Abuse, Police And Champagne

To this extract from my post yesterday:

"And where else is betting these kinds of sums possible other than on the "big betting exchange"? If there's an alternative I'm not aware of it, but certainly the sportsbooks would soon close you down if you were seen to be consistently winning in-play, though I doubt you'd be able to bet much at all in the first place."

James shows us his dark side, writing:

When I still had a LinkedIn account I had contacts from Asia wanting me to code for their syndicates on what can I only describe as "dark exchanges" and "dark books" so there are certainly alternatives. It's how to get on them that is the problem. A dark anything is primarily set up for one entity to shake down another so you won't be running it for the benefit of others. There are many Asian syndicates with low-latency operations in whichever sport is amenable to such trades. Western betting/trading is quite primitive compared to its Asian counterparts.

It's a world I know little about and a likely topic for "Flash Boys" author Michael Lewis's next book. James had a good day today, posting that his book, Programming for Betfair, has now been linked to by Betfair in the Learning section of their website. If you're a botty boy, check it out. 

Although I wish my old friend Ian Erskine the very worst this Saturday, or at least the team he supports, he did entertain me with his latest rant. In reference to a certain Chris who abused and threatened him on Twitter (account now closed I see) after claiming to have lost £16k on a game, Ian had this to say:

Now I have not responded, I don’t know who Chris is and I have called the police (well my son did) and they kindly came round and discussed this with me this morning. That may sound dramatic but there is a clear threat and I whilst I expect the Police will not do anything they have told me they will provide the name and address of the person once they obtain it and I can then inform their family and employers etc of the behaviour.

When I look at it in its full essence the game referred to is an Original FTS selection that I posted Friday evening along with other games. These were the selections that were part of the very first LTD trading manual in 2007 that I agreed to provide for life and have stuck to.

Trading them is very profitable and indeed this very game whilst ending in a draw provided two trading opportunities to exit with a small loss or about level. The advised price was 4.0 so this outburst would intimate a lay stake of £5333.33 was placed on this game and left. I am guessing at those stakes and risk factors I won’t be informing Chris’s employers because he must be a multi millionaire with no need to work. Chris must of had some nice wins along the way but I never got any chocolates or champagne sent to me.

A multi-millionaire! As Ian says, if Chris was indeed staking anything like he claims, his betting bank must be huge, or he missed the chapter on staking sensibly. If he's staking close to the generally accepted 2% exposure on any single bet, that would suggest a bank of around £800,000.

The two preceding 'ifs' can probably be ignored though. It's far more likely he lost closer to £1.60 than £16,000, but any penny he lost is his responsibility anyway, not Ian's.

A little later on, Ian writes:

The match selection has nothing to do with failure – people do. After the July seminars a guy asked me to sort his bank of 10k out which I did. He then lost £1856 which is less than 20% of his bank. He sent me a load of abuse and stated he was no longer continuing.

I replied and stated that in that case he did not have a 10k bank clearly he had a less than 2k bank and had he informed me of that I would have started him on much smaller stakes relative to a 2k bank. I then got another load of abuse. That is how so many of you operate. You do not commit, you fanny around trying to do everything to £2, £5 stakes and wonder why your not rich. You give up as soon as a bad run comes, you stake money you don’t want to or can’t afford to lose, so have a meltdown as every bet leaves you teetering on the cliff. If you just stopped took a breath and set yourself up properly then you would see it really is not that difficult and once set you control your emotions and operate the same daily.

The importance of discipline and a positive mindset. I've written before that:

Ian Erskine is a hugely successful punter, and is a shining example of what can be achieved with a positive mindset and disciplined approach. To the best of my knowledge, he is not a qualified statistician, but he knows his way around a spreadsheet, understands value, and likes to go on the occasional rant.

Well the ranting continues unabated, but so does Ian's positivity. From 2015:

I agree with Ian who has said that the key ingredient to being successful in betting is not so much in IQ but more in the approach and attitude one takes. He’s also observed that you can teach a group of people the same strategy, and then observe that some profit from it, while others don’t. Success at betting is about more than just facts and data, and of course it has to be. Any edge from data is (usually) quickly self-correcting, so there has to be an ‘intuitive’ factor required which perhaps is more readily available to some personality types than others. Successful betting is more art than science.

Having sung Ian's praises in this post, I do still hope Ian has a terrible Saturday this weekend, and definitely one with no champagne (or cigars).