North Yorkshire profesional gamble Kristian Strangeway affords a glimpse into his money-making method (From York Press)

North Yorkshire profesional gamble Kristian Strangeway affords a glimpse into his money-making method

12:06pm Friday 22nd May 2009 in Turf Talk

KRISTIAN STRANGEWAY won a quarter of a million pounds on one race. Think about that for a second. A quarter of a million pounds.

How long would it take you to earn that? One year? Five years? Ten?

It took Strangeway, a York-based professional gambler, about five and a half minutes.

The horse was Optimus Prime. The race – the Irish Stallion Farms European Breeders Fund Beginners Chase at Ireland’s Thurles Racecourse on November 8, 2007.

If you read the form-book, there was nothing to distinguish the two-mile, six furlong contest from any other. If you had been at the track, you wouldn’t have been the wiser.

But Strangeway was watching the race at home on television, and he was about to use simple human error to his huge advantage.

“Optimus Prime was so distinguishable because he was trained by Adrian Maguire,” he said. “He wore a big, white bridle on his face but the commentator had said he had fallen.

“It’s not uncommon for commentators to make that mistake. I was watching it very closely. I think it was only the fourth or fifth fence and he said the horse had fallen.

“It was obvious it hadn’t but some people would rather believe the commentator’s words than believe their own eyes.

“As soon as he said it had fallen, I asked to back the horse on Betfair at 1,000-1 – hoping that someone would make a mistake. Someone did. They gave me £270 on a 1,000-1 shot. That stood to win me £270,000 and then I backed against it – to guarantee a win either way – and got £228,000 out of it.”

Strangeway has been around horses, and gambling, all his life. Not surprising when you consider his mother is an area manager of a bookmakers and, as a child, his step-father was Norton trainer Brian Ellison.

“It was always ‘do you want to stay in the house or do you want to go down to the stables with Brian?” he added. “I always used to go down to the stables.

“When I was about nine or ten, my mum used to give me a note to send to school saying ‘Kristian needs to be excused from 11am, he is off to Southwell for the afternoon to watch the horses run’.

“The school couldn’t say anything because, if I didn’t go, there was no one to pick me up from school and look after me. They couldn’t chuck me out on the street at 4pm so I had to go racing. It was maybe once a month.”

He started off as a cashier for Stanley Racing. Then, after graduating from Salford University, Strangeway trained as an odds compiler at totesport’s head office in Wigan.

When the head of the department suggested he might be better off punting for a career, he needed little persuasion. But that time spent reading and pricing up races is proving to be time well spent.

Strangeway explained: “You have got to realise that the price of a horse is not always dependent on the chance it has of winning. People will give a horse a certain price because they understand it is the weight of money as well as the expectation of how well that horse will do combined together which realises the price.

“You could have two horses that are as good as each other but if one is trained by the flavour of the month – a big trainer – and one is trained by another, they will be different prices – even though you know they have the same chance.

“You have got to price it as a discrepancy. They can’t both be even money because, as a bookmaker, you would get 50 times more money on one even money shot than the other.

“That’s not how you want to work. You want the book to balance so you would make the two horses 4-7 against 7-4. So the money balances out. Whichever one wins, you win. That’s one of the lessons you learn.”

Strangeway started with £200 to his name. Five years later, he estimates he has earned more than £1 million from Betfair alone. But it has not all been plain sailing.

After his huge win, he admits he changed his winning habits – and that huge windfall quickly drained away. But one thing Strangeway believes sets him apart from others who dream of betting for a living is patience and discipline. And that saw him fight back.

“I think after that I had too much of a comfort zone,” he said. “When you win £228,000, if you lose £28,000 the day after what do you say? I’m still £200,000 up.

“It came to a crunch and I had lost it all. I said to myself ‘get your zen back and do what you do well again’. I didn’t play to my strengths.

“You need to know how the races work and you need to know how Betfair works. You have to dispel myths – like gambling needs luck. It’s like any other profession. It requires hard work.

“To make it you have to give it the respect it deserves. You have to give it time, disciple and have a work ethic. If you think you can go straight in there, well it’s an animal and it will bite you hard.

“Sometimes, it is fastest finger first. I probably spend around 20 minutes looking at a meeting – so around an hour or two hours a day in total. I play race by race. Some people call it being greedy but I will probably play every race, every day.

“If you think you have a five or ten per cent edge on the market, you might as well play it as often as you can.

“It’s a good life and I enjoy it. It gives you freedom.”