MY STORY

I ummed and ahed about writing this page for quite a long time before starting the "blank page run". Why ummed and ahed? Mainly on the issue of relevance but, then again, I always like to know who I am dealing with and listening to in my day-to-day affairs so it seems only fair that I should spell out my interest and history with "the punt".

My lifelong obsession with gambling started with my grandmother who, at age 11 (me, not her!), taught me to play euchre and poker, do the draw back with Craven A cork tipped cigarettes and bet on horse racing. She lived right next door to a TAB in a Brisbane bayside suburb, so the latter was a daily occurrence.

She also introduced me to the idea of the possibility of regularly winning through the systematic analysis of past performances with a view to providing indicative information about a yet to be decided random event. Well - not really!! She had a type of system - the type that will drive you stark raving mad.

Where she got it from I have no idea but here goes - don't say you weren't warned... Her idea was to back horses only if the third letter in their name was an "r" especially if they were the ONLY horse in a race that qualified for this in depth approach to quality punting - I know - absolutely off the planet BUT... check out the results from yesterday's racing - any day's racing - and weep. It will drive you fair dinkum mad when you start looking for this.

Anyway, that's what she did so, so did I! In the early 1960's my mother used to give me two pounds a week on holidays for pocket money (which were always spent at Nanna's joint) so when two third letter horses won a daily double in Sydney and paid over 230 pounds I had a little explaining to do...... found it in the gutter didn't go over too well ....... and so did Nanna have to explain to my strictly Presbyterian mother who thought gambling was the end of the world as we know it - especially as her uncle had just been busted by the Queensland constabulary for SP bookmaking and was now the black sheep of the family.

And so my fascination for "beating the horses" was started by this quirky third letter R system. Of course, that didn't last as my understanding of punting expanded in my late teen years and I became consumed with the collection of data.

In those days (if you weren't around then) the only real data was in the form guides published by the newspapers. There was none of the reams and reams of data available online as there is today (which is probably why the margins between winning and losing are much tighter) and the main source of form was The Telegraph - an afternoon paper that used to be published in Brisbane - and the Courier Mail.

There was also a paper called the Melbourne Truth which focused on some great but unbelievable "vox pop" stories - e.g. "My Uncle Was Kidnapped By Aliens" - and also featured racing quite heavily and covered it quite well. They actually carried racehorse form for the past five starts which was unavailable in the Courier Mail and Telegraph who only did the last three starts. So it became apparent that to be truly successful you had to have a system of data retention that was hinted at in Rem Plante's book which was quite successful and the Bible of its time.

So this is where it all started - going to the newsagents at East Brisbane and buying blocks of 100 "feint ruled" record cards that measured about 6 inches by 5 inches in the "old language" and fastidiously recording (by hand!) every race horse run in Queensland that I could uncover and any comments regarding the run I could find or observed myself as I used to go to the races every day I could manage at that time.

Of course the idea was that I would cover every horse in Australia (why not?) but it soon became obvious that the task of gathering that much information was way beyond one person - apart from which my Queensland collection was starting to become a storage issue on its own.

What I did find was that the more time I spent fastidiously keeping records and data and opinions, the more winners I backed and the less I started to lose. But it was interfering with my daytime job - at the time I was a junior public servant in the Queensland Government - so something had to give. I longed for the ability to be able to go to the midweek meetings at Esk, Gatton, Beaudesert and Kilcoy and be able to gather more personally observed data for my own records and so the obsession had manifested itself!

In 1969 it was obvious that I had to do this full time so I resigned from my full time job (BIG MISTAKE) and decided to spend my days gathering, punting, gathering, punting - ahh, the optimism of youth! I wisely did not inform my mother as to my decision. So 1969 became a watershed year but with a result I would not have wished for but inevitably plunged towards. It culminated in a motoring trip to the 1969 Melbourne Cup - a big trip in those days from Brisbane but no challenge for the 1963 EJ Holden Premier sedan (gold of course in colour) that I had...... well, the finance company really had and eventually did!

