An introduction to me, Micky Biggs.
I thought I'd let you know how long I've been interested in horse racing and how I was bitten by the gambling bug and how this web site and my services as a horse racing tipster came about
From as young as I can remember, I've always had an interest in horse racing. My auntie had shares in a couple of jumpers. I saw one of them run once in a race that was part of the ITV7. Some of you may remember the ITV 7. It was a great challenge every Saturday afternoon to try and pick seven winners on the trot. Me and my granddad used to spend a £1 on it every week and spend the afternoon watching the races on an old black and white TV.
One of my greatest first memories was of cheering Arkle home in the Gold cup in 1965. I think I won 10 bob (50p) on it and by then I was in love with racing and jump racing in particular. The ultimate test of a racehorse for me.
In high school, I used to take all the kids bets to the bookies unless I thought they were losers and then I would pocket the bet and hope it didn't't win, which very rarely they did!
As a kid I once won about £20 (a lot of money in those days) from an accumulator. All the runners I had chosen on the grounds that they had won their last three races and I thought I'd cracked the way to pick winning horses. I went to Church Fenton to see the planes with my winnings and I bought a portable radio and a couple of 45's (records) I hid them under my bed and guess what, my mum found them! She thought I had stolen them! I explained where I had got the money from, so she frogmarched me to the bookies to make sure I had actually won the cash. I was delighted he confirmed the facts and thought she would share my delight. But she proceeded to inform him I was only 14 and requested he never served me again.
A few more treasured memories involved Pendil and Bula two magnificent beasts that won me fortunes. I Particularly remember when he was beaten by another of my favorite horses the Dikler. I remember being in floods of tears when Pendil was sadly killed.
Of course I have to mention the Grand National where I had a touch on Red Alligator ridden by Brian Fletcher and the superb Red Rum who can forget him collaring poor Crisp on that long run in. The Grand National has been a lucky race for me Maori Venture being another big priced plot for me.
My biggest winning single bet was on Aldino in the 1991 grand annual chase got the early entries and couldn't't believe what price it was 25-1 and backed it down all rates to 10-1 and I can see it now charging up the run in with those blue blinkers on, that was nearly surpassed in 2007 again in the grand annual when I backed Andreas down from 25-1 to as low as 12-1 with Robert Thornton.
Anyway I could fill pages with my memories, but I really just want you to know that horse racing is and always has been a love and passion of mine and long may it continue. I'm sure you want to know some more up-to-date stuff so I'll fast forward to 2004.
It was a significant time of my life as far as horse racing was concerned. Personal circumstances conspired against me and I had to leave my full time job and bring up my 4yr old alone, working part time to keep the wolf at bay and basically paying for any additional expenses and family holidays from my regular winnings on the horses.
After a short time, the winnings from my " investing " over took any other regular income I had from my part time job, and I was managing to save a healthy amount too, So I decided that there was no need to work for other people. I was sure I could make a living for myself from betting and went for it full time, using Betfair as my preferred "bookie". BUT it wasn't all easy going and for the first year I did struggle sometimes. People were all pointing and telling me "I told you so " and at one time thought I might have to go back to a normal job. But I got my head down and we came through it and now when I think it's too easy, I think of those first few months and it makes me get my head down and study the form books long and hard. I used to back or lay maybe only 4/5 horses a day. But I was very selective of the races I bet in.
Then one day I was reading the Betfair forum and saw that someone was asking for a form expert to work with him. Now I never bother answering anything like that, but on a whim, I did!
That someone was one of the most highly respected, high stakes players on Betfair and a regular forum poster who always had a large readership of any thread he started or participated in. A very private person, he was only known to most as the Magician, or the Magician(1) and (2).
The Magician has a healthy interest in betting bots. He had employed programmers to code unique bots for himself. He wanted some people to enter their own selections into one of the bots he was running. The challenge was to beat other bots which used no human form input. He also wanted £1000 as a starting bank from me. This was a serious man with a serious proposition. Because of that I really had to think twice. I was sure my hours of studying and tweaking, and the years of knowledge I'd gathered over the years would beat a dumb software bot. So I eventually decided to give it a go and volunteered my services. I wasn't the only one selected by the Magician. And it was a selection process, pretty much like a job interview for me.
The others selected for this project were known by their nick names and they were: Koo, a very high roller who makes a full time living on Betfair. Probably one of the most famous Betfair characters. And also famously known for winning over £200,000 in one trade! And loosing most of it again but is now very much back on track. You can follow his progress on the Betfair forum. He posts profit and loss and a daily analysis of his work.
Also involved in the Magician project were Clarke and Flawed. .....
The Magician wanted me (us) to rate EVERY horse in EVERY race between plus 10 and minus ten and input my selections into a betting bot through his web page. If I wanted to put +6 for a particular horse, I had to use -6 on a horse / horses that I didn't't think would win. For my own records, I wrote out pages and pages of horses I had selected and when the horses won I simply coloured its name in with a green highlight pen. When they lost I did the same with pink highlight pen.
Every day the Magician would post that day's results on the Betfair forum , for the world to see. Some days I would win 1k then 3k then lose 2k etc. Half way through the month I noticed my sheets had loads of green on them. Significantly more than pink, so I checked back on the results and calculated that if I had backed and laid all my selections I would have won 150 points a day on average. So from then on I started backing them using my own account and in 1 month using the staking system I developed for the Magicians challenge, I boosted my own personal starting bank from £500 to £7000 !!!
IN ONE MONTH working with the Magician we had won between us over £16k!!! Many people were following the Magicians thread on the Betfair forum and I was getting a lot of positive attention from there. Always good for the ego. What I did next was really focus my attention on selecting winning and losing horses and I further developed my system of ratings. People on the forum were very interested in how I selected horses and I was happy to explain the process of how I was choosing my selections.
I started a thread of my own, so as not to choke the Magicians thread with people asking for my tips and advice. I was telling people how I selected my bets and the basics of the staking plan I developed. I had 100's of posts to that thread. I was explaining to people how to make selections, how much to bet and I was posting selections pre -race for everyone to follow. It was a lot of hard work to feed the Magicians bots and the forums hunger for daily winners, it was time consuming doing both. Then one day a guy asked if I'd consider selling him my selections and put his email up for me to contact him.
Virtually overnight there was dozens of people posting their email addresses up and offering to pay me for private selections. Which is what I started to do alongside feeding the Magicians betting bots. It was a lot of hard work and nobody wants to work for nothing. Keeping my private "members" happy was now a full time job and a greater incentive than winnings alone.
That's where it all started and here we are today. Our syndicate officially started April 14th 2008. By January 2009 (time of writing) we have won 5075 points profit.
