Recent content by ThePuntingProf

The live losing experience changed significantly after Margaret died and I have only understood why while reading this thread, when she was alive and I was watching something losing she would sometimes simply come and sit nearby, not to watch, not to comment, just present, the physical company...

I have felt contempt once with genuine clarity and examining it now I am not proud of it, a colleague at the university many years ago mentioned casually that he had won a significant amount on a football match, he had placed one bet, a large one, on a match he knew nothing about, the bet was...

I had a number once and Margaret knew it, we agreed on it together early in our serious betting years, a figure that would represent genuine supplementary income over a lifetime and would justify the time and energy the whole enterprise had consumed, it was a shared number with a shared meaning...

My largest single win was in 2004 and I remember it with unusual clarity because Margaret's reaction was so different from mine, I came home having won more than either of us had expected and she was genuinely delighted, not about the money specifically but about what she thought it represented...

I hadn't articulated it that way before. But yes. That's accurate.

The boring system question has a specific answer in my case, I did maintain a profitable approach for many years that was genuinely mechanical and genuinely dull, a narrow set of conditions, limited number of qualifying events, Margaret used to joke that my most profitable periods were the ones...

I have done this and the specific memory that comes to mind involves not a friend but my son James, several years ago I had an unusually good month and mentioned it to him in a way that I now recognize was designed to communicate that the betting was under control and working rather than to...

She understood me. Which gave her better calibration on my bets than any model I ever built.

The question of whether I would still bet is simple: yes, though with reduced volume at current margins, I have a genuine edge that a 10% levy would not entirely eliminate given my stake levels and selectivity, but the more interesting question the framing produces is whether I have ever...

I have tried once and the memory is not comfortable, my son James at twenty-six, he went through a period of betting recreationally and I could see the pattern beginning to organize itself in a familiar way, I sat him down and gave him what I believed at the time was the comprehensive honest...

The calm detachment Eddie describes is real and I have experienced it, Margaret used to say I was most reliable as a bettor when I was most boring about it, when I stopped explaining the analysis to her with enthusiasm and just quietly placed the bet, the enthusiasm was the warning sign, the...

She would have been considerably better at it than me. She understood when stillness meant something.

I have traveled considerably for both work and personal reasons over thirty years and the pattern is consistent, I bet more carelessly when abroad, not more in volume but more carelessly in selection and reasoning, Margaret always knew when I had bet badly on a trip before I told her because I...

The question of what we talk about with real life bettors assumes we have them, I have had very few real life betting friends over thirty years, in the early years Margaret and I talked about betting with another couple who bet seriously, those conversations were largely what Tony describes...

I have one experience that I find difficult to categorize even now, 2009, Champions League, a line that by every analytical measure should not have existed at those odds, the discrepancy was not subtle, it was the kind of number that makes you check whether you're reading it correctly, I spent...