Interview copied from http://www.smartersig.com/potts.php

This months interview is with book author, TV pundit, WBX columist and most importantly long time successful pro punter Alan Potts.

How did you first get interested in horse racing and betting?

Betting was always something I enjoyed from an early age - pontoon with my uncles, sixpence each way on the National, checking my Dad’s football pools, all from the age of six or seven onwards. The legalisation of betting shops came when I was 14, so the timing was perfect for a teenager that liked to bet. I was a maths whizz at school and that side of betting and racing was part of the appeal. I saw my first horserace live when I was playing cricket one Monday evening on a ground in the centre of the loop at Alexandra Palace near my home in North London - the horses effectively raced round the boundary and it looked a lot more exciting than cricket. I went back a week later and that was my first race meeting - I was aged 14. Within two years I was working in the local betting shop on Saturdays and during the school holidays.

How successful or unsuccessful were you when you first started to bet regularly, did you serve the typical losing apprenticeship?

I went through all the usual phases of form book, systems, tipsters, and pins. Losing was certainly my normal experience through the 60’s and 70’s. Like all punters I remember the winners, but only once did I win enough to actually justify all the effort. The autumn of 1976 was very wet after a drought and I had a golden two months backing soft ground performers who had no form because the ground had been rock hard all summer. The winnings helped to pay for new furniture and a car (a Triumph TR6, one of my lifelong ambitions). I’d say it took me twenty years to learn how to consistently break even and another five to become a regular winner.

Twenty years sounds familiar to me. Looking back do you think there could have been a shorter route to finding a consistently profitable approach.

Given the lack of educational material available in that era and the paucity of information, I can’t think of anything that would have made much difference. The internet has changed betting, but it’s far more important as a source of information when combined with the ability to use computers to analyse that information. The amount of time that would have been needed to collect information, let alone do the research, simply wasn’t practical alongside a full time job and a reasonable social life. It’s indicative of the lack of sophistication of the 70’s that I could actually win money (occasionally) just by identifying a small group of horses that relished soft ground. To give an example, I saw a filly called Lucent hack up in a soft ground maiden at Doncaster on TV as a 2-y-old. The following summer, she turned up in the entries for a handicap at a Windsor evening meeting I was planning to attend. It rained all day before the racing and I backed her with total confidence - but I’d guess 90%+ of punters had no idea that she was better on soft ground, because the only way to know was to have remembered that race from the previous year.

Could you cite any pivotal moments or influences in your early regular betting life that shaped your style and approach to successful betting?

The first bet that persuaded me there was a pattern that I could interpret was at my beloved Aly Pally. It was spring 1969, the horse was called Little Earwig - he’d finished second over the course and distance and was a few pounds better off with the winner. I was sure he could reverse the form and had £30 at 100/30 with a course bookie (to put that sum in perspective, I bought a new house later that year and my monthly mortgage payment was £39). He won OK, although I can’t remember any other winners from 1969 and I doubt if the £100 lasted very long!

How would your summarise your style of betting. I get the impression that you are not systems man but someone who is confident and relies on his own judgment about what is a good bet.

Inevitably it’s changed a lot over the years, but the basics since I stopped being a loser have been to watch a lot, listen a little, ignore ‘inside information’, be cynical about hype and rely on my own judgement. My ideal was always to go for the big return, so that when I found a decent priced winner, the profit was substantial and worthwhile.

What would be a typical betting day for you (eg- 10.00pm compile list of contenders, 8.00am compile odds line, 10.00am check betfair prices etc etc etc

Not more than two hours early morning with the form book, often a lot less - by watching all the racing, I find I can absorb a lot of information that I don’t have to look up again. My current approach, which is almost the total opposite of what I’ve done most of my life, is to concentrate on short priced horses, either backing or laying them on Betfair. So the first task is to identify the races I’m interested in and all the 3/1 the field handicaps get the chop immediately. Then focus on the favourite and establish the positives and negatives for that horse - using form, time, draw, going, stable form, jumping ability etc to set a target price. Then check prices on BF and monitor the markets up to the start of racing. I watch most racing, although I might draw the line at some of the low grade evening meetings and I’m constantly looking for horses of interest for next time (positive or negative) and for patterns in the racing that might indicate any form of bias on the track. A typical example of that would be horses running well from a bad draw or vice versa. I have a method of splitting big field results by draw to see if any horse stands out - e.g. in a 16 runner race, look at the horses drawn 1 - 8 as if that was a separate race. If one horse from that group beat the other seven by a wide margin, he’s almost certainly run better than the bare result of the overall race suggests. I also reserve up to an hour per day for a review of races and bets and I do a weekly round up on Sunday or Monday. As a general rule, I don’t bet on Monday or Tuesday and keep those days clear as my ‘weekend’.

Do you have any particular methods or approaches to handling a bad run of results. Could you give an example of a typical poor run eg time span, bets, pts lost.

Not difficult to find an example of a losing run as I’m on one at present! I made around £50k in 2004 and 2005, £20k in 2006 and was over £30k up for 2007 at the end of last October. Since then I’ve had two winning months that produced less than £1k profit between them and the other three months have seen a loss of £20k. At the time of writing, April 2008 is level. So I’m down over £19k for the last six months. I handle that by sticking to my approach, recognising that there’s nothing very unusual about such a run. My experience over the last 20 years is that profit comes in bursts and that much of the time I’m either treading water or losing slowly. Losing an average of £3k per month over a six month period is no surprise, although it’s the longest such period I’ve experienced for several years. I use what I guess a shrink would call positive reinforcement - I go back to times when I won big, watch the videos of those races, read my account books and diaries, all with the intention of reminding myself what is possible. I’ll also take a short break from betting to get negative thoughts out of my system - I did that most recently the week after Aintree earlier this month.

