Confidence can be everything when on the punt
The Age
Tuesday December 15, 2009
TWO friends who worked closely in their city office jobs decided that with meticulous study they could make a windfall from betting on racehorses.While, to 99 per cent of the population, the phrase "we've heard it all before" immediately springs to mind, these two had painstakingly taken a different approach to winning big money from the races.They decided they would make the Western Districts and the Mallee their centre of attention. After months of buying tapes of races from both parts of Victoria, and having secured recordings of races from over the border in South Australia, the pair believed they were equipped to take a decent amount of money and invest it wisely in a quadrella.A meeting at Murtoa was selected and, despite it being the middle of the winter, the two punters believed they had every base loaded. And what a fine start to their experiment they enjoyed when they found the first-leg winner, a horse from Mount Gambier, who saluted at $21.But, in the second leg, the pangs of disbelief came over the future tycoons after their selection €” a $15 chance €” was caught close to the line by a horse, starting at $8, that they didn't have in their bet. They went over and over their form and were stumped at how they had missed the second-leg winner.Naturally, their third and fourth legs were successful, with the quadrella paying $41,000. Had their second-leg selection held on, the quadrella