SECRET BETTING CLUB COLUMN

THE PRACTICAL PUNTER

ROWAN DAY
THE PRACTICAL PUNTER - ROWAN DAY
ONE MEMBER'S REAL LIFE BETTING EXPERIENCES

Welcome to the very first betting column from our newest contributor - Rowan Day, who each
month will be sharing his own practical experiences in following a range of SBC rated tipster
services.
Rowan has been an SBC member for several years and has run a series of blogs during this time,
including the popular 'Portfolio Investor' blog available via the Gallops Live website
His goal is to continually earn enough from his betting to put his kids through school and enjoy
the odd holiday, all the while juggling a full-time job and busy life!
Each month Rowan will be detailing his own real life experience of following tipsters and tackling
all of your questions as he goes, so if there is anything you wish to ask him, be sure to get in
touch.

INTRODUCTION & BETTING BACKGROUND

Its Dick Franciss fault. His fault, that of a horse called Rustle, and bad company. Had I not read
Franciss Dead Cert, I wouldnt have gotten interested in horse racing and betting at all. If I
hadnt read that book, Id have never bought a copy of the Racing Post and have my attention
caught by an advert placed by a tipster promising a winner in the Stayers Hurdle at Cheltenham.
If I hadnt shown that advert to the bad company, my best mate Matt - years later the Best Man
at my wedding - Id have never had the guts to go into the bookmakers whilst still underage, to
place my fiver on Rustle, the horse confidently tipped up by the mysterious fella who had
answered the phone on the number given in the Racing Post advert. And if Rustle hadnt gone
and won the Stayers Hurdle at 4/1, I very much doubt Id be writing this piece for the SBC now.
Funny how things work out.
My name is Rowan, and I gamble to provide myself with a more than useful second income. Ive
two kids whose primary education but certainly not their secondary if Ive anything to do with
it is costing my wife and I a small fortune. And it is for this reason that four years ago, I decided
to take my betting seriously, build up a portfolio of tipsters, and attempt to ease the self-created
(bloody kids!) financial strain by making money backing horses and football teams.
Before Id discovered the SBC, Id have never even dreamt of trying to make proper money via
gambling. I think its fair to say that Rustle wasnt typical of my experiences with tipsters back in
the days of smoky betting shops, SIS radio commentary, and board markers writing up prices (a
job my mate and I had a crack at one day, with hilarious results but thats a story for another
time!). Quite frankly, and it took me a while to realise it, these self-proclaimed professional
tipsters were all scam merchants and I was the nave victim of their wickedly wily ways. So apart
from the odd notable win such as Salsabil Antepost for the 1990 1,000 Guineas at 33/1 (and what

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a day at Newmarket that was!), my betting had regressed to the odd Saturday punt on no-hopers
or ridiculously short-priced talking horses that seemingly never failed to be mute, despite my
friends and my best efforts to come up with a winning system or two.
When I first found the Secret Betting Club, I have to admit I viewed it with suspicion. The old
adage of something appearing too good to be true means that it usually is, heavily influenced my
thoughts, but for a not massive outlay and a promise of subscription fees returned were I not
satisfied, I persuaded myself to take the plunge. And so it was that I made my first tentative steps
towards constructing the portfolio of expert betting tipsters that I utilise today.
Im sure many, if not all of you will appreciate that building and following a portfolio of tipsters
that youre completely happy with is not an easy task. And I would wager that most of you have,
like me, made plenty of mistakes along the way. Yep, Ive overstaked, understaked, stopped
following a tipster after a poor run only to jump back on board after a few winners, paid for
services that are simply not suited to my personality profile, overpaid for unproven services and
dropped services I should never have dropped. And thats even with the expertise and guidance
afforded by the SBC! Recognise yourself?
So, after serving an apprenticeship that has probably lasted a little too long, I am now at the
stage, and have been for a little while now, where Im happy with my portfolio as it stands. Let
me list the services I follow. Most of them you will, as SBC members, be very familiar with.

MY PORTFOLIO
Horse Racing
Northern Monkey Punter
On The Nose
Winning Racing Tips
Horse Racing and Sports Betting
The Sportsman Bankbuilder Service
Football
The Football Analyst
Football Investor
Skeeve
Scottish Football Bets
Soylocoportiamerica (A service we are keen to review soon - SBC Ed)
General Sports
On The Oche
BetPlace
GT Tips Rugby, Tennis, American Football
Insider Betting (Expect a full review of this service in December - SBC Ed)
Quite the portfolio, eh? Keeps me busy, thats for sure. It may be hard work, but Ill tell you
something. I enjoy following these services, and I think thats a vitally important and often
overlooked factor by those who are trying to take their betting to another level via the medium
of professional tipsters; you really need to enjoy the services you use. If you dont, then the
inevitable bad times that any service will inevitably hit at some point in time will sour your
experience of gambling, possibly fatally so.
One other thing before I outline future plans for this section of the SBC Mag. This is, I think, an
appropriate place to say that all the hard work and effort involved with following a portfolio of
tipsters has been worth it. Perhaps not so much in the early days when I really was learning the
ropes, but over the past couple of years or so Ive been hitting an Return On Investment (ROI)

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around the 7.5% mark. That may not sound a great deal, but as Ive gradually moved towards
football and sports betting and away from betting the horses, the ROI levels have decreased a
touch. But, and this is the thing, the actual amount of hard cash Im making has risen. Enough to
put the kids through school, enough to book the odd extra holiday, enough to get that takeaway
in on a Saturday night when if it wasnt for a few winners we might have gone for a cheaper,
cook-it-yourself option. And surely, thats what this great gambling game is all about
generating the income that will let us enjoy ourselves that little bit more.

