Formula One / Jack Houghton / 12 September 2009 /

Well-endowed with recent winnings, bettor extraordinaire Jack Houghton heads to the Italian Grand Prix for the latest instalment of his weekly betting challenge..

There is a truth professional gamblers hold to be self-evident: to be profitable, you must specialise. Losers gorge themselves of all that the great buffet of betting has to offer; winners only ever eat the cheese and pineapple sticks. Who knows what might be lurking in that couscous salad? Therein lies uncertainty, and winners have no truck with uncertainty.

Jack Houghton was a long-time follower of the specialisation theory. Many learned academics credit him with its invention. But now he's turned his back. August 2009. Armed with a £1,000 bank and oodles of likely misplaced confidence, he sets out to prove that, in a year, betting on everything Betfair has to offer, he can turn a profit.

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When Roger Federer wins the US Open on Monday, the Challenge account will be bursting with funds, and the entire punting landscape will be our playground.

We'll have so much lolly sloshing around, we'll be like those moustachioed, be-suited City gents in Mary Poppins, offering to invest Michael's tuppence in sure-fire money-making good works. Except it will be our money, not Michael's. And there won't be some warbling granny trying to persuade us to feed the birds. No wonder there was a run on that bank. Give me strength... If it's not sub-prime toxic assets, it's pesky kids egged on by meddlesome nannies.

Now we're so flush with cash, it's time to venture into the small-men-with-small-penises, millionaires' world of Formula One. This week, apparently, it's the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, which isn't far from Bergamo, where I presume they harvest the sweet smelling crop of a similar name that adorns my favourite scent.

This is what this God-like value-hound has sniffed out. Monza is a fast circuit. And someone called KERS is going to be crucial. I know little of him, but assume our Gravadlax-eating friend brings invaluable Scandinavian engineering nous to the break-neck-speed conundrum that is Monza. As for the capitalisation of his name, I can only posit that a life in Formula One has rendered the poor chap hard-of-hearing, and that people must now shout to get his attention.

Anyway, KERS is only working for McLaren, Renault and Ferrari this weekend; so no other team is going to be winning. Add to this that Ferrari is currently useless, and that Lewis Hamilton - who drives for McLaren - is a snivelling little snot-bag; our money has to go the way of Renault. So it's a £5 back, in the Winner and Podium Finish markets, of both Fernando Alonso [17.0] and [5.0] and Romain Grosjean [95.0] and [32.0].

With the reasoning behind this week's bets so succinctly articulated above (or in a need to meet a word requirement; whichever you prefer), it's probably worth talking about the staking strategy being employed in this great Betting Challenge.

Much is written about staking strategies - often by anaemic-looking ex-librarians with numeracy deficiencies - but the reality is that there are only three basic steps to successful punting: decide what the odds should be for each possible outcome; select the outcomes with the greatest discrepancies; and stake accordingly. And it is the last of these steps that is the least important. Save for a broad theme - that you should stake more when the price discrepancies are greatest - there really isn't much to it.

(If anyone is interested in looking into this deathly-boring subject in any more detail, then Rowles' effort from a while back does a better job than most else I've seen.)

In terms of the staking strategy for the Betting Challenge, I've settled on two rules. First, I will have bigger bets when I believe the value to be greater. This rule will, of course, be ignored the moment I start to lose money, at which point any idea of professionalism will be cast asunder as I desperately try to claw my way into profit by having massive bets on wildly unlikely outcomes.

Second, I will never risk more than five per cent of my bank in any one bet; and no more than five per cent in any week. This is partly because when doing some now long-lost work on staking strategies a while back, I seem to remember five per cent had some magical quality in the model I came up with. More importantly, it means that even if losing every bet, I'll still have some money left at the end. Hopefully enough to treat the betting.betfair editors to a curry as they remorselessly dissect the stupidity behind each and every losing bet.

Not that I'm worried. Federer wins Sunday. So do Renault. The curry's on you boys.

This week's bets:

£5 BACK of Alonso at [17.0] in Italian GP Winner market.
£5 BACK of Alonso at [5.0] in Italian GP Podium Finish market.
£5 BACK of Grosjean at [95.0] in Italian GP Winner market.
£5 BACK of Grosjean at [32.0] in Italian GP Podium Finish market.

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