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 Against the Odds: A Comprehensive Guide to Betting
on Horseracing
by David-Lee Priest
This book represents the culmination of an ambitious project
aimed at researching the potential for profitable betting in British horse
racing. Recent developments in computer technology have enabled the author to
analyse the performances of over 1 million runners in 100,000 races. The
findings are distilled in a meaningful and accessible way that is anchored by
an understanding of betting and horseracing.
The author's scientific
background is tempered with his experience of betting professionally. Readers
are afforded an applied understanding of how to improve their chances of
winning money. More than all this, readers will find that "Against the Odds"
offers fresh and original writing in a domain where approaches to betting have
become predictable and formulaic.This book presents; the philosophy of
gambling; ability ratings; course suitability; past performance figures; race
grade; draw; and, the betting market.
Editor's Opinion
The
writer analyses profitable systems from handicaps, speed ratings, weight,
sex(!), headgear, finishing positions, fitness, time of year, class, draw etc
etc and presents a number of easily workable 'rules' for each type of race to
enable you to make profitable selections and trim down the field significantly
for each type of race. Essential reading and highly recommend for the serious
horse racing player wanting to make a profit betting on
horses.
Paperback - 288 pages
3rd Revised edition edition (3 Oct 2008) 
£9.09
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 Enemy Number One: The Secrets of the UK's Most
Feared Professional Punter
by Patrick Veitch
Enemy Number One offers an often controversial but utterly
fascinating insight into Veitch's life of punting. For anyone who likes the
occasional bet or who takes gambling seriously and has both the 'brain surgeon'
and 'mad axeman' capabilities to do it there is more to be gleaned from this
book than probably any other betting book.
Veitch is no ordinary
punter. Enemy Number One documents an eight-year period of profits in excess of
£10 million. It also chronicles the tactical headaches of placing bets
with the bookmakers using Veitch's vast network of agents and sub-agents.
Veitch has had no comfortable ride, though. Just a short while after
becoming a full-time punter he was the victim of an extortion attempt by a
dangerous criminal who was subsequently tried twice for murder and later
convicted of attempted murder. Veitch was forced to flee and go into hiding,
returning to Cambridge to testify in a bulletproof jacket with police
protection.
Editor's Opinion
Now I have to say that this is
indeed better than the average racing or gambling book. However, before you get
too far into the book there are signs that not all is well, some things just
don't add-up. Take for instance his Ferrari, a depreciating asset that he uses
as collateral to obtain a loan. What? A shrewd mind like his! And then later in
his story his major coup d'état was basically insider dealing, which is
still illegal as far as I can remember.
The conclusion is that you won't
have gone far wrong at the price of this book but an editor and a ghost writer
would have been worth their salt.
Hardcover - 304 pages (16 April 2009)
£10.04
 $22.58
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 Eclipse
by Nicholas Clee
Racing, of all sports, is the most fuelled by gossip and
innuendo. This makes the Sport of Kings attractive to people from every walk of
life, a point emphasised in Nicholas Clee's biography of Eclipse, perhaps the
most famous racing horse of all time. Though Eclipse could not have been more
aristocratic, he was owned by a jailbird chancer and a brothel owner - Dennis
O'Kelly and Charlotte Hayes, the madam's madam in what was "a golden age" for
prostitution. The pair were a perfect partnership, gambling and philandering
being kindred interests and in the mid-18th century people would bet on
anything:
The horse, in contrast to his owners, was so good that he
made the sport boring. In one race, he left the rest of the field 240 yards
behind: in another, he started at 1-100, testament to the bookies' despair. He
frequently won by a walk over, for no one dared take him on.
Yet
despite his magnificence on the course, he was more valuable off it and it was
O'Kelly's genius to realise that stud fees could dwarf prize money. The
entwined fortunes of horse and owners make for a ripping yarn expertly told:
part Flashman at the Races; part Seabiscuit without the schmaltz.
Will
Buckley of The Observer
Hardcover - 352 pages (12 Mar 2009)
£15.00
$30.07
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 Betting on Two Year Olds: The Inside Track
by Nick
Attenborough
The first
comprehensive guide to UK two year old racing.
