Monopoly, Anyone?
We writers tend to have a fair bit of time on our hands, particularly during the day. It’s not really that we have a lot of spare time. More just wasted time, time to flutter and drink and sleep and think away.
When everyone shuffles off to work around nine, the modern writer is stretching, clearing the eyes and the mind, reaching wildly for cigarettes, crying for coffee, howling vile abuse at the sun…
But we calm down after about ten minutes….suck back a dart…fill the veins with caffeine…enter into that writer’s Zen state where the paper is blank and your head fills with a million things to do and your body moves compulsively to the least constructive…
In days gone by, much of this time was spent down the local TAB. It wasn’t really about the punt or the rush or any urge to gamble madly. It was more to talk of whores and horses, as that old Feinian hero Shane McGowan once eloquently noted…
Yes, I’d make the short walk down to Cecilia’s TAB, pick up a Telegraph, grab a nice big sausage roll from the Vietnamese bakery and settle in for the afternoon, talking of Shergar and Shane Dye, dreaming of Bulldog glory and that great novel which was just a pen stroke away.
Around lunch time, seats were at a premium. Businessmen stared intently at the “next race” screen, garlic sauce winding down their chin, as they try to cram as much action and kebab into their hour off as possible. The anorexic-esque old men, three in all, sitting in the same seats since Yalta. And always eating vanilla ice creams. An old triumvirate of the racing game. As the afternoon went on, gamblers and punters and desperates and the lonely would come and go. Accountants putting on their daily doubles. Political folk loading up on a tip. Chinese suits whispering heavily into their mobile phones.
They were good, if unproductive, times.
But I was getting screwed. I wasn’t wise to the scam. I didn’t know any better.
None of us knew any better.
These were the days when the corporate bookmakers were just taking hold, just before sports betting was allowed, a decade before Betfair…
The TAB was the only option. Well, for those of us without SP’s anyway.
And the TAB knew it. So what did they do? They gave us all a jolly old rogering…
Takeouts, rounding, fixed odds percentages, the whole damn shebang…
They ran the old horse and bull show, never mind that. The Jolly Green Giant was our only option. It was a monster, a joke and a farce but it was Big Daddy, so we did what we had to do.
And at least the money was coming back to us, however indirectly, through public spending in those days. The feeling that when you’d done your bollocks that you’d just paid for one more copy of Death of a Salesman for one more school was re-assuring, even if foolish.
But these days, the TAB is owned in the private and run in the thuggish. It is run and controlled by greed heads, propagandists and fear-mongerers who justify ridiculous takeout rates, fixed odds percentages and rounding robbery as fair because they “put back into racing”. Which, of course, is bollocks. Betfair or any corporate bookmaker would put just as much back into the game if they were given the running that the TAB gets…or even just a fair playing field.
But this isn’t an article aimed at highlighting and dismantling the preposterous arguments of the TAB that racing in Australia will die without them. That’s a diatribe for another time when I’m cranked on whiskey and anger…
No, this is an article about punting smart. And more often than not, that involves not betting with the TAB.
To win as a punter, you have to constantly get the best price. The margins are too small to be taking worst price and still expect to win.
To make money in the racing game, you have to bet with at least a couple of bookies, who offer different services. Make sure you have as many avenues open to you as possible. Find a bookie who will bet you the price from the track. Open a betfair account so you can get the price you’re after. Find a corporate bookie who has the most settling options available and open an account.
By the by, most corporate bookies will bet you at least one tote, some the best of all totes. This takes away the need to bet at the TAB. If there is a substantial tote overs, you can get still get it…and you don’t impact the pool.
But saying this, don’t run out and cause carnage on the roads on your way to closing your TAB account. Leave it open, just in case. Occasionally, they will have an option clearly priced wrong. And they are often very slow to react to information, particularly on the American sports, so they can be picked off quite easily. It is at these times that I have a warm inner glow and think of the positives of the TAB…but then I remember the years of monopolistic abuse and wish the organisation nothing but harm and despair.
So, alas, there are no more afternoons spent down the TAB. I’ll sometimes pop down to say hi to Cecilia and to watch the old timers eating their ice cream…but I don’t go throwing money down the gob of the jolly green giant. And if I see something I like, I call my bookmaker where I can get set in a fair manner.
And that, racegoers, is that.