Paul Kent: Corporate bookmakers need to be pulled into line
It has never been so tough to win on the punt but corporate bookmakers, with algorithms to fend off the smart players, continue to cry poor. It needs to change, writes PAUL KENT.
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The fearless bookmaker survives only in the imagination.
Where once they strode across betting rings, chins out like Mussolini, today’s bookmaker is a timid soul who hides behind the fine print in the terms and conditions tucked away at the bottom of his website.
He is a guy terrified of the next big bet that might come along because his sad truth is he and his kind are more accountants nowadays than bookmakers.
Instead of framing a market on knowledge and form, they instead copy their odds from rivals and shave them half a point to further reduce their risk and then they sit back and watch the mug punters all fall in, drunk on gambling.
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The bad punter looks through the field with a poker-machine mentality.
The corporate bookmakers’ advantage goes beyond that, though.
Algorithms written into their computer programs are allowing them to fend off the smart punters while they welcome the thousands of mug punters who line up every day.
Winning punters are not welcome.
It has never been so tough to win on the punt but the corporate bookmakers, as they pockets millions of dollars and pay Hollywood celebrities to push their products, continue to cry poor.
And governments turn a blind eye because of the hundreds of millions they pay in turnover tax.
It is better than tobacco ever was.
This week, a flamboyant punter in Sydney collected a solid six-figure sum when the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl and immediately, knowing that when the luck is in you run with it, he wanted to parlay it into another bet.
He has been around racetracks his entire life.
As the Rams were still celebrating, the punter called his corporate bookmaker to have $50,000 of his winnings on Melbourne to win the NRL premiership at $5.50, for a $275,000 collect.
The trader said he would need to ask his supervisor first what they could bet him, before taking the bet, and he would call back.
No return call came, so an hour later the punter checked the website and saw Storm had tightened to $5 and, rather than wait, he called again.
By luck, he got the same trader who mumbled something about a reply email his supervisor had sent before saying he could bet him $10,000 at $5.
The punter asked where the $5.50 price was and was told it was gone.
This is how these guys operate.
When a smart punters calls in for a bet, they knock him back and reel in the price, then offer him a reduced bet at reduced odds.
Because of their algorithms, every other corporate bookie, without a human even being aware, winds its price in too so suddenly the price is gone everywhere.
In any other business you could sue for stealing intellectual property, but on the punt there is no sympathy for the winning punter.
Jealousy and desperation blind the mug gambler, who finds a kind of solace by thinking he and the smart punter share a similar plight.
“It’s not bookmaking, it’s mug finding,” the punter says. Corporate bookmakers are doing all they can to discourage smart punters while they trawl for the mug who couldn’t tell the difference between a pacer and a thoroughbred.
“It’s like trawling for tuna,” he says.
When Cyril Stein was setting up Ladbrokes many years ago, he told his bookies in the shops to forget about form and “play the face”.
It is a philosophy all the corporate bookmakers now follow, turning off winning punters with proven track records while chasing the mugs to top up their empty accounts with offers of matching deposits, fixed-odds boosts and bonus bets, among other promotions.
But it is not the big punter who scares the corporate bookmaker.
As Stein first recognised, it is the face of the smart punter. Even the $10 punter can scare the corporate bookies.
So his name is John and he makes his living in cowhide boots. Every night during the week John, who has a mind for detail, is Sydney’s best trivia night host.
Not so long ago John, whose full name is John Barrand, was looking for a punting edge so he signed up to a betting service that provided tips on early markets.
By no means is he a big punter. His bets are $20, maybe $50, maybe $100 if he thinks it is value.
But John’s account has been marked. He is what the corporate bookmakers call a red dot.
He began his betting life as a green dot when he deposited $1000 into an account with Bet365 and was welcome to back whatever he liked for whatever he wanted.
Some time after, he became an orange dot, which meant the traders were monitoring his bets, and some time later he became a red dot.
“I bet this thing at 5/1 and I took the free bet and tagged it on as well, and then it blew out to 10s,” he says.
One of Bet365’s better promotions is its fixed-price guarantee. Basically, even though John missed the starting price, taking 5/1 when it later became greatly unpopular and blew out to 10s, Bet365 guarantees the greater price and paid him at 10/1.
“Then I got this email saying I now had all these restrictions on the offers,” he says.
“Not long after that, I tried to have a $50 bet at 7/2 and they knocked me back.”
John called to ask why his bet was being rejected.
He was told he was an “educated punter”.
Over a period, his balance had risen from his $1000 deposit to more than $5000 and, annoyed at Bet365 rejecting his perfectly legal bets, he closed his account and went elsewhere.
It was good business for Bet365, which turns over hundreds of millions a year but has no interest in a punter like John adding small wins to his account.
The secret is legislation continues to allow corporate bookmakers to use algorithms to shut down successful punters while they continue to target the mug punter with feel-good advertising.
Their algorithms tell them what tracks they win at and lose and the days where they win and lose and the corporates adjust their betting allowances in accordance with the facts, largely unknown by the punter.
Yet the punters are not allowed to use similar algorithms to spread their bets to catch the price before it is wound in.
Nor are they allowed to use the old-fashioned “bowlers” to help spread their bet before the price is gone.
And minimum amounts corporate bookmakers must stand to lose are so small it becomes hardly worthwhile for those who know the effort they must put in to win.
Make three phone calls or spend five minutes at the track and you will find half a dozen punters who have been banned from betting on the greyhounds, or the pacers, because they know more than the bookmakers, who run their markets with that poker-machine mentality, and so regularly win.
The autumn carnival is around the corner and at some point the government is going to have to stick its pointy nose in and take control of an industry.
The corporates must be stopped from focusing on the mug punter while shutting down those who affect their profit margins.
Anyway, that is today’s sermon. As always, gamble responsibly.
SHORT SHOT
Brian Fletcher’s outrage at Penrith being raided by rival clubs was admirable but, Unfortunately, it remains a simple fact that it is going to happen.
What did he expect?
The Panthers have done a tremendous job of developing the talent in their area and rode that all the way to a premiership last year, undeniably helped by a posse of players who will get significant upgrades in their next contracts.
Either at Penrith or somewhere else.
What failed to get said by Fletcher is the tremendous advantage Penrith has in recruitment. They boast the biggest junior league in the world.
It’s simply how it is.
What rugby league could never anticipate was the changing demographics as not only the competition, but the city, evolved.
When the NRL first began as the NSW Rugby League way back in 1908, the Penrith club was not even part of the competition.
Bondi was working class, Balmain was a slum, and the comp went as far west as Ashfield, where the Western Suburbs Magpies played.
That said, the NRL has got to look at ways to reward those clubs who develop players because, as the ARL Commission identified by naming Redcliffe as its expansion club for 2023, the game must continue to grow its grassroots and for that it needs a constant stream of players.
The Dolphins, who better attach a Redcliffe to their name soon before they become known as Storm Lite, have started to do a superb job pillaging the best young players at rival clubs. As for Melbourne’s claims that the Dolphins are inflating the market, well, hello!
The total player payments now available will rise by $10 million next year. Given minimum wage players will still command minimum wage, that means a significant upgrade for those in demand.
The clubs who come to terms quickest with that will benefit most.
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