The Perfect Punter: Chapter Two - My first punting dilemma

The Perfect Punter / Perfect Punter / 12 August 2009 / Leave a Comment

The Bowler is one of the Perfect Punter's favourite bars in the world and the setting for his first punting dilemma.

"I realised this week that at least a tiny part of punting has to be about fun and friendship, because if you don’t have that, then there’s no one to talk to when you’re losing, and nothing to spend your money on when you win." (The Perfect Punter)

The Perfect Punter is attempting to iron out chinks in his betting armour but wonders if occasionally it's ok to place a bet that has failed him in the past for the sheer enjoyment of doing so....

I've had my first dilemma. I'm trying to turn myself into the kind of reflector-shaded iceman who arrives at racecourses by helicopter and yet I've spent the first part of this week agonising over a relatively small stakes bet that I place every year with a friend. Patrick Veitch, eat your heart out.

The Perfect Punter's journey moves from Hollywood Boulevard to Paris this week, and more specifically to a small road not far from the Champs Elysees called the Rue D'Artois. There's a bar there called The Bowler, and behind it you will find my friend Eddie. Eddie is pure gold, the nicest guy in any room that he's in, and when I go to The Bowler, we talk about a lot and about not very much all at the same time.

There's a cast of characters there that bars in England never quite deliver: a big friendly Swede called Rich, an alluring Danish girl, a Bostonian Walter Mitty and a fantastically bright American who wears an Aquaman T-Shirt but hates Entourage. And, of all things, a gradual and stereotype-breaking realisation that many of the English customers are more arrogant than the French ones. If you're ever in Paris, try it for yourself, and go figure.

So every football season myself and nice guy Eddie place a bet. For five years we've tried to predict the five winners of the major European football leagues and for five years our accumulator has come up one short. Bayern Munich let us down last year, Chelsea the year before, and four out of five has become an annoying habit. This week we sat down to come up with this year's magic names.

The first part of my dilemma was whether I should even be placing this bet. The Perfect Punter experiment is meant to be about changing bad habits, and learning from those who know more than me. Placing an accumulator within the same fixed parameters every football season is probably not the way to profit, but the simple fact is that I enjoy doing it, and I want to keep alive my dream that in May, I'll be standing at the bar in The Bowler, watching the final leg come in, and will have a betting slip worth four figures in one hand, the alluring Danish girl in the other, Walter Mitty telling us all that he's just come off the phone with Barack Obama, and Eddie supplying buckets full of champagne.

Given that most people bet for fun, am I allowed to do that as well? There are different views on this subject in the relatively small number of books written about punting. I get the impression that the Veitch would never place a bet simply for fun, whereas Dave Nevison admits in his first book that, after a day betting properly at the races, he will occasionally sit at home, watch a game of football, and chuck a hundred quid on it to make it more interesting. It might not make him a clinically watertight pro punter, but it does make you like him, and it makes him more like the rest of us. So in the end I decided that, yes, it is alright for me to try and become the perfect punter on the one hand and still do my bet with nice guy Eddie on the other. It might be an early chink in my armour, but I'm going to chase that Parisian dream.

The second dilemma is the bet itself, and our discussions have thrown up three obvious names. We're going with Inter and Bayern as bankers, because, even though there is value elsewhere, they're both by far and away the most obvious winners of their leagues. Eddie tells me that the widely held view in France is that Marseille will be Champions, and that backs up the view of all of the French football experts that I respect, so they're in. And then we have a difference of opinion. We both want Barcelona to win in Spain, but we're unconvinced, and so we're going with Manuel Pellegrini and Real Madrid. And we both want to oppose Manchester United, but are divided between Liverpool and Chelsea. I think Liverpool, Eddie thinks Chelsea, and we can't agree.

So here's how it will work: at 10pm on Friday night, Eddie will toss a 2 Euro coin behind the bar at the Bowler. One side will mean Liverpool, and the other Chelsea, and our accumulator will be complete. I'll reveal the result of the coin toss on twitter as soon as it's done. It won't be scientific, but it will be fun. And I realised this week that at least a tiny part of punting has to be about fun and friendship, because if you don't have that, then there's no one to talk to when you're losing, and nothing to spend your money on when you win.

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