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From the moment we are born to the moment we pass away, we depend on other people. Yes of course, you can choose a different water supplier, but unless you are able to access your own freshwater stream, you will need to pay someone to provide you with water. And even if you did have access to your own stream, you would depend on other people not polluting it.
Of course, you are correct to state that you are not directly employed by the utility company, that was clumsy language I used and should have taken more care over it.
Your point about families was an interesting one. I’m not sure I go along with the way you put it. Certainly to have a family is a choice. However, are you really still working for yourself if you have a family? Would a self-employed father of three ever say to himself, "Actually, I’ve had a good day at work today, but since this is my money, today I choose not to buy my children any food’? Your point here sounds more like economic theory than a recognisable model of humanity.
My general point is that our society is increasingly fragmented, in part because people do not feel any connection to one another, believe that they can live in glorious isolation and that nothing they do has any impact on anyone else. Working for a wage or betting for a living amounts to the same thing: you work to earn money.
Dave Nevison has some interesting comments on some of the professional punters he came across who believed they were ‘beating the system’ or ‘putting two fingers up at society’ but in reality would have been better off stacking shelves at Tesco.
Of course, Nevison isn’t just a pro punter because he’s good at it, he loves it. His job is his hobby, indeed his passion. If you can get to be working at something you love, then that is a wonderful thing indeed, whether it be a self-employed on course punter or a social worker.
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Aragorn
I disagree somewhat.
Having been a wage slave for years, then working even longer hours running my own business, mostly for the benefit of the taxman, the VATman, the banks, accountants, and insurance companies, there is no substitute for the independence of working when you want, where you want, and for as long as you want, and answering to NO ONE.
Like most ways of earning a crust, it becomes exactly what you make it.All my punting in nickels and dimes does is pay a few bills – with disappointing intervals…! But I think your posts were very perceptive, tooting, and notably, your last one, just above, reet hard.
- Total Posts 17716
Salselon
My apologies to both you and Aragorn.
My rather hurried reply was addressed to Andrew Hughes (Aranalde?), though it appears to have lost something in passing through my brain.
There are some good posts on this thread and some really badly informed ones. I suppose you can only really talk with any confidence from your own experiences.
I dont believe there is any such thing as easy money outside paid employment. After a life time of being self employed, running factories for other people, running my own businesses etc, ive gone into a sort of semi-retirement. I am currently in paid employment and it is so easy. I get up go to work, come home, get paid, get sick pay, get holiday pay .. get sent around the world and get paid even more .. and its all so easy and stress free.
The money isnt as good, but the amount of effort required to get an extra few hundred quid a month doesnt justify the amount of effort required to get it.
People who regularly make money gambling, arent gamblers because they know they are going to win. Think about it !
Dave,
Do you mean that they have an indication what is going to win or lose? (Allegedly, of course.)
Regards – Matron
But you DO know you’re going to win, don’t you , Dave?
It’s just when, and, how much, that pose the uncertainty.Well, that is the case for myself, so I’m sure it must apply to the brighter lights on this forum. Strictly speaking, there is nothing to say that I won’t be starving of the hunger some day in the future. in fact, I do go hungry at times, when things go against me, but I always bounce back, eventually.
One day, I won’t, of course, but there’s no profit in dwelling on that.I don’t believe that any of this makes me unique; I think it applies universally. Who knows?
Btw, I think there is such a thing as easy money outside paid employment; I know a guy – relation of mine – who inherited a fortune when his father died. The kid was barely eighteen at the time. He’s never worked in his life, except for doing hobbies. Apparently, the estate is shrinking, but I can’t see him ever having to do much in order to stay comfortable.
Interesting points above. For the last ten years or so I can be fairly confident on 1st Jan that I will make money over the year. As Sean Rua says, what I don’t know is when, or how much. What I do know is that until relatively recently if I was being paid by the hour for the work involved, it would have been minimum wage stuff. The only thing is that once you are sure you have an edge, there is nothing to stop you upscaling the operation- in theory if you double your average stake, you double your profits. That’s where I am now, but increased stakes bring their own problems- getting on, for one. I get the impression that punters like AP have migrated to Betfair for this very reason and even though 70% of my current turnover is with traditional bookmakers, I can see this dropping over the coming years as it gets harder to get on. If you can find an edge in well-traded markets on Betfair, that’s got to be the way forward.
Just happened on this thread again, that EC was a modest bloke!
EC was an interesting, knowledgeable correspondent with many a novel take on race analysis who had a healthy scepticism (verging on an unhealthy cynicism) for conventional received wisdom. For that he was worthy of applause.
Trouble is his temperament resembled that of a rhino with a red-hot poker up its ar*se; hence his inability to make his betting pay. Refreshingly self-confessed of course, as were his numerous references to ‘liking a bet’.
As has been mentioned elsewhere on this thread those with a volatile, mercurial temperament and an addiction to the gamble-induced adrenalin rush are not best accoutered for a venture into beat-the-book land.
Good to see this thread re-emerge, and some very good additions to it there are too.
Dave
You wrote: "People who regularly make money gambling, aren’t gamblers because they know they are going to win".
