Hello!
Seems an appropriate way to start a new blog. A blog dedicated to all things betting, which is only right and proper for a site such a this!
My name is Rowan, and I have been an SBC member for years. It might well be that I originally found the SBC site as you did, browsing online looking for something betting related or something that might make my betting better, if you know what I mean? You see, I’d had an interest in having a flutter ever since I was a teenager and started to read Dick Francis novels. For those of you who don’t know, Dick Francis was a jumps jockey (who rode for the Queen and who was famously on board Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National, seemingly about to win the big race before this happened). When Francis retired from the saddle he put down his whip and picked up a pen, writing thriller novels that became annual best sellers and which always contained a plot based around horse racing in some way or other.
Anyway, after reading a couple of these books, I started to get interested in horse racing as a betting medium. There was no internet in those days, and I spent many an afternoon with my best mate – who I’d managed to persuade that losing money on bad bets was actually quite fun (!) – in a smoky, dingy betting office listening to SIS commentaries that invariably didn’t need to mention the horse we’d backed as it wasn’t involved in the race much beyond halfway! It was whilst this was happening that I started to question my selection methods and the possibility that my lucky boxer shorts weren’t that lucky (or clean if I managed to get in a trip to the bookies a few days each week!).
After a break from betting whilst at Uni and then getting a career up and running, I found myself getting drawn back to racing following a trip one year to the Cheltenham Festival. I still couldn’t pick a winner though, with the odd exception that was enough to convince me that deep down, I had the talent to provide tips for the Racing Post (after all, I couldn’t do much worse than some of their so called football betting experts like Didi Hamann!), hence the (now) online search for a better way to bet. Which is when I found the Smart Betting Club.
In those days the SBC was a little different to how it is now. At the risk of upsetting someone behind the scenes here, the website was a touch more basic, but the content was great. Here were reviews of tipsters and betting services – just what I was looking for. Admittedly, it took me a little longer than it should have to join up, as initially I was a touch suspicious that it might be a scam, but ultimately I took the plunge and since then my betting life has never been the same.
To cut a long story short, I learnt how to put together a portfolio of successful tipsters and over time, grew my betting operation hand in hand with the SBC. I wrote what has surely to go down as the best betting blog ever (*cough*) for three years called The Portfolio Investor, and developed my betting into what was initially a decent second income and for a while, my primary source of income.
So that’s where we’re at, and the folk at the SBC thought it a good idea if I start writing a blog for them back in 2015 for their members.
Such has been its success, that I am now writing a second blog for the rest of you, keen to understand more on the ins and outs of running a portfolio of betting services.
So that’s what I’m going to do, and this has been the first post! Next week, I will list the services I’m following and give a run-down on each, so make sure you check back, ok?
Until then, may all your bets be winning ones, and you experience deep joy at the bookies’ expense.
Wouldn’t that be nice.