PUTTING THE THEORY INTO PRACTICE

So whats this column going to be all about, then? Well, here am I, a (very youthful looking) 42
year old bloke with a young family, a full time job and interests in all sorts of things from the
mighty Arsenal to The Wire, trying to balance everything out so that I can successfully make good
money from betting by exploiting the expertise of others. Put another way, if I can make it work,
so can anybody else. But thats not to ignore the challenges and problems, both practical and
psychological, that serious betting brings, and it is those challenges and problems I hope to be
able to tackle as subject matter here in the SBC magazine. I guess its a forum for readers to air
their concerns and the obstacles they face, from getting bets on to keeping bookmaker accounts
open to coping with a horror Saturday without actually kicking the cat as opposed to just wanting
to. Because like I say, if I can, so can you.
This series of articles will, in a nutshell, put into practice the theory that you read of in the SBC
publications. This is real, gambling life not a text book. So, take advantage, and lets see if we
can learn together. Ask questions, state your point of view, raise issuesand well see if we cant
address each one in depth, all in the context of actually following a lot of the services that you
will have read and heard about with hard cash.
Bring it on!

YOUR QUESTIONS...ANSWERED!
Bringing it on already, has been Henrik, who has the honour of asking the first question(s):
Hi Rowan, regarding the Northern Monkey Punter service (SBC Hall of Fame Tipster), do you
follow this on the exchange or do you still have any Best Odds Guaranteed (BOG) accounts left? I
got none left but was thinking of implement NMP to my portfolio. Do you still think this service is
profitable with no BOG accounts? I was thinking of splitting my stakes on early exchange odds
and BFSP. Any good experience with this method? And also, do you use NMP with some filters like
only over 2pts or something?
Lets take each one at a time, shall we?
Firstly, I follow Northern Monkey using BOG bookmaker accounts only. I still have four that can
be utilised but of course how long these will remain open to me, I have no idea.
It would be silly to claim that being restricted to using the exchanges only wont have some
impact on the returns you can achieve with any service. My gut feeling though is that NMP is
one where you could still make a good profit if that is what you are forced to do. A long term ROI
of 17%+ would suggest that you could lose 7% of that and still be happy in the long term. I must
stress though that this is gut feeling and a conclusion that is not based on any statistical analysis.
I have in the past discussed this very issue with Wayne, the tipster behind Northern Monkey. I
know at one stage he thought that following his service using Betfair could seriously impinge
upon the bottom line, but recently he has softened his stance somewhat. Using the results of
August 2013 as an admittedly small sample, Wayne pointed out the following, the stats relating
to the bigger priced winners he had tipped during the month:

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Rex Imperator (17.0 adv, SP 13.00, BSP 14.00)

Secret Look (12.0 adv, SP 15.00, BSP 19.19)
Pethers Moon (5.00 adv, SP 5.00, BSP 6.4)
Farmleigh House (8.00 adv, SP 11.00, BSP 16.50)
Ehtedaam (8.00 adv, 5.00 SP, BSP 6.00).
So for ease of calculation, returns to 1 pt win advised stakes would have been 46 pts off those
bets (assuming no BOG). To SP they would have been 44 pts and to BSP they would have been
+57 pts.
Where I would have my own reservations would be in the lost value on Betfair in the place part
of the each way bets (the majority of Waynes selections are tipped each way). Over time, I think
this could well be detrimental to returns. The other very important factor to weigh up is if
members start stacking up money that is unmatched, then it may well lead to bookmakers
cutting prices, and thats not going to benefit anyone.
In light of this, my personal outlook would be to seek alternative ways of getting money on with
bookmakers as opposed to using the likes of Betfair when following Northern Monkey. If you
really do have no alternative to exchange betting, I would be looking at racing services that back
the majority of their selections win only. Im sure though that we can explore in more detail the
theme of getting bets on with the bookies if anyone would like me to do so.
Thank you, Henrik, for getting the Q&A section of this column up and running. The rest of
youdont be shy.
So join me next month and well see what October brought for the portfolio and hopefully well
get to answer some of your questions and explore the things you want to explore.
Until then, enjoy your punting.

ASK ROWAN YOUR QUESTIONS

We want to help you with any questions you may have on the real life practicality of following
tipster services to make money betting.
If you have a question for Rowan that you would like answering in this column, we would love to
hear from you. It might be in reference to a particular tipster, a topic raised this month, his
betting banks or simply how he juggles betting with a full time job!
Send them to us via info@secretbettingclub.com and we will do our best to answer as many as
possible each month.

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