Opened Eyes

Have you ever woken in the night and just felt gratitude for all that you have, all that you've lived and all that you know?

The System

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned” Fast Eddie Felson, pool hustler, The Colour of Money, 1986.

There was a time in my life when I was a professional gambler, or sorts. I followed a system. There are two reactions to hearing these words. Some look wide eyed and slightly feverish at the sound of them, and others look with a glassy scepticism and waxwork complexion. They are words you will usually hear spoken in hushed voice, you’ll probably have to lean in a little to hear them. Then you’ll either lean in deeper or start trying to make your escape. But you’ll be one or the other.

Horse racing was my sport. I could have looked at blood lines, or physique and temperament, or form to choose my winners. Then there are the tipster, the whispers and rumours about newcomers and outsiders, and the sure things…at short odds. But I didn’t. I used a very simple system based on one simple idea: Favourites are favourites because from time to time, they win.

In these winter months the exciting National Hunt with its fences and jumps warms the heart of the more dedicated punter. Compared to the money and pomp of the Flats season, whose warm summer months bring out the glamour and wealth we associate with Royal Ascot, the National Hunt is by contrast associated with fingerless gloves, hot cups of coffee laced with something warming, and a cigarette to take the edge of things. This is a season for the professional and addicts, nobody else could justify exposing themselves to these temperatures and it can be hard to distinguish one from the other.

I had a simple little thing I’d created to calculate how much I’d need to bet. I say need to because I took this all rather seriously. I earned a second wage from it, had an earnings target and ‘worked’ until I had met it. Race meeting typically have between five and eight races. The odds for each runner is published in advance and as the market places its money those odds shift and usually shorten. Favourites fall in and out of favour as the race start nears. Sometimes a favourite wouldn’t emerge until seconds before the race got underway, but there was and always is a favourite.

From the comfort of my laptop, I calculated the value of each meeting to decide which I could afford. You see my system was simple enough. A favourite will eventually win, so I bet on the favourite in each race at a meeting until it did in fact win. This requires a great deal of nerve and money, because in the worst case scenario I would lose the first six races and have to place a very large bet on the seventh race to both recoup my loses and make my margin. There is nothing certain about the seventh horse coming in, but eventually a favourite will win.

Needless to say, it worked and I made a very healthy second income from it for some months. But I am inescapably human and felt the thrill and rush of each race, of each win and the lure of greed. Human emotion had no place in this system, the fear one has when placing a large bet after a series of losses, the feeling of being lucky or unlucky, the temptation to place bets outside the system, the sheer enjoyment and excitement of it all… they are all just feelings and impulses associated with gambling, a mugs game. If I could resist all that then I was, in effect, not gambling. Or at least no more gambling that the bankers in the City of London. For another person that might have been easy. For me though, it was too difficult and I closed the door on that chapter of my life.

For some time I had carried around in my wallet a pass to the enclosure at Brighton Race Course. It somehow was tied up with who I was and said something about how I lived, what sorts of choices I made. There is, as with all stories, so much more I could say, but I won’t for now.