All successful punters have an “edge” – defined as an advantage in the game. That edge may be slim or large, applying to one specific situation or across a broader range of scenarios. In the New Year’s spirit of making resolutions, all horseplayers should try uncover their special “edge”, whatever it may be, and then resolve to make that the focus of their wagering for 2019. By recalling two notable coups, one from the 70’s and another from the early 90’s, punters might be motivated to come up with their own cunning plan and reap the rewards.
Barney Curley is a fabled Irish gambler associated with a couple of inspired coups. The first was concocted in 1975 by the man who’d variously worked as a pig and cattle farmer, band manager and betting shop operator, and also once trained to be a Jesuit priest, set about clearing accumulated gambling debts.
He approached a trainer friend, Liam Brennan to come up with a jumps horse sporting superficially dim form, that could suddenly wake up at a big price. They hit upon Yellow Sam that had run nine times over two seasons without ever troubling the scorer. A couple of those outings had been at mainstream circuits like Punchestown and Fairyhouse, but with a best finish of only eighth, he would be dismissed as a no-hoper and priced up at long odds.
Yellow Sam’s form on soft ground was dreadful. Word from the yard was that he was making slight improvement in his work, and with Ireland going through a freakishly dry spell, would get, for the first time in his life, the faster ground he preferred. Curley and Brennan found a suitably weak race, an Amateur Riders Handicap over 3700m at tiny, Bellewstown racetrack and engaged one of the best amateur jocks around, Michael Furlong.
Finding the right horse was just one aspect to the plunge – the real brilliance behind the attempted coup lay in the details of getting bets down at the best odds. Curley’s conundrum was that only insignificantly small wagers could be placed on course at little Bellewstown, and Irish bookies fielding bigger Starting Price liabilities in the betting shops would drive down the price by “taking back”” bets before the off.
Bear in mind, our hero is scheming in the 1970’s before the technological revolution had altered the way people communicate. No cells, tablets or Wi Fi – instead Public phones were the medium for bookies to contact their operatives on course. Curley had cased the joint perfectly – Bellewstown had only one public phone near the betting ring, and he instructed a burly associate to hog that phone from twenty minutes before the off till the jump at 3.30.
He’d already orchestrated a team of loyal “putters on” to sweep through around 300 betting outlets in Ireland, placing modest wagers of between 50 and 300 pounds on Yellow Sam just before the race, quoted at 20/1 due to his dismal form. In total 15 000 pounds was invested – normally bookies would become aware of increasing liabilities and bet back on course to drive the price down. But they could not get through as Curley’s tough guy commandeered the phone booth.
Curley kept a low profile throughout. Arriving undetected at the course in a friend’s modest car he proceeded to hide in the bushes near one of the final jumps. After all the drama in the build- up involving weeks of cloak and dagger style machinations, the race itself was uneventful. Yellow Sam, loving the firm ground and jumping well in the hands of a skilful rider, had it all under control against pitiful opposition.
The collect was massive, over 300 000 pounds which equates to more than 2 million pound today. Curley bought himself a manor house and assumed near-mythical status amongst Irish bettors as details of the coup emerged. As a sad post script, Yellow Sam never won again and was subsequently killed in a race-track fall.
Recently, Nick Townsend wrote a great book about Curley’s adventures and a more recent coup landed in 2014, which is definitely worth a read. “The Sure Thing” includes this quote from the audacious gambler. “It was one man’s brains against the bookmakers. I’d outwitted the system and taken advantage of unique circumstances. If they’d been able to, the bookies would have driven the price of that horse into the ground.”
And now a trick question for our sports-savvy Turftalk readers. What are the odds of a hole in one being made at a pro golf tournament? 20/1, 50/1 or perhaps upwards of 100/1 that someone in the field will hit the perfect fluke? Intuitively, we would think that the odds should be high on such an “unlikely” occurrence. The so- called, “Hole in One Gang” exploited the ignorance of dozy independent bookies back in 1991 and took a series of long odds accumulators wagering that a hole in one would be scored at each of five selected Tour events.
You see, the actual odds of a pro golfer acing it in any four -day tournament are quite short. In fact, they’re not much better than even money. So, the true multiple odds of five being made are around 50/1, yet bookies gave two sharp lads, Paul Simmons and John Carter much bigger prices. These wise guys exploited that edge with a series of spirited bets at smaller independent shops around the UK. When Miguel Angel Jimenez scored a hole in one at the European Open to complete the required sequence, they netted profits of 500 000 pounds from a relatively small outlay!
The battle of wits between punter and bookie continues. More sophisticated methods than blocking off access to a public phone booth or getting hugely generous stretches on a seemingly improbable outcome are needed these days. Both sides increasingly use algorithms, machine learning and automated “bots” to place clever wagers or construct accurate odds. And, bookies typically have excellent early -warning systems in place now to make adjustments and limit action on any potentially unfavourable result.
Despite those changes, what Barney Curley described as “unique circumstances” do crop up occasionally though, and can still be source of life- transforming profits for an innovative and alert bettor. The challenge for horseplayers into 2019 is to hammer relentlessly those bets where they have a proven edge, or else wait patiently for a situation to materialise where rare circumstances are especially advantageous. Happy punting from the Interbet team!