Online gambling Senate Inquiry: Why corporate bookmakers really stop successful punters | Paul Kent

Bookmakers were finally asked the question thousands of punters around Australia want answered at a Senate Inquiry, but Sportsbet boss Barni Evans couldn’t give a straight answer, writes Paul Kent.

Ken Callander has remained a quiet hero since we first got acquainted one day in the betting ring at Gosford, some time in the early 1980s.

He was studying the board with a racebook in hand in a jacket and tie and, like all dedicated punters, nothing was more important than the fluctuations on the board.

I might have been 11, maybe 12, wore shorts and I called him Mr Callander.

“Who do you think wins this race?” I asked.

I’d love to tell you it’s name was Slippery Sarsaparilla or something similar — even “Something Similar”, for that matter — but the name is long forgotten, unlike the conversation. He showed me his racebook and ran a finger across a horse he had marked and, with that, I was off.

I had $5 in my pocket and plonked the lot on the horse.

Of course, it won.

Ken Callander gave a young Paul Kent a winner in the early 1980s. Picture: AAP.

Thinking there was nothing better than free money I found him in the ring several races later and asked what he liked this time.

“I like the favourite but he’s too short,” he said.

The horse wasn’t pony-sized but that isn’t what he meant. The price was too short to back but, given he thought it should still win, I figured a winner was a winner so what did I care what price it was?

Sadly, the horse ran like it was wearing thongs, which caused considerable pain at the time. In hindsight it might have been one of the great life lessons in life.

The key to successful punting, as David Walsh says, and which Kenny knew, is as simple as getting the right odds.

Walsh, for those who don’t know, grew up in Tasmania but overcame that to become one of the world’s biggest punters.

Walsh worked for the tax department as a young man, earning $100 a week while he was betting $100 a hand each night at the casino. He soon figured which was more profitable.

Walsh and his partners now turn over roughly $2 billion a year betting on sport around the world and his premise has remained the same the whole way through.

Bet only where there is value.

David Walsh has built a successful career out of betting, becoming one of the world’s biggest punters.

He explains it by picking up a dice. In a fair roll the odds of a three being rolled is 5/1 (1, 2, 4, 5 or 6 against a 3).

As far as finding value, if he was to get 8/1 odds on the three being rolled then that was a good bet. For every one in six times a three is rolled, he gets eight times his stake.

If the odds given were 4/1 then that is a bad bet.

Sadly, this is where the house in any casino, and where the bookmakers, like to sit, with the percentages in their favour.

Not that the corporate bookmakers will admit to this.

That became clear in Canberra this week before a Senate Inquiry into online gambling, where Sportsbet chief executive Barni Evans had to face Senator Peta Murphy as she asked the one question thousands of punters around Australia want answered.

“Does Sportsbet stop people from being able to bet or being able to access their accounts if what they’re doing is consistently using promotions and inducements through arbitrage to always win?” she asked Evans.

Sadly, Evans’ answer didn’t include what every punter in Australia knows; that winning punters are quickly restricted by corporate bookmakers.

“We will seek to occasionally limit some forms of transaction, be that bets or deposits, in a number of circumstances,” Evans began.

“If people are betting on behalf of other individuals then we’ll intervene there. If their behaviour is seen to be using privileged information and distorting the market and therefore …”

“So if they’re winning consistently?”

“If they are seen to be acting on privileged information that is distorting the market then yes we will.”

And that is the problem.

What is privileged information?

Sportsbet CEO Barni Evans fronted a Senate Inquiry into online gambling this week. Picture: Aaron Francis.

Evans tried to suggest it was something like a stablehand betting with information from within the stable, likening it to insider trading without ever saying it, but that doesn’t seem to fly.

Sportsbet stops successful punters, even the lucky ones.

Like the punter who had $200 a win and $100 a place on a horse he owns, which paid $41 when it won at Kembla 11 days ago.

Was that privileged information? Not by any standard. He backed it because he owned it, the horse got a run and yet his corporate bookmaker immediately started restricting his bets.

By pricing it at $41 the bookies were showing they thought it was a weak winning chance.

Fact is, the successful punters most often prey on bookmaker errors.

But bookies will often put up $3.50, for example, when a horse should really be priced at about $2.40. The smart punters will take that bet.

It’s why a horse will open at $3.20 somewhere today and get backed into $1.80, the market adjusting to where the money is going.

That’s how the successful punters consistently win, by betting value, like getting 8/1 on a roll of the dice.

It’s not privileged information, just outsmarting the bookies. To counter that now they restrict those who consistently win.

The corporates won’t admit it but they have data that reveals who wins more often than not, what tracks they most often win on, what days they most often win, and will often refuse to accept a bet for the minimum amount they are legislated to lose because the data reveals them as a risk.

It does not matter how small the bet, just that winning punters are turned off.

This, despite government legislation demanding they must stand to lose a minimum amount with each bet. A clause in their terms and conditions apparently overrules government legislation.

The corporates are harvesting small punters like a net trawling through shrimp.

Evans revealed Sportsbet has 2.2 million customers. Most would be small punters, you assume, but once all those small bets are harvested they would far outweigh the bigger punters the bookies used to need to afford their waterfront homes.

It is every bit as problematic as inducing problem gamblers to reinvest and needs just as much attention as the current focus on inducements.

He said winning punters affect the market, stopping other punters from getting a fair price, but like that 11-year-old kid all those years back a mug punter will back a horse they like no matter how much below its true value its odds are.

Senator Murphy finally got frustrated with Evans and asked him why it was “difficult to say yes or no” when she asked if winning gamblers were restricted.

He laboured on, before she again interrupted, and finally put us all out of our misery by saying she would take his evidence as “yes, you stop people who are consistently winning from betting”.

“That’s your prerogative,” Evans replied.

Which apparently means yes.

Originally published as Online gambling Senate Inquiry: Why corporate bookmakers really stop successful punters | Paul Kent