This book has wealth of
knowledge for the expert and the amateur alike. All the different phases of the
two year old season in terms of race fixtures and horse development are
explained in an easy to read fashion.
Whether or not the pointers in the
book will actually help you in terms of successful betting is in debate.
Certainly they will afford the avid student many more ways 'into' a race, by
which is meant that you can assess a race by your own personal set of values
that this book will have highlighted.
All in all this is a welcome
addition to the literature on horse betting. Its one to have on your shelf if
you are intent to tackle the two year old flat season.
Hardcover
- 198 pages (1 April 2009)
£14.99
$??
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 A Bloody Good Winner: Life as a Professional
Gambler by Dave Nevison
Dave Nevison is doing, every day, what thousands of punters dream
of doing - living the dream of life as a professional gambler. Since taking the
plunge in 1993, Nevison has made his living, a very good living, from backing
racehorses.
One of the best aspects of the book is Dave's brutal
honesty (which I think is essential when it comes to this genre of reading,
there's just no realism to people who just constantly win all the time) when it
comes to how he's done over the years. Although as he became more successful,
he found it harder and harder to get his bets down. Therefore he uses a number
of associates to put his bets on.
There has been a bit of criticism
within racing circles of Dave's harsh treatment of certain jockeys and
trainers, although I think it comes across, not as bitterness, but as rounded
and well argued. As punters, there's nothing worse than feeling that a certain
jockey could have ridden a ride more aggressively. Although he really does
stick the knife into certain towns and cities he has the misfortune to stay
in.
One compliment to pay to this book is that you will start buying the
Racing and Football Outlook every week just to read Dave's column. He's just as
honest there.
Hardcover - 256
pages (19 Oct 2007)
£9.59
$31.42
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 Racing
Post's 500 Strangest Racing Stories by Graham Sharpe
This is a book about the unexpected, the off-beat,
the quirky - five hundred of the strangest stories in horseracing's history. If
you go racing or watch racing for any length of time, you soon realise that it
is suffused with an aura on unreality and other worldliness. Odd moments
abound, the surreal is almost commonplace.
In "500 Strangest Racing
Stories", read about how a jockey lost a race when he insisted on riding in a
top hat, what happened when a trainer fitted his short-sighted runner with
spectacles, and why a racehorse was sent to jail.
Hardcover - 272 pages (14 Sep 2007)
£9.09
$25.83
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 Winning Without Thinking: A Guide to Horse Race Betting Systems
by Nick Mordin
The author
will, I’m sure, be the first to admit that the title is a misnomer,
because thinking is very much what he advises. But it is a clever title
none-the-less. Yes you have to think like mad, but having thought, then must
put aside all the usual ‘conventional’ reasoning for picking a
selection and just believe the elements you have isolated even if from a normal
point of view it may look dubious..
The Racing Post, Mordin
is unique - there is no-one else writing anything quite like this for the
British market … thoroughly recommended.
Paperback - 426 pages new edition (15 Oct 2006)
UK Amazon £8.54 or
U$17.73 from Amazon USA
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 Seabiscuit: An
American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
This story has got it all, excitement,
drama,disappointment, suspense, tragedy, determination and even comedy.This is
a true story written like a novel. Read this marvelous book to see what
Seabiscuit, his owner, trainer, and jockeys accomplished when the rugged,
little stallion turned seven---well past the retirement age for most
Thoroughbreds.
Times, 20th May 2001 'a rip-roaring
narrative...Hillenbrand tells the story with flair and skill, relishing the
larger than life characters who inhabited this forgotten demi-monde.'
Paperback - 437 pages new
edition (2 April, 2002)
expected price £6.39
Buy
This Book or
U$9.00 from US Amazon
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 Crossing the Line by Charlie Brooks
(New edition)
In January
1999, Charlie Brooks, former leading race horse trainer, was arrested in
connection with a police investigation into race fixing. He crossed the line
from insider to outsider, and this is his informed and honest view of the weird
and wonderful world of British horse racing. Gripping insight into the racing
world.
