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'I watched in awe as Dave collected'

Stephen Moss goes racing with a professional punter who wins
Tue 15 Feb 2005 20.11 EST

After the first race at Plumpton on Monday, I was all for chucking in my job. I was at the course with Dave Nevison, ace punter, the faces' "face", and he had just turned the 2.00 race, a low-grade hurdle, into a punting procession, pocketing £1,850. He had made more in four minutes than I could make in a fortnight, and all without the inconvenience of tax and National Insurance.

I watched in awe as Dave collected. Now all I had to do was untangle how he had done it, with a dizzying range of bets placed moments before the start: £600 on Absolut Power at 7-2, £300 on Harrycat at 3-1, £300 on Mr Dinglawi at 5-1, and a spread bet involving Mr Dinglawi to beat Caspian Dusk, placings irrelevant, each length worth £100 either way, maximum win £1,250.

Mr Dinglawi won the race by a neck, Absolut Power was third, Harrycat nowhere. Best of all for Nevison, Caspian Dusk - bred, as he had noticed, from a sprinter - was a furlong behind. In about seven seconds - "faces" are noted, above all, for their formidable mathematical brains and unappealing anoraks - he had worked out he was £1,850 to the good.

I had learned my first lesson. The pro, at least this pro, is not looking to pick the winner; he's looking to make a profit. If anything, his "tip" for the race had been Harrycat, which never featured. But more important was taking the prices he thought represented "value". He was playing a statistical game. Brilliantly.

I jotted down plenty of other lessons as we rushed from parade ring to betting ring: most information is disinformation; if a stable is telling you something, ask yourself why; don't vary the size of your bet according to the price; when someone gives you a tip, study the quality of their shoes; you're never betting with the bookies' money, you're always betting with your own; people forever complaining that they should have had more on are exactly that - morons; if you do what everybody else is doing, you'll go skint. And a disconcerting final rule: there are no rules; every race is different.

Nevison has been a professional punter since 1993 when he lost his job as a currency trader in the City. He took his redundancy money to the track (never start, he says, with less than £50,000 in disposable cash) and has done very well. Large house, built to his own specification, in Sevenoaks; four children at private schools; six-figure income.

Some of that comes from journalism - he writes a column for the weekly Racing and Football Outlook paper, a diary in Scotland's Daily Record, and has a tipping line - but most comes from punting.

The 2.30 at Plumpton goes just as well for Nevison: £600 on the favourite Caballe at various prices wins £1,120. He's almost three grand up after half an hour. "Go home now" I suggest. He looks at me as if I'm mad. "There's no such thing as the last race," he says.

Nevison is 43 and has been obsessed - his word - by racing since he was four. "It's the only thing I've ever been interested in and the only thing I know anything about. My grandad loved the races. He did all his money all his life, couldn't win, but he loved it, and I loved him and that was that, I was hooked."

He wanted to work in racing but the wages were too low, so instead he worked in the City for 10 years. "I loathed it and when I was made redundant I decided to try my luck on the racecourse. I've been there ever since."

At first he would try to isolate one or two "good things" on the card but, as he says: "I found that was OK as long as the two bets won, but if you're at Sedgefield from Kent and it's freezing cold, snowing, and you've had two grand on a 5-2 shot in the first race that's got beat, you don't half feel a long way from home.

"I thought 'This is a complete waste of time, there's another five races here', so I started pricing up races - reverse bookmaking. I put a price by every horse and horses that are bigger in price I will bet. That can lead to you betting four or five horses in a race if you've got a strong view and your view is skewed to the market."

Nevison goes racing every day except Sunday, part of that odd travelling caravan of professional punters - male, largely middle-aged, many just scraping a living.

"Some must win £200 a week" he says. "It's freezing in December and going to Fontwell in the rain for 200 quid a week? Why not go to Tesco and stack shelves? They think they're cocking two fingers up at the system - but are they, or are they sad gits? They just roll on from racecourse to racecourse being skint."

The rest of the day - cold, exhausting and involving the handing over of carefully folded £20 notes - makes me revise my view about forgoing my salary. Nevison loses £500 on the 3.00, is level on the 3.30 (a six-length win in a match compensates for his bet falling), but then disaster: Capitana pulling up in the 4.00 costs him £1,700. Another £400 goes west in the 4.30, leaving him with £370.

I would want to court-martial Capitana, but Nevison is philosophical. "I'm happy enough getting £370 out of that card. I'm just glad to win. I can keep body and soul together on £370 a day."

Resilience is the key. Nevison has seen several bets of £10,000 go down, lost £20,000 in a single day and had a deficit of £29,000 on the all-weather last month, but here he is suggesting a post-races beer (he never drinks during racing - another tip).

"I've had losing runs that you just wouldn't believe" he says. "I've experienced everything short of an aeroplane falling out of the sky and landing on your horse just as it's about to go past the winning post. I even had a horse knocked over by a cow.

"You cannot imagine what can go wrong when it's going wrong. But I've never thought about giving it up. What would I do? I want to drop dead on the racecourse."