20 years of beating the bookies – how it all began 

Hi, I’m Bob Rothman – professional gambler.

That’s not how I started off, of course. I studied finance and accounting at university, joined Price Waterhouse and then went into computing. But it was obvious that for big money, I needed something else.

Since my school days, I found myself attracted to horse racing and always wanted to be a professional gambler.When I was a kid I admired John Gough, a well-known ‘player’ from York, whose betting prowess allowed him to own one of the first V12 E-Type Jaguars. Yes, gambling was going to be the answer.

To start off with, I advertised in the papers for contacts and pursued people in racing who I thought could help me. The only problem was, 99% were timewasters. But I managed to filter out the dross and was fortunate to meet well known odds-compiler and private handicapper Angus Hill. He was also a Pro Gambler and a great help to me in the early days.

I soon built up a network of top-quality contacts among people involved in the sport, and also got in touch with a few other professional punters. Along with their advice, I used money management techniques to help me select winners. I treated betting as a business.

As a Professional Gambler you’ll have a massive overhead quite apart from any losses along the way. I’ve spent £100,000 or more in a year on information and performance data.  But in the early days I had to rely on winning to generate enough cash flow to pay my contacts … and it was tough, no doubt about it!

My learning curve was steep. It cost me £35,000 before I started making money. But I made it big time – more than £440,000 in my second year of full-time Professional Gambling.

Then the bookies played dirty. They soon wised up to the fact that I was onto a winner with my system, and did everything they could to shut me down. They don’t want pro punters betting with them, they just want mugs.  They even put spies in my network, so when we had, say, a juicy 33/1 shot, they would smash up the price before the shows were sent to the betting shops.

In spite of their dirty tricks, I kept on being successful. So much so that one by one, the bookmakers started closing my accounts. Among Professional Gamblers, getting banned is a sign of success. Most pros get closed down once or twice. In one year I was closed by 25 different betting shops.

So I took my revenge. I created my Horse Racing Tips Service. For a small fee, people could join and I would provide the tips. They weren’t known to the bookies, so no problems there. They simply gave me a share of the winnings.

Perhaps it’s time you did the same?