Paperback - 317 pages
(2 November, 2000) expected price £6.39
Buy
This Book
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 An Arm and Four Legs
by Stan Hey
Anybody who
has considered owning a racehorse should be made to read this as a matter of
course, but equally if it has never occurred to you, it will also make
interesting if somewhat salutary reading. In any case, this is one of the first
books I've read about horse racing which does not presuppose knowledge of the
subject. If anyone wants to know why the sport was once dubbed the Sport Of
Kings and is still dominated by royalty (latterly from Dubai rather than
Europe), this book will explain.
Paperback - 230 pages new edition (28 September,
2000) expected price £6.40
Buy
This Book
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 The Inside Track
by Alan Potts
Considering
how many people like to have a bet, there are relatively few good books about
the gambling. True, there do exist slim volumes of esoteric
mathematically-based rhetoric of the sort that make the outpourings of Einstein
and Russell seem like pulp fiction, but accessible, interesting books about
punting are few and far between. This makes Alan Potts's book all the more
refreshing. There are sections covering flat racing and jumping, and also
detailed discussion of all-weather racing and the world of spread betting.
Hardcover - 255 pages (1
June, 1998) expected price £18.00
Buy
This Book
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 Betting for a Living by Nick Mordin
From an author who devises and tests his own systems,
this book describes how, during the winter of 1991/2, he applied his ideas at
the racetrack and took over £1000 per month from bookmakers. It details
the exact methods he used and explains the precise reasons behind every bet
made.
Hardcover - 320 pages
(16 November, 1992) expected price
£18.00 Buy
This Book
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 The Boss by John Budden
The sudden death of Gordon W Richards in October 1998 brought a
premature end to a legendary training career which had seen him rise from
obscurity to national fame as a master of his profession. Consigned to racing's
scrap-heap with a broken back at the age of 29, he scraped a living as a livery
stable proprietor and horse-dealer in a remote part of Northumberland until,
five years later, he "discovered" Playlord and a new dawn broke.
Rugged,
demanding, often outspoken, sometimes ruthless but never lacking in humour,
Gordon made relentless progress through the training ranks. "The Boss", as he
was widely known. liked to run his stable his own way. Horses, not humans,
headed the pecking order, as many famous riders and owners discovered to their
cost. Few escaped unscathed, but in over 30 years at Greystoke he employed only
six stable jockeys, and two of theses, Ron Barry and Jonjo O'Neill, gained
Championship honours.
The Boss charts the successes of the man who twice
saddled more than 100 winners in a single season and who scooped the pool in
the Aintree Grand National on two occasions. This enthralling biography,
written with the full co-operation of Richards himself, provides a compelling
insight into the forces that drove him to become one of the most respected
trainers in the world.
Paperback
- 240 pages (15 March, 2001) expected price
£6.39 Buy
This Book
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 Jenny Pitman by Jenny Pitman
Jenny Pitman OBE faced a double whammy when she applied for her
trainer's licence. First, she was an outsider to the world of racing; second,
and more importantly, she was a woman in what was still very much a man's
world. As she tells us in her frank and entertaining autobiography, simply
titled Jenny Pitman, she overcame the first problem much easier than beating
the second. This is a personal story for those who love racing.
Paperback - 425 pages ( 4 November,
1999) expected price
£5.59 Buy
This Book
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 A Licence
To Print Money by Jamie Reid
An
exploration of the world of horseracing and gambling
Forget the tired
biographies of worthy jockeys and trainers, this book cuts to the real soul of
the sport - gambling. The core of the book concerns a series of essays on the
history, culture and technicalities of betting on racing. These are well
researched, well written and unearth a host of 20th century characters which
many punters will enjoy reading about. These essays are interlaced with details
of the author's own gambling forays, which make for compelling reading. The
final chapter's account of a small sting at Redcar is outstanding, one is so
involved with the story that it feels like taking part. The adrenaline flow
produced by reading it is akin to that produced by having an over-big wager of
one's own.
Paperback - 288 pages
(October 1995) expected price
£7.19 Buy
This Book
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