Bob Rothman Horse Racing Tipster & Professional Gambler
I’ve been a Horse Racing Tipster and Professional Gambler for over 30 years. That’s not how I started off, of course. I studied finance and accounting at university, joined Price Waterhouse and then went into computing. But it was obvious that for more excitement greater income, I needed something else. Something thrilling and rewarding. Since an early age I found myself attracted to horse racing and always wanted to be a professional gambler. I admired John Gough, a well-known ‘player’ from York, whose betting prowess allowed him to own one of the first V12 E-Type Jaguars. His success drove my early ambition.
History My learning curve was steep. It cost me £35,000 before I started making money. But I made it big time – more than £440,000 in my second year of full-time Professional Gambling.
1st year
investment
2nd year
profit
Scotland on Sunday If backing horses is a mug’s game then Bob Rothman is several furlongs short of the healthy gallop.
He exhibits some of the classic signs of romance of the turf – “I’d bet ten grand a week if I could” – he studies form and racing information from the moment he gets up in the morning, and he is often to be seen breaking into a wide grin. This means he’s probably off to see his bank manager.
Bob Rothman is a professional punter and the antithesis of the bookies fool. More then 25 bookmakers have refused to handle his business because he is too successful – he does not bet ten grand a week because they won’t take his money.
So he punts through an elaborate network of friends and acquaintances who place bets for him, and he runs a highly successful tipsters business complete with logarithm-like tables and electronic bleepers.
Bob Rothman
The average punter loses because he’s doing it for entertainment – 20 or 30 guys getting together in a betting shop. If you want to win you have to work at it, to spend 40, 60 or 80 hours a week at it
Apart from hard work Rothman holds to two basic management principles: betting “value for money” – dispensing with emotion and working out whether the odds you are being offered on a fancied horse actually make sense on the balance sheet after outgoings like tax – and betting in proportion, looking at the total of what you have and deciding what the next stake should be.
The Sunday Express We put Mr. Rothman to a random test on Wednesday and Thursday, two racing days he described as “uninspiring”.
He selected three horses for the Wednesday evening meeting at Ripon Airedale, Colourist and Mahrah.
For our benefit he had imaginary bets of £1,000 each way on Airedale and £1,000 to win on Mahrah and Colourist which could have been backed at 2/1 and even money respectively, before racing.
Airedale was a non-runner, making the bet null and void – but the other two horses romped home – so if the bets had been real, he would have won £3,000 on the day.
On Thursday, there were two selections, both at Brighton on the afternoon – Shikari’s Son and Jawab.
The proposed bet was £400 to win on each. Shikari’s son won at 7/4, showing a profit of £700. Jawab came second in its race – so on the day £400 had been lost and £700 won.
The overall “profit” on the two days would have been £3,300.
London Irish ‘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.
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Last updated 24 October 2026.