Having a Flutter, the Honest John Way

I learnt a long time ago that most people like a little, low risk gamble on something. The thrill of winning is such a high, even if it is only a few pounds or dollars.

The problem is, if you watch YouTube videos about gambling or the adverts on TV, it all seems to be about in play betting, accas, trading and complicated systems.

Years ago it was simpler. You would look in the paper at the day’s races and spot a horse with the same name as your mother in law’s cat and say to yourself, I will stick a couple of quid on that.

Or maybe you were like my dad, backing anything with the word gold in its name. You would pop into the bookies at lunchtime, scribble out your slip, and if it won it was a nice treat. If it lost, no great disaster. It was a bit of fun.

That kind of easy, casual fun is much harder to recreate now that everything is online.

To open an account, a bookmaker wants to know half your life story, and to be fair, they have to, there is no tax on winnings in the UK, and there are plenty of checks to make sure you are not laundering money. Once you are in, you are faced with a wall of choice, casinos, slots, poker, golf, tennis, football, politics, you name it, you can bet on it.

Having said all that, unless you live somewhere very rural, there is probably still a betting shop in your town. In a decent sized town, there are usually three.

A Bit of Fun with a Bit of Sense

If you just want to have a flutter and better still, be part of a method that has historically given around a 68 percent safety return, a winner or a solid place in one of the races most days, then my three horse system is designed for exactly that.

You have probably seen horse racing advice videos where people work the betting exchanges, winning and losing thousands before the race even starts. Or trading in running while the race is on. Win here, lay there, hedge over there, it is clever, but it is also complicated and high pressure.

Then there are those systems that hunt for tiny price differences between the exchanges and the bookmakers. Back a horse at one price, lay it at another, and try to lock in a guaranteed profit no matter what. In theory, brilliant. In practice, the profit per race is tiny, you need big stakes, and by the time you get there the value has usually gone. Bookies are not slow.

What a Casual Punter Really Needs

For the casual punter who likes the idea of a structured flutter, an ideal system is:

• Simple enough to follow with a cup of tea in hand.
• Based on clear selections you can see in the morning.
• Easy to place with your usual bookmaker.

That is exactly what I aim to provide with my three horse tips and the dutching calculator on this site.

Here is how a typical fun but sensible day could look.

• You check the Daily Runners page in the morning.
• You see the race or races I have highlighted and my three horses:
  • A likely winner.
  • A big danger.
  • A value each way.
• You open your bookmaker, online or in shop, and look at the odds on those horses.
• You enter those prices into the dutching calculator, set your total stake, and it tells you exactly how much to put on each one.

The key point, do not ask for SP, Starting Price. Dutching relies on the actual odds you have plugged into the calculator. If you take SP, you are handing control of the prices back to the market and undoing all the careful work.

Then you sit back, watch the race, and enjoy the best bit, the will it win, will it lose feeling, knowing you have given yourself a sensible chance without risking silly money.

Using the Local Bookies

If you prefer going to a high street bookmaker, that still works perfectly well.

All you need is:

• Your phone or tablet to access my dutching calculator.
• A pen to write out your slip.

You then:

• Set your total stake in the calculator.
• Type in the odds on the screen for each of my three selections.
• Let the calculator tell you how much to stake on each horse.
• Write those amounts on your slip and hand it over.

The person behind the counter will know it is a dutching style bet, but in my experience, they do not mind at all as long as the slip is clear and the stake is real.

Then you watch the race and enjoy the excitement as one of my selections romps home, 'probably'.

That is the Honest John idea of having a flutter, small stakes, clear choices, a bit of structure and a lot of fun.