In the first of a 3-part series, PPM's expert Statsman begins an absorbing probe into how a punter can turn $5,000 into a full-time betting bank and become, in fact, a professional punter.

The series will examine a string of staking ideas, and bring you the views of some of the world's leading bettors. It is essential reading for any punter intending to turn professional-and any punter happy to remain a keen amateur but also wanting to increase his profits and end loss-making.

The bankroll is always a problem whenever any punter sets out to try to make it as a professional in punting. In this series of articles, I am going to assume that the maximum amount of money you have available for a betting bank is $5,000. But some of the plans I'll be putting forward do not require this much money. They show that you can, quite simply, bet full-time without having an enormous betting bankroll.

There are some professionals, the conservative ones, who maintain that the smaller the bank the better, pointing out that with a small bank you only lose small! With a big bank, a punter initially could get careless with his betting, erroneously believing that the large bank is going to last forever and a day.

A punter who does kick off with a small betting bank is forced into being ultra-careful. The knowledge that he hasn't got a big wad in the kitty makes him THINK a lot about every bet he makes. This has its good points, but it also has a certain drawback. The small bank punter could suffer from FEAR and thus have his judgement threatened when making his selections. The actual fear of losing what little he has throws his judgement awry.

But discipline and patience can overcome this ill-founded fear. What the small punter has to remember to his advantage is that he has as much chance of winning as the man with the big bank. People with more money do not have any more in their favour percentage-wise on the racetrack than the little old lady with 50-cent doubles.

Dean Albertson is an American professional punter. We correspond regularly and Dean, in a recent article in a British magazine, wrote: "All the work I have ever done in regards to betting has taught me that if you want to make a business out of betting, you must have 20 times the amount of your first bet in a betting bank. And you have to be prepared to win small amounts, and watch them build up.

"If you're a $20 punter, you must have at least $1,000 capital to back yourself up. Double that would be even better. It's when you have built up these small profits that you can afford to graduate to bigger stakes."

Alick Fleming, one of Britain's most successful professional punters in the 1950s, said: "There's no short-cut to success as a punter. Intense study of form is essential. You have to trust yourself completely. You must always bet with confidence. When you feel you have something to bet on then hit it hard; don't shirk the issue. You're a bit like a wartime commando-you have to take risks and if they come off your mission is successful.

"Nerve and patience are what it has all been about for me. Waiting for the right time to bet, stopping yourself from trying to pick the programme, finding the value odds; all these things played a significant role in my career. I don't think I ever had a bet if I thought a race had four or five chances for the win. They were just too difficult to operate on.

"It was when I could reduce the chances in a race to a maximum of three that I thought seriously about betting, and often that depended on whether I thought the favourite could be beaten. That's when value comes in, when you find a favourite that can be beaten.

"One of my secrets is that I was never scared to plaster the money on when I believed a favourite couldn't win."

If we assume that we have a theoretical $5,000 in hand, we can then set about deciding how we are going to attack our betting action. We know we must win, but we also know that we have 12 months to do it in, because a professional doesn't judge his progress on one day, two weeks, or six months, but, like any businessman, on a year.

The Annual Plan is designed to fit easily into the Law of Averages in regard to winners, and their average odds. Now, my recent examination of the results of some of Australia's leading tipsters showed that they average about 25 per cent winners at an average price of around 5-2. So, every 1000 races you cop about 250 winners, whose total odds add up to 625.

You can tell immediately that you are in a loss situation. With The Annual Plan. we decide to adopt an even more conservative approach by declaring the combined odds return to be only HALF of the example given. So, we assume that we are still going to score 250 winners from every 1000 races but that the total odds will be only a low 300 points-and not 625. This equals total odds of only 30 points per 100 races.

With The Annual Plan, we treat every 100 races as a single bet on the assumption that they will produce for us winners whose odds are equal to 30 points. What we are doing, then, is attempting to win a predetermined amount on those 100 races-that is, 30 points.

As soon as winners whose odds total 30 are backed, our win target is achieved and the series as such is ended. You can end the series earlier if, at any stage, a profit of one point or more for every race played has been achieved. Example of this-if the bet is to win $1 a point and at the end of, say, 17 races you have a profit achieved of $17 or more, then the series is ended.

How do you lay your bets for this plan? OK, it's easy enough. Just read the following rules very carefully and you'll quickly understand what it's all about.

The aim, as we know, is to win 30 points every 100 races. We start then with a divisor of 30. For the first bet we divide 30 into 100 and that calls for a bet of $3.50 (always take the bet to the nearest betting unit). If the horse lost, the next bet would be 30 divided into $103.50, giving you another bet of $3.50. Let's say that this horse won at 3-1. We would have a profit of $10.50 on the bet, and win three points. You then deduct these three points from the divisor, leaving it now at 27. Your objective has been reduced from $103.50 to $93. You are now ahead of your objective and should close off the series and start again, but you can at this early stage continue if you wish.

If you feel at any stage that your bets are becoming too big, you can introduce a new divisor, and a new objective, and add them to what you have left in the series being played. So, let's say you had reached the stage of having a divisor of 20 and an objective of 200. You introduce a new 30-unit divisor and another 100 target, meaning you now have a target of 300 with a divisor of 50. This gives you a six-unit bet, as against the 10-unit bet you were facing before.

Introduce this safety rule whenever you like. You will always eventually reach your objective. The idea is to reach it safely and without too much stress.

Another way of using this 1/30th idea is like this. Let's assume you are prepared to bet $3,000 of your total $5,000 bank. The opening, and minimum, bet is 1/30th of your bank, which would be $100. You continue with these bets until your bank reaches $4,500 and then you begin to bet 1/30th of that amount, which would be $150.

With this method, you can go 30 losers in a row before your $3,000 is completely wiped out. If you do back that many losers in a row it would be time to call it quits full-time, I'm afraid.

Some time ago, a punter pal of mine set up a bank of $240 and began to use the 1/30th level stake progression idea. It called, of course, for an opening $8 bet 1/30th of $240). He dabbled in daily doubles. He coupled up various horses to a limit of $8. His returns were so good that he was soon up betting in much higher units. Daily doubles, naturally, offer the chance of big returns.

These are just my initial thoughts on this subject. In the March PPM, we'll be moving further along the line, with a host of information on betting strategies, and an examination of some of the more common faults that are found in a punter's betting makeup.

My own surveys among punters show that they are at their most vulnerable when they are losing. This is when their biggest mistakes happen. A losing run begins, they cannot halt it, and commonsense goes out the window to be replaced by chronic desperation.

Also in the next article, I'll be unveiling a terrific professional betting scheme that allows you to have a yearly objective and achieve it through a clever betting method that never calls for any great risk of your capital. The final article, in our third birthday April issue, will look at a whole array of staking plans that will enable you to decide clearly and carefully how best to put your $5,000 bank to good use.

We will present conservative plays, because we feel this is the safest route to follow. You can, indeed, make a living from a $5,000 bank and you can do it without too much risk of blowing the lot. Protection of capital is what must always be kept in mind when you are operating. You are a businessman as a punter and you must adopt the same strategies as any rational business manager. Manage your money, and you'll be able to manage your profits.

I'm sure you'll be very interested in what the late Eric Connolly had to say about sensible staking. His views will be in the next part of this series.

Click here to read Part 2.
Click here to read Part 3.

By Statsman