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I thought an earlier thread on here actually pegged HF’s profit at 2% after commission? That sounds more believable.
My personal research fund (already kindly namechecked earlier) is currently showing 4% profit – which given my commission levels, makes some sort of sense.
As the old-timers on here know, I was a "pricewise" style value punter on the horses for many years and went full-time on the back of it. Then I found the market changed entirely (betfair driven) and had a terrible couple of years. Personally I found I’d lost my edge on the purely tissue-driven betting gingertipster evangelises about. On horses anyway.
What I did find was that there was juice at the front-end of the market in certain circumstances. (I believe Apracing had a similar conversion). As ratpack says "favourite-longshot bias" explains some of it; a very competitive market explains some more of it; the place liabilities of each way bets explain a bit more; and I’d could add a few more reasons, each increasingly exotic or fanciful.
This has come as quite a profound shock to me, and required a remarkable turnaround in my betting approach. But I was facing having to return to corporate life on the back of my over persistence on a methodology that was no longer working for me. So I’m personally quite grateful I was at least intrigued enough by Harry’s pontifications to check it out for myself..
Paul’s explanation sounds spot on, so Daily Mail sensibilities can relax.
What you’re actually looking at is a job creation scheme within HR. And that’s good news really.
Think of it as a pointless bit of bureaucracy to keep some nice young white middle class graduate girl busy, prior to her giving it up as a career to settle down and have kids with a farmer back in her home town.
Well done all.
Last year I finally stopped waiting my long overdue call-up to the England team.
Looks like I’ll have to stop expecting the call from the Nobel panel as well!
Pru, you imply that movements on exchanges are "transparent".
Presumably, in as much (paradoxically) as that we can all see them.
Am I the only one who was actually more confident about deciphering the old days of bookie ‘cloak and dagger’, than I am at working out what and who is behind movements on the exchanges?
That old phrase about poker players knowing who they’re sitting down with springs to mind…
RUK coverage of racing is way ahead of all the competition imo.
Better presenters and better ‘tipsters’. Today was a B team partnership granted, and the stealthy introduction of adverts is a worrying trend, but I preferred their coverage over the Beeb. And if it wasn’t for in-running (and Mike Cattermole) I’d watch the races on there as well!.
The same with Cheltenham. Their coverage, with Lydia, and Mellish/Neesom/Cunningham ,and preferably no support meeting to get in the way, is just about spot on.
ATR is a terrible channel – unless you have a predeliction for leg-lock Luke talking baloney and Ocean Finance adverts running over the start of races.
Agreed excellent post.
I’ve just come to the end of my third year full-time. The main attractions for me are:
a) as George says, it’s a more fulfilling way of spending my time than the years I spent stuck in soulless hotel rooms; the years I wasted stood at flipcharts talking corporate lingo bingo I’d long since stopped taking seriously; the death of a thousand meetings; the eternal commmuting; the sense of not belonging and of being caught up in a wheel of life you never asked for nor believed in, (and other Reggie Perrin woes!)
b) I find it incredibly difficult, and hence challenging. Every other job I’ve had I’ve either been 100% useless at, or found drearily easy.
c) The feedback is instant and in black and white. I used to earn far more but never felt I’d really earned it. It was just a payslip.
I wouldn’t have thought it would suit very many people though. Misanthropes and geeks mainly.
Fat pig signing in!
For those of you who can bring yourself to buy a Guardian there is a very nice booklet of Mr Toilet’s poems free inside every copy today. You can see where Prufrock got his name and other delicacies.
To put TS Eliot in context, I think Louis MacNeice spoke for a weary nation (apart from me and presumably prufrock) when he pointed out that he’s an anagram of Toilets.
Is my old city geting to you gamble?
TS Eliot saw its Dantesque qualities – I imagine in a smog.
"Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future."Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
Good to hear you again, gamble.
Max,
actually pretty much the same thing happened to me when I was 10.
I was a youngster who played and dreamt football every waking moment. My Dad was long gone, not even a Sunday father. I was about the best player in the playground and began supporting Liverpool (As Kwang says above) because they were the best.
My Dad supported Fulham. Who at that time were a long way down the Shoot league ladders on my bedroom wall. He materialised from abroad around this time. And was apoplectic to learn I wasn’t a cottager. He dragged me there for a match. It was great.
I remember being in the playground shortly afterwards tentatively trying out my new allegiance. It didn’t last long. I got the piss ripped out of me (a) for switching clubs and (b) for switching to such a rubbish club. It made much more sense to support Liverpool. You got to see them on Match of the Day, got to try to emulate their stars and, importantly to a kid, they won all the time.
My Dad disappeared again – promised me tickets for the FA Cup Final, then didn’t show, I didn’t see him for 6 years and fell in love with Kenny Dalglish instead.
After University I went to live with him in the States and as I matured gained a better sense of what Fulham meant to him, and of what supporting a small, frankly useless club is all about, and how what I had been doing was following a club, not supporting it.
I came home and shortly after my Dad died – aged 48. His 3rd wife flew back from the States with his ashes and his family scattered them at Craven Cottage. Not long afterwards I moved to Tooting. And started going to Fulham. My feet seemed to find their way there of their own accord. It was a way of communing with him. And it felt good to finally be supporting a club. Fulham fitted my soul far better than Liverpool ever could.
On the whole though I’m glad I didn’t support them when I was young. When you’re that age and full of hope and optimism I think you really are better off aiming higher. I think you probably need to be older and wearier and wiser to fully appreciate the charms of an underachieving club.
So, there’s plenty of ways of following football. The stereotypical "one club" from birth was never the whole story and certainly isn’t now. I’d leave him find his own way home.
54 new or updated threads since I last logged on (Saturday morning).
Certainly a change from all those threads over the years asking where all the threads had gone!
If this is the future can I suggest people put plenty of thought into getting the titles to their threads spot on – I’m obviously not the only one who’s stopped reading them all.
I don’t suppose we could have a facility to search on the names of posters?
The oystercard – one of the best thing to have happened to London in my lifetime – imho.
