite fun though unlike you (I think) when presented with dogma, then and now – ‘do don’t never always’ etc – prefer to entertain the possibility that the converse may have something going for it – ‘don’t do always never’. For better or worse I have never felt comfortable believing what I read or hear, though of the ’80s missives I was least uncomfortable reading the Clive Holt books which did at least attempt the analytical
what can be more soul destroying than travelling to the races to back one horse only to see it fall, slip up and stumble at the last! You get the impression he’ll watch the winter sports – as do I, it’s horse racing after all – but the flat is more straightforward and suitable for his mindset.
A too-familiar rationalization trotted out by those who want an easy excuse to ignore NH as a betting medium. It certainly is damn annoying if not quite soul destroying but in truth how often does this actually happen? I’d warrant with no greater frequency than ‘trouble in running’ prevents your bet winning on the Flat, or the unravelling of an unforecasted head-scratching draw bias. To the inexperienced eye NH falls appear ‘ruinous’ to the jumps bettor because they are so bleedin’ obvious unlike the subtler ‘ruinations’ on the Flat
Anyway it should be clear by now that I am not and never have been in the NH/Flat ‘them and us’ camp. Each to their own, find and mine your own motherlode, your own mindset indeed.
It is true that my preference has inexorably crawled from Flat to NH: betting-wise certainly (for the simple reason I couldn’t make Flat betting pay) spectacle-wise generally (for complex reasons I can’t quite fathom, too much Flat racing the catalyst)
I could never take salaried work seriously after reading the book – something which, I have to admit, has proved both a boon and a curse.
Yep, betting is the repository for those for whom the 9-5 is anathema, for those who resent being told what to do, and for those who find it difficult to function within the accepted societal norms, customs and values. The wide-eyed and lazy see betting as an easy way to avoid a contributary life, the lynx-eyed grafter (grifter?) as a difficult though ultimately rewarding way
Dunno about you but I think the "Is Horse Racing Betting for Mugs?" thread should be pasted on every punter and wannabe punter’s wall. The general gist is a quintessence of the old, old, old belief that ‘the bookie always wins’ and therefore a priceless piece of illogical received wisdom for those few who know that it ain’t necessarily so.
Thank you for the two-cups-of-tea post. Appreciated
Max, imv punting on the ponies should make you feel like THIS* and the day it doesn’t we should all take up fishing or watching F1 or somefink…
* I actually did this in our kitchen when I backed a horse at 80’s (on Betfair) iirc and it came cruising up to the hard ridden odds on favourite one out….
I said to the missus "forget the egg & chips for tea, I’ll take you out for a chicken boona"
I’d warrant with no greater frequency than ‘trouble in running’ prevents your bet winning on the Flat,
So true, sir. I countered the "Lonely horse" strategy favoured by some flint hearted professionals by backing in every race.
yep, betting is the repository for those for whom the 9-5 is anathema, for those who resent being told what to do, and for those who find it difficult to function within the accepted societal norms, customs and values. The wide-eyed and lazy see betting as an easy way to avoid a contributary life, the lynx-eyed grafter (grifter?) as a difficult though ultimately rewarding way
There’s a whole story in this, Drone. I’m as guilty as sin in your Kostermeyer spotlight. If I had my time again (Part 361), I’d have done things differently because, as you will know, when its going badly, as it does, it can be a heartless world we live in.
Maybe this is why the young have taken one long at racing and thought twice. It’s hard work, possibly fruitless – and this doesn’t come across in Simpson’s book. I suspect you and I took one look at it and fell headfirst in love – today’s young strike me as being a bit shrewder than we were.
I backed two horses yesterday over the sticks. Backbord, which was, by some way, the most exciting finish of the past fortnight -what an absolute rogue! And Dawn Ride up at Wetherby, who should have won. At its best – like both these races – NH racing is incredibly thrilling. We’re blessed in the UK, aren’t we.
Pete, I can picture it. You could even boogie into the space where your fridge once was. Nice one.
There’s a whole story in this, Drone. I’m as guilty as sin in your Kostermeyer spotlight. If I had my time again (Part 361), I’d have done things differently because, as you will know, when its going badly, as it does, it can be a heartless world we live in.
The sign of The Beast?
Those words weren’t aimed at you specifically Max; rather they were aimed at the inveterate ‘serious’ punter in general, myself very much included
I’ll leave you with these lines from Edgar Allan Poe, which in my opinion more-or-less encapsulate the discomfort of those who ‘just don’t fit’.
Some of whom see betting as the road to take them far away from a society they don’t understand and have no wish to be part of. And in equal measure as a medium with which to cock a (misguided) superior snook at said society.
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then–in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life–was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
One crazy, mixed-up dude hey? Lurv ‘imhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Edgar_Allan_Poe_2_(oval_cropped).png
Another tortured soul – I watched the documentary on him a few weeks back. A fascinating journey leading to a tragic end.
Just out of interest, did you get the Kostermeyer reference, Drone?
It would seem not
Thought it may have been an oblique reference to Postermeyer late of this parish, but the K continues to fox me
Was this Kostermeyer a philosopher or summat?
He’s an important character in several Jim Thompson novellas, Drone. I’m sure you mentioned once that you’d read a couple of his tales. He’s one of my favourite novelists.
Some critics believe Kostermeyer is the model for Columbo. Just when you think you’ve got away with it, up pops Kostermeyer to come and take you away.
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