That is a much better way of saying what I intended to convey by my phrase "an approach to betting which had proved robust enough to give good grounds for thinking it a realistic basis for making a living". One could perhaps add that they know because their approach (whatever it is) is both logical and validated in action – both are necessary for real confidence.
I feel I understand your problem, carvillshill, and I think it is similar to what most businesses face when they expand.
How often have we witnessed a decent family business fail to make the leap to PLC status? Success brings problems and sometimes the mushroom grows so big so fast, it just kees over and dies.I’ve seen victims of "expansion" so many times ( even if only on the customer service front). The big operations ain’t the same somehow.The little things don’t seem to work anymore.
I think that a lot of this is down to the need to delegate. Once that occurs, then, often, ime, problems and costs arise.The great thing about being a punter, for me, is that I’m a one-man-band. I love the freedom, but fully realise the limitations.
Trouble is, expansion would mean bringing in others, and that leads to costs, aggro, and, dare I mention it, possible business registration and taxation. Horror of horrors! Back in the loop, working for the Man again!
I would agree that the Exchanges may offer you your best solution, but as a staunch enemy of these, it grieves me to admit so!
Commission and Liquidity may become increasing difficulties, I guess.‘Tis hard to win, but losing is not an option!
Carvills is correct in assuming that the move to Betfair, in my case at least, was as much due to problems getting bets on as anything else. I mostly played on course up to the end of 2000, and encountered little difficulty, but even then there were limits to what could be staked and/or won on a race. At the time, I was perfectly happy operating within those limits.
It’s a moot point as to whether the decline of the on course market was caused entirely by BF or by a mix of that and the deregulation brought about by pitch reforms. Either way, there’s not much life left in that market at most midweek meetings – fewer books present, mostly playing to lower liability levels and most of them total strangers to me, unlike the many layers that I knew and worked with in the 80’s and 90’s.
Using BF at home also cuts out a lot of expenses for travel and admission and saves the time otherwise spent on the road. Those savings pay a sizable portion of the commission, which in itself is just a more visible version of the fixed odds bookies margin.
It’s mostly boring and solitary and I don’t think I would have been interested in this lifestyle when I first went full time at 44 – but now at 60, giving up the driving is no great loss and I’ve no prospect of making a living any other way.
Would I do it all again – definitely.
AP
It’s a moot point as to whether the decline of the on course market was caused entirely by BF or by a mix of that and the deregulation brought about by pitch reforms.
I would contend that the abolition of UK off-course betting tax in 2001 (hard on the heels of Chandler’s 3% from Gib) had at least as detrimental effect on the on-course market as did the – approximately concurrent – emergence of Betfair as a serious player. The latter being a painful blow on the former’s deep bruise.
Although my staking was never really at a sufficient level to warrant the ‘tax saving’ expense of regular travel and admission to the racecourses, when a nicely priced winner was had on-course the knowledge that the (always enjoyable) day-at-the-races had been ‘free’ due to having not paid tax-on made the succesful bet all the more pleasurable.
For the regular monkey-plus player such as yourself AP, I would have thought that being able to sit at home and phone your bets through tax-free provided a great disincentive to throw on best bib-and-tucker and tread the once familiar path to the racecourse.
AP,
Imagine, what your fuel bills would be know travelling from course to course compared to just a few years ago.
You are now a "carbon efficient" gambler.
Regards – Matron
The term, "professional gambler", though used, mostly, I imagine, for convenience, is actually an oxymoron, isn’t it?
If you simply take calculated risks to earn a living, and you lose, like it or lump it, you are a gambler. If you make a living that provides for your requirements, then you are a professional bettor/investor – but not a gambler.
I thought of the term, "self-employed actuary", but there are and so many imponderables to try to take into account, many, only recognisable from experience, before making your decision, it’s surely more of an art than a science.
I suspect the most successful bettors financially are good at thinking on their feet, like the money-market traders. Those of us who have a lot else going on in our minds subliminally (not talking about sex or anything specific), as most of us do, are not sharp-minded enough to capitalise as efficiently on the money-making possiblities.
An old pal of mine who used to lecture at Heriot Watt, teaches Arabic privately now (having picked it up from reading newspapers!) and still, as far as I know, translates, as well, though he is, as the Americans say, "independenlty wealthy". Anyway, he seems to me to personify that expression, "having a mind like a steel trap". He’d look at a page of legal text in a foreign language and in a few seconds, understand the essence of it, and almost write a summary of it in translation.
I used to kid him about it, telling him he was a brigand, but I fear I encouraged him to overdo it, because he got a rollicking from one of his suppliers – maybe Sheik Mohammed! – for taking liberties and not sticking more closely to the text.
He taught me a lot, though I wasn’t a very apt pupil, but what this is leading up to is, that he used to laugh at the mess my desk was in, and couldn’t understand how I could translate texts with the TV going on in the background.
There’s always a trade-off with intelligence. He could make a fat living by using his extremely sharp and highly organised mind… while I could have the TV on in the background, while I was translating, but stumbled along from financial crisis to financial crisis. I wonder who’d made the best trade-off?
PS
I once happened to mention to him that I had a card index of words and expressions in a little plastic box. It was about 6" by 4" and 3" deep, which I found very useful. He said, "What, you mean like this?" and pointed to a card index consisting of a rack of three shelves, each about 3′ long.
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