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I never felt Nevison revealed his methods as clearly as Potts. Veitch’s technique is even more opaque. I reckon if you do have a winning method then you don’t publicise it or at least you disguise it a bit. To my mind that suggests a pecking order of Veitch, Nevison, Potts.
On the other hand, Potts’s methods had probably moved on by the time his books were published. Anyway what about Beyer or Mordin or Segal?
I think Mr Mordin is as close to a nutty prof as you can get . . . although this blog piece brought me some hate mail!
I’ve found Nick Mordin’s website a wee treasure trove (said wee treasure being lost during the week on the minor races usually at the lesser tracks).
So, when I’ve read criticisms of his racing punditry, I’ve always assumed it was deliberate disinformation. What I particularly like is the way he points his readers in the direction of class horses.
Checking the form in the light of several short-cuts to knowledge via tipsters, is far less onerous than trawling through the form of all or most of the runners in every race. Not that each tipster would not edit what he looked at on the page, himself. But sometimes, of course, such economy of effort can catch you out.
I tend to have my fancies (often Mordin horses) and check with the various tipsters, and various other things. Today, I was pleased to see Waffle tipped by the RP Verdict man, but it didn’t work out. I did have a saver on Marine Commando but am hopping mad that I didn’t put the same amount on. I’d wasted too much money on Newmarket races during the week, some from bad picking, but also some inexpicable results.
Nick Mordin, the man who single-handedly brought about a renaissance in British racing analysis literature, of which Potts and Nevison are part.
Nobody can doubt the man’s ingenuity with the quill and his recent prescriptions for racing’s malaise hit the nail firmly on the head.
However I fear that the transition from theory to practice would be his downfall.
Potts trundled up to the racecourse, wheelbarrow in hand, to bet that things could only get better and not a bead of sweat was sighted on his brow. They didn’t, of course, but he got the weigh in signal before history amended the result.
Nev thinks nothing of staking the school fees on a Super7 and his main concern as the last leg reaches a crescendo is one sugar or two.
Mordin, I fear, lacks the eye of the tiger that these two greats have. He gets the shakes very easily and his corner would throw in the towel as soon as he caught sight of the other two walking up to the ring.
Mordin must be the appetiser
at any betting feast, but as
far as Veitch goes he could
easily come from another planet.
Sitting ogle eyed,
Cambridge first staring down as he
flits between screens
for his daily twelve hour stretch
– and there nestling underneath his desk
his big hairy secret –
twenty pairs of differently shaped legs.
I always mistrust a man with that
many runners, and if you get close enough
there is no smell or hint of algorithm,
more foot rot and algae and smelly information.That may be guesswork on my part
but as for the main contenders
the eight races might as well
run themselves as we all know
there is only one way to find outF I G H T
I quote directly from Nevison’s
A Bloody Good Winner
…in my view, if you only make [what Alan Potts aspires to make] you are not really a professional punter because you would be considerably better off doing almost anything else for a living. You have not beaten the system and must be living a pretty quiet life, probably in a bus shelter.
To paraphrase the Basingstoke Bandit paraphrasing Damon Runyon – if that’s not
fighting talk
it will do until some fighting talk comes along.
There is a pressure on a professional punter
who is in the public eye and with a secondary
income due to his celebrity, to bump up his earnings.Pott’s betting income may be smaller than Nevison’s
but that may be due to his strict ‘victorian’ upbringing,
his possible love of the church, and that his school
rarely locked the cane cupboard.It can work both ways Gamble.
What better way to secure a price in a showdown like this than to resemble a broken man?
Laser beamed face spitters, the recent RUK appearances, the removal of professional from his title and now this…
‘would love him to play.. inmyday would go against any, not on top of the form at present ( as bodugi acct shows!) so Alan fav’ Dave Nevison
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all just an act and he’s waiting for some greenhorn to chalk up a bit of 6/4 against.
My point about Potts is his age and
stricter upbringing make it more likely his
figures are reliable. I am sure he played
conkers as a kid and this teaches a lot
about hierarchy and right and wrong
Those kids who pickled them in vinegar and
baked them in ovens were soon found out
LORDS LORDS OF THE FLIES !Mr Potts corrected me in advising me
he owned no tweed jacket with leather
elbow patches, but instead owned a bomber.
A frank admission few would admit to
You know far more than me about these two
goliaths Glenn but I would like to congratulate
them both for cracking the code.
I know little of Nevison’s methods but
read reports of him frightening all
sorts of people by leaving live tissues
on the seats of the british rail network
on his way to the races.His latest venture of shoving all his eggs
into the misery bet fiasco to try to scoop
a gladiatorial win – are simliar to his efforts
to replace Russel Crowe in a remake of the Gladiator.