By the time we got to Melbourne after punting our way down the eastern seaboard at every race, trot and dog meeting known to mankind (even the Dapto dogs) , the bank was decidedly shaky. By the time Rain Lover saluted for the second time in the Melbourne Cup all that stood between me and bankruptcy was a doubles ticket that I took in Sydney on the way down to Melbourne with Rain Lover and Daryl's Joy in the Derby but I had to go back to Sydney to collect it!!

Just a disaster from start to finish, but an example of how one's ambitions can run way away from reality. What it taught me was that you should never stray far from your betting comfort zone and that if you have a "system" that you are confident about, never vary - stay consistent - don't wander and, at worse, you will minimise your losses for the day.

However, I digress. So back to Brisbane, no money, no job, but a heap of data updating that needed to be done that had accumulated while I was off on the Melbourne jaunt. Gee, this was a great life wasn't it? Luckily jobs were pretty easy to get in those days so I got a job selling cars for a Brisbane dealership - bit of a problem as I hadn't really formally gone through the official process of getting a car driver's licence - an even bigger problem when on day one of my employment I managed to put a very expensive car into a creek on Bowen Bridge Road!

Oh dear - the problems were getting bigger. The following Saturday at Doomben I backed two substantial winners - one at 33/1 and followed up in the next race with a 14/1 winner having won enough in those two transactions to: a) pay for the Melbourne losses, b) restore my punting bank to its previous level of $3500 (a not inconsequential amount in those days) and c) fix up the car dealer for the damage to their precious ZA Fairlane sedan. HOME free!

But it was obvious to me that, even though I had been lucky, I did not have the mental control to succeed at this caper full time so I had better get a meaningful job to subsidise my punting interests. The next 25 years I very happily spent in the media in places all over Australia enjoying it and the freedom to punt a bit as well as developing my ideas on different methodologies that I believed would work reasonably successfully in the racing world - a job made so much easier these days by the plethora of information that is now available at the touch of an "enter" key.

One of the greatest punting "gems" that ever passed to my eager grasp was, at first, not recognised by me for the gem that it was - mainly because I was "in drink". After the last race at Mowbray in Launceston, I was in the Member's Bar with a bookmaker with whom I bet "on the nod" - an extremely dangerous practise when mixed with alcohol. I had just "got out" on the day with a fortuitous 10/1 winner on the last in Sydney and we were having a quite convivial chat when he said "your trouble is that you're a good punter but a hopeless gambler".

Now that is one of those statements that you learn to take on board (even in drink) and think about later - "a good punter but a hopeless gambler" - and it took me a little cogitation the next day to realise he was right and that had been a problem for most of my punting life.

These days my punting is very structured and long term oriented - I can happily walk away from a day's activities slightly behind, confident in the knowledge that in "the long run" I will finish in front at the end of the year as has been the case for quite a few years now. The heart of the data-gatherer-user still beats ever as strong and I love refining and testing methodologies that can be exasperating and exciting and passing them on to other folk at different stages of their punting journeys in the hope that they enjoy them and possibly profit from them too.

I punt most days (except when family "things" are way more important - and they always are when you think about it!) and enjoy an unobtrusive and quiet life in front of this computer (which now has grown to three screens). I don't seek to win a million dollars like I used to and at times this becomes so tedious that I think I could walk away from it all but then how would I spend my time?

This computer is now the "feint ruled" record cards full of data I could not have ever imagined back in 1964 and I find the thrill of "the chase" of trying to perfect the methodologies just as exhilarating now as when I began to notice the effectiveness of record keeping way back then. In fact, the thrill of the chase is probably way more important to me than the prize.

The greatest thing I think I have learned from this is that with ANY methodology, so much of the end result depends on the starting point of using the methodology. Where do you "jump on" the endless conveyor belt of races that are there for the punting seven days a week? And how do you control the randomness of that decision because it undoubtedly determines the end result?

There is no correct answer to that question. It's called luck - and being consistent.

And by the way - Warm Whispers won at Moonee Valley last night (5.12.08) - paid $5.60 - and, yes, it was the only third letter R in the field!! Wonder do they punt in heaven?