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Letter of the Week

Not all bad

I must take issue with Boris B.’s generalised criticism of tipsters in the media (19/9). 
In Boris’s opinion, “These people should have their return on investment posted.”
These commentators and tipsters are employed to provide a service, and are required to tip on every race at the meetings they are covering. 
I suggest there would be few if any punters who can win by betting on every race at every meeting on which they invest.
The people who should live up to the “gamble responsibly” motto are the TABs and corporate bookmakers who keep coming up with more gimmicks to entice punters to Invest more and more. 
“Money-back” races for instance remind me of the old on-course concession bookmakers, who offered  money back for the place but posted prices at least 25 per cent below the straight-out and even each-way bookmakers of old. 
Check out the percentages being offered the next time there’s a “money-back” race. You may be shocked. 
Punting is all about opinion, and if you do your own price assessments, you can occasionally (not often) find the price of a fancied runner over your assessment. Most are not and should be avoided. Importantly, you won’t be betting on every race. 
Of course this requires discipline and patience, two virtues not possessed by many punters.
I also find Boris’ opinion that most media tipsters and commentators “would not know the off side of a horse from the near side” quite insulting. 
We are all entitled to our own opinions of course.  But such generalisation is very wide of the mark.  I have been honoured over the 70 years I have been punting to have had personal involvement and friendships with several media journalists and commentators as far back as “Magic Eye” Ken Howard in the 1950s and more recently  including  Max Presnell (retired turf editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and author of the brilliant book Good Losers Die Broke, Michael Maxworthy  (4TAB and now Sky Racing) and the great, late Wayne (Bertie) Wilson of 4TAB. 
Through the last two gentlemen I was also  introduced to Bernadette Cooper, a brilliant jockey and now a co-commentator with Maxworthy. 
All of these people would have forgotten more about punting, racing and horses than your average PubTAB punter will ever know.   

Paul Connors
Brighton (Qld)
Today's Racing
Friday 29 March
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