The film was not to be based in Rome,
but rather on the northern rail network
and featured bookies eaten not by lions
but by him.somehow I MISSED these good posts …..must add my 2 pence worth
It takes a very special quality to make a living on course from the ponies , I tried it 3 times and bombed ….sigh , but better to have tried than never !!!
I know both of these guys and a little about their methods …for me the cast Iron certainty is that AP IS THE business bar none
Mellish and Big Eddie are gifted , and could well be the best around today …but I promise you Alan was something else
Perhaps Glen we should try and get the Swindon Geezer to join us in a glass of pop ….(or 2 ) soonish
cheers
Ricky
You look
as though
you have enjoyed being
out of the desert rain Ricky
bobbing along on a little
retired filly with no name
– that looks a dead ringer
and the last of her sex to win
thecrochet
crown.
Sit down on a rock mate
take out a cold tube
and take in
the black beauty
of it all !I achieved a lifetime’s ambition last Sunday. A betting company invited me to a racecourse box for the first time in living memory and I got to meet one of my heroes – Dave Nevison.
He’s a director of Bodugi these days (the company that sent me the invite) and he won the in-box Bodugi table that afternoon, showing that he’s still got it. When I suggested he step up in class and take on Potts over the Bodugi table he wouldn’t be drawn, which was a shame. I’m sure we’d all like to see a showdown.
Is Prof Potts still in circulation Glenn?
Has he joined the twittering classes yet?
Still laying and playing the short-end on Betfair I wonder?
Or maybe rejoined the fray at Wincanton and Stratford?
Or tapping his fingers to the Bodugi boogie?
I haven’t sighted him in either the virtual or real world since he left TRF in a huff ‘n’ puff a goodly while ago now, though I don’t get in or out much these days
I’m led to believe that an underground volcano, below Trundle Hill, that appears on no map, forms the base for operations these days.
There’s been a little local difficulty with the neighbours’ flagpoles interfering with the ley lines he uses to transmit his wagers.
I’m just relaying what I’ve heard. Take it as you will.
I believe PJ was in contact with ‘ten thumbs’ JJE a year or so ago and reported him to be alive, well and living the quiet life in Sutton Coldfield
Sold my collection of Smartsig mags for a not untidy sum to a guy in Australia. Postage was £70 surface mail and took six weeks to reach him!
Quote us a few verses from Inisfree, Drone.
And be very careful when you move away form that stanchion, as it looks as if you’re holding it up, in a curiously diagonal sort of way.
I believe PJ was in contact with ‘ten thumbs’ JJE a year or so ago and reported him to be alive, well and living the quiet life in Sutton Coldfield
Sold my collection of Smartsig mags for a not untidy sum to a guy in Australia. Postage was £70 surface mail and took six weeks to reach him!
Quote us a few verses from Innisfree, Drone. Here’s a good one for you by G K Chesterton:
‘For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.’And be very careful when you move away form that stanchion, as it looks as if you’re holding it up, in a curiously diagonal sort of way.
Quote us a few verses from Innisfree, Drone. Here’s a good one for you by G K Chesterton:
‘For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.’And be very careful when you move away form that stanchion, as it looks as if you’re holding it up, in a curiously diagonal sort of way.
Indeed GK: those big tales from some big men: war-torn punters; blood, sweat, tears; missing in action; long gone with the fluttering once ‘fair blue wind; It couldn’t have lasted Angel, too much happiness
My little world has long since collapsed all around me Grimes though still diagonal, holding thin air; tangential, blowing hot air
Not from Innisfree, but these closing lines from ‘Under Ben Bulben’ seem apposite
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!yay or nay?
lay or play?
Wonderful stuff. Its meaning escapes me, but it has a haunting, epic ring about it.
I’m a goin’ to google the poem now.
I read a few months ago a remark by G K Chesterton to the effect that slang is poetry, and it happens I’ve long admired the incredible metaphors in slang, at least of Anglo-Saxon provenance, e.g.
‘Why, she beat him like a red-headed stepchild!’ You could just imagine an old scold in the Southern States drawing that, couldn’t you?
And I was reminded of this one, another American one, today:
‘Kicking butt and taking names.’
Just read Under Mount Benbulben, Drone. Wonderful stuff! A ‘momentous ring’ to it; that’s what I was searching for.
‘Horseman, pass by!’
yay or nay?
lay or play?Was that couplet of your devising? It has a certain magisterial ring to it, anyway – like, ‘Horseman, pass by!’ But with overtones of ‘no nonsense’.
as though
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