The Perfect Punter - Week 24: Shades of the prison-house

The Perfect Punter / Perfect Punter / 20 January 2010 / Leave a Comment

"I realised that I’d been watching for too long when I jumped off my sofa and yelled: 'Kill him, for God’s sake, kill him.'”

The Perfect Punter explains why wiling away the hours in front an implausible television drama has helped him gain greater control over his gambling. And why, when you're in control, you have to take advantage...

Before you ask, no, I didn't ring her. And that was the right thing to do, even if it took a heap of self-control.

Control has been on my mind a lot this week. After a successful weekend's betting and trading on Italian and Spanish football, I realised that I felt in control of pretty much everything that I was punting on. Over 2.5 goals bets that were 1-1 after 20 minutes and trading at 1.08, and unders punts that were still goalless with an hour played, ended happily. My light relief from gambling over the last fortnight has been the final series of the formerly-brilliant Prison Break, which has got less and less brilliant, and more and more hopeless, the longer it has gone on. How I wish that they were all still in prison.

The final series of Prison Break can teach us a lot about control though. The basic plot is this: a group of on-the-run convicts, led by dreamboats Michael Schofield and Lincoln Burrows, are trying to find a thing called Scylla, which is being used for evil purposes by a man called The General. (He's bald and ugly, so he must be nasty.) They don't know where or what Scylla is, but they know that if they find it they'll be free, and they can pursue what strikes me as their fairly unambitious dream of opening a surf shop in Panama.

Michael and Lincoln are joined in their 20 episode quest by a disgraced FBI agent called Alex , a disgraced doctor called Sarah (who's also Michael's girlfriend, bless) and a complete and utter maniac called Theodore Bagwell, also known as T-Bag, who is one of the best characters there has ever been on television. Up there with Omar, Paulie Walnuts, Trigger and Tucker:

The reason that the final series doesn't work is that a group of fairly reprehensible people who've shown barely an ounce of compassion in 60 previous episodes suddenly start to seek redemption and stop pulling the trigger. At various points in Season Four, T-Bag has Sarah at gunpoint, Sarah has Alex with a knife to his throat, Alex has an AK-47 trained on the The General, the General has Michael's testicles in a vice (I may have made that up), and it happens over and over until you find yourself begging one of them to kill, to maim, to put us out of our misery.

Control shifts from character to character with such bloodlessness that it ends up resembling an episode of the A-Team, as popular characters' survival allows the series to stretch to the full 20 episodes. When you're in control, you have to take advantage, and while I tend not to be a fan of cold blooded killers, I don't mind the fictional ones if they make an hour in front of the TV whizz by a little more quickly. I realised that I'd been watching it for too long when at one point I jumped off my sofa and yelled: "Kill him, for God's sake, kill him." I really should get out more, but when I do that I fall in love with unreachable girls, and so I tend to stay in.

Anyway, as I flitted between Prison Break and punting, I became a little obsessed with control: I'm not a trader by nature, but if you've predicted that a game will have over 2.5 goals and it's 2-0 after five minutes, you have to stay in control and take advantage. Lay back your stake, guarantee a small profit and leave the rest of the bet running. To stretch the analogy to breaking point, if you're T-Bag and you've got the General where you want him, don't let him sweet talk you, promise you things, and let him go. Put a bullet in his stupid bald head and walk back to your life. Otherwise the next day he'll be back to haunt you.

I was talking to a punting friend this week who is having a bad run, who keeps tipping decent priced horses that finish second, things he'd backed at [11.0] which had traded at 1.2 and lost. Over and over he has said to me that he's never been the kind of person who lays back any part of a bet, he'd rather let them run and run. I like him a lot, and I love his chutzpah, but had to tell him that when he is in control, when he's on the right side of a bet, he must take advantage.

I'm not talking about trading at [1.83] when you've got on at [1.9] - I don't regard the people who do that as gamblers, they're just whey faced grumbling idiots with big mouths and no balls. But if you're way ahead of the game, then you have to make use of the situation, you have to be both cool and cold, otherwise you'll end up like T-Bag. Believe me, Prison Break does not end well for him, and nor will your gambling if you lose control. This is the last time I'll be using a fictional serial killer as a role model for my gambling life, and yes, I promise, I will get out more.

Provided that you're not put off by the connection he makes between gambling and murder, you can follow the Perfect Punter on Twitter and join in the cold hearted fun. Simply go to www.twitter.com/perfectpunter and sign up. There are 350 of us now, so come on and join the, erm, party.