JUST five Saturdays off in 20 years is the level of commitment needed to make £1million betting on horses.
But you don’t need to be an expert to do it.
Not to start off with, anyway, as expert Betfair trader Peter Webb told Sun Racing.
Peter has perfected a system that means he more often than not wins on racing regardless of who is first past the post.
It sounds too good to be true.
But where Peter is different to so many punters is he trades on the Betfair Exchange.
There, punters place bets against other punters rather than a bookmaker.
Peter’s job is to anticipate how punters are going to bet and use that to his advantage to make a profit.
And there’s no bigger week to do it than at Cheltenham– a week that’s proved crucial in him hitting the sacred £1m mark.
But as Peter explains, when he started out trading successfully there was no Svengali-like knowledge involved, and even now he uses the same fundamentals he used starting out which anyone can employ.
He said: “The first day at Cheltenham is typically the hardest for me because there is no momentum for jockeys or trainers and people are trying to figure it all out.
“After that it starts to build and I’m figuring which jockeys and trainers people are backing. Other things too, like is the weather changing?
“Every day will have a theme and my job is to try to find it.
“If Willie Mullins wins the first three races then every mother and her son will be on Mullins in the fourth.
“I look for those clues to see if anything is changing and how people’s opinions could be switching.
“Sometimes on TV they might do a feature on a horse and that gets the market moving as there is a story behind it and sentiment builds.
“But then they might speak to the trainer and he is negative about the chances, so that has a big bearing on the market as well.”
It’s split-second stuff and requires full concentration.
It’s why Peter – who runs the successful Bet Angel programme – has been so committed to his job and had a handful of weekends off in 20 years.
He hit the £1m mark winning an average of around £20 a race.
That meant Peter had to make a profit on 50,000 races to make a million.
There are exceptions though. At this year’s Gold Cup he’ll be looking to make £1,000 on the race no matter who wins.
With roughly 15,000 races in Britain and Ireland every year, you get a sense of the level of commitment – and success – it took to make seven figures.
There are exceptions that can speed up the process, though.
Peter has been known to catch the Holy Grail of betting – the magic 999-1 winnner on the Exchange.
They’re rare to pull off but there have been a few this year – including this freak one at Chepstow that left a trainer ‘absolutely gutted’.
Peter had one at Cheltenham when he backed 2005 Gold Cup winner Kicking King at the maximum odds ante-post before he won at 4-1 under Barry Geraghty.
But for the most part, Peter says the tactics he used are the ones anyone can employ.
He said: “My racing knowledge has improved but when I first started I didn’t take into account much to do with racing.
“I did get more into it, understanding how the going changes things etc.
“But I never had specific knowledge like an opinion on a horse.
“Instead, I learned the characteristics of how a race can pan out, what to anticipate and how to spot opportunities.”
It’s a tactic that’s served him very, very well indeed.
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