How to beat the Bookies and buy a gold Rolls Royce

London- Irish News May 11th, 1990

For racing fans the quest for a formula to consistently beat the bookies is as elusive as the quest to make gold was for medieval alchemists.

But like some of those alchemists who devoted their whole lives to a futile pursuit of the unattainable, many punters struggle from one racing season to the next convinced that some day, somehow they are going to beat those who prey so professionally on the tempting belief that it’s possible to make lots of money quickly, easily and legally.

It’s estimated that about 5% of punters make a profit out of their gambling while the number of really professional punters is far less, somewhere in the region of a few dozen in the U.K.

Of those hardcore professionals, Wimbledon-based Bob Rothman has probably attracted the most attention for his phenomenal gambling exploits in the last four years.

Until 1986 Rothman (35) had never backed a horse. However in that year he was virtually bankrupt after his computer business folded. He needed to make money quickly, and having made respectable amounts of cash (£1,000 a month) playing backgammon he was convinced there was money to be made from backing horses.

‘Ultimate Accolade’

He was right – eventually. In his second year playing games with chance he made a £440,000 profit and received the ‘ultimate accolade”’from 25 bookies – they closed down his account.

He has letters from all the leading turf accountants to prove it, including a very humorous one from City Index: “You have today been awarded the ultimate accolade from City Index – namely that of having your account closed for being too clever for us… you have always been fair, courteous and correct. However I hate having to pay out week after week, after week after week!

How did he do it? ‘The first time I backed a horse was when a jockey gave me a hot tip. I put £2,000 on the horse and it lost. I was absolutely gutted. I had just sold a business and I was on the verge of bankruptcy. I needed to make money quickly and despite what happened with my first bet I decided to start backing horses full-time

Blackjack

As someone who had absolutely no knowledge of horses he approached racing without any of the normal precautions about gambling. ‘I built up a network of contacts among people involved in the sport, and I also got in touch with a few other professional punters.

Along with the advice I got from them I used mathematical money management techniques and gambling methods from other games like blackjack. I treated it as a business. I wasn’t emotionally involved in any way with the sport’.

In his first few months it wasn’t a very profitable business. At one stage he was £35,000 down as he tried to perfect his system, but slowly his loses began to decrease, he broke even and after about nine months began making a profit much to the surprise of his family, friends and seasoned punters who all thought Rothman was on a loser from the beginning.

The fact that it took him nine months to devise his system is a perfect illustration of what he sees as one of the main differences between ‘mug’ punters and professionals – discipline.

Rothman believes the true professional must be ‘as disciplined as a soldier with himself… he must be made of steel. Gambling is the hardest game in the world to make a living at.

The usual state of affairs is that you lose more often than you win, but when you win you get much more, so that overall all you show a profit. The professional gambler has to learn to live with disappointment without allowing it to cloud his decision making ability.

But the main reason for Rothman’s success is to do with his concept of ‘value’ betting – how to recognise value when you see it: ‘the guiding principal is deciding what the right size of bet should be on the odds available. A professional punter simply does not vet unless he has VALUE. Like an accountant he carefully weighs up the cost of his investment against its likely return. Without value you simply cannot make a long term profit from gambling’.

Money management is also vital. A professional gambler must always ensure he has adequate funds to operate i.e. avoid placing all or most of his betting bank on a loser, only to find that he has no money to back a winner the next day.

Value is backing horses at the right odds. Rothman claims that using his system you can choose the right odds to back a horse at, rather than letting the bookies choose bad value odds for you.

Even if a horse is a dead certainty to win a race, you shouldn’t back it if the odds are not right. He argues that you should always back the horse with the more favourable odds, and while you might lose money some days, the days you do win will more than compensate for a losing run.

‘Racing Success’

Rothman has published a book on his system called ‘The Racing Success System’ in which he completely explains the concept of value betting and money managements, and there are pages of formidable looking tables to help you decide what the right odds are.

The book costs £50, which sounds steep enough but when you take into account the amount of work Rothman has put into it and the fact that it’s a limited publication it seems reasonable. Perhaps the best idea is for a group of four or five would be pros to share the cost of the book between them. As well as saving money it’s the sort of book that’s easily understood when it’s discussed in a group.

So far Rothman has sold 1,500 copies of the tome which he published himself, proving that just about everything he touches these days turns the same colour as his gold Rolls Royce. But apart from that he’s not the stereotypical flamboyant gambler.

These days he’s on the blacklist of most bookies so he depends on reliable contacts to place his bets. He rarely visits a race course, and when he does it’s purely a gambling free day out. All of his business is done from an office in sleepy Wimbledon, where he gathers information over the phone. These days he employs an assistant and he calls his new business R. Rothman Offcourse Commissions.

He doesn’t guarantee success but his attitude is that if the system works for him it can work for anyone irregardless of the size of gambling bank, providing they make an effort to grasp it and follow his rules properly.