Does it not worry you that the week after Aintree could have been a superb week for you or do you feel during these periods that your judgement needs a rest and therefore the break is unavoidable?.

I’m certain that regular breaks from betting are essential (although perhaps my age is an influence - turned 60 last August). When I started out full time in 1991, there was no Sunday racing, far fewer evening meetings and generally less racing than there is today. Also, since like almost all professionals then, I bet on course, by only going racing three or four days per week, the workload was kept manageable. With the volume of racing we have now, I’m quite sure that keeping mentally fresh is a big help - sit and do this seven days per week, 52 weeks of the year and you’d go stir crazy. Read the BF forum any day for evidence! It’s possibly a harsh judgement, but I feel that most losing punters go on losing because they never stop to actually think about what they are doing (and of course the non stop nature of the ‘product’ these days is designed to achieve exactly that).

My impression of your betting is perhaps one of quality rather than quantity. I believe in the past you have averaged around 300 – 400 bets a year. Is this correct or has it changed.

Fifteen years ago, soon after I turned full time and was doing almost all my betting on course, I had around 300 bets in a year and concentrated on the better racing. Ten years ago, that was still the same, with the addition of spread betting as an off course activity that provided useful profits for a short period (a couple of years) until the firms effectively removed my edge. Five years ago, the high stake single win bet at ‘value’ prices was still my staple, but the internet was changing the world, the on course market was suffering and I could see that I needed to alter my approach. Now, I’ve given up the high stakes single win, mostly because I could no longer find the value, such has been the impact of the exchanges and the limitless supply of information available to punters. I work almost exclusively with short priced horses on BF, because that’s where the liquidity is greatest and that’s where an edge can still be found. If this losing run continues for a few more months, I’ll have to think again! Betting on course is no longer an option, as away from the big meetings, there isn’t the money there any more, the bookies I knew and worked with have mostly retired or sold up and the costs of travel and admission (time as well as money) are now a significant factor. Why spend three hours in my car on the motorway to stand in the cold and wet taking worse prices than I could get in my office at home in the warm and dry? So I have changed from a high stakes low turnover punter to a low stakes, high turnover player on the exchanges. To clarify that, by high stakes I mean backing horses to win five to ten thousand, by low stakes I mean laying them to lose £400 to £500. On average I bet around thirty races per week, so I’m turning over more money and accepting a lower percentage return.

I can see why you are laying at the shorter end but does this mean you are also backing at the shorter end of the market, using the exchanges to grind out a smaller return but on a higher turnover.

Yes - at a rough estimate, I’m turning over about £750,000 per annum and making around 4% after commission averaged over the last five years. The split of laying to backing would be around 70/30 and the back bets do still include horses outside the short price range, but to much smaller stakes than I would have used on course. The basic method is to ensure the maximum loss on a race cannot exceed a set limit (currently £500) - the betting on a race might include more than one lay, or a mix of back and lay on different horses.

I know you bet on horse racing, do you bet on other events. How about laying and trading, do they play any significant part in your activities?

I have dabbled with various sports, but never at the same level as my betting on racing. Just occasionally a price will catch my eye - at the start of this football season, I took the 6/4 for Reading to finsh in the bottom six and that looks like producing a profit that will help the account for May. But that’s the only football bet I’ve had in the last 12 months - I don’t bet on individual matches.

What do you see as the key characteristics needed in a successful professional gambler?

Self confidence, belief, arrogance - call it what you will, but if you harbour doubts about your ability to succeed, you will fail. The ability to take the long term view - the idea (commonly debated on the BF forum) that you can set a target to win so much per day is frankly laughable. It’s one thing to have a target of £x thousand per year and then calculate what that means in daily terms, but to say, I’ll win £x today and then stop is plain daft. The mental strength to deal with the negative view that most of society will take of your chosen profession. There are no estate agents advertising million pound houses in the Surrey professional punter belt. Flexibility - what worked then doesn’t work now, what works now probably won’t work by 2012.

What are your tools of the trade so to speak. What range of facilities and by that I mean visuals, ratings, books and anything else that contributes to your daily profession.

Racing Post delivered by the local wholesale depot at 6 a.m. Timeform Perspective delivered by post. Laptop with broadband, with the Post website, Betfair and the BHA website (only available as I’m an owner, but useful as best source of going reports, non runners, entries and declarations) as the main sites used. Sky via satellite dish for ATR and RUK. Total cost of these things around £2200 per annum. All fairly simple and basic - I don’t bet in running, so I’ve not found any need to use an interface with Betfair. I stick to paper for the Post and Perspective as I spend enough time gazing at a computer screen already. The key piece of equipment is the one inside my skull!

There will always be a nucleus of people contemplating becoming a full time pro’ in the betting world. What are the positives and negatives of such a working life style?

The positives are much as they always were - freedom from routine, the feeling of doing something that is beyond most people, the pleasure of turning a hobby into a living. The negatives, especially in the modern era - solitude, the hours spent in front on a computer screen and a TV, the difficulty of going back if things don’t work out.

Finally, if I presented in front of you a willing wannabe professional punter (horse racing), who is the type of punter who doesn’t lose a lot over the year but cannot quite break into the regular profit zone. What advice would you offer such a person? Are there any simple tips that might improve the bottom line by the required amount?

Make a plan - what races will you bet on, how many bets, what stakes etc. You can’t start any business without a plan and this one is no different. Specialise - it’s old advice, but it’s still valid. Analyse - especially analyse your losers post race. Is there a pattern that you can break out of and either stop making so many losing bets, or even turn some of them into winners. It goes without saying that this sort of analysis depends on you having proper records of your bets. When I became a full time punter, I found after five years that I was backing the same number of winners per annum, but fewer losers - and that was the key difference in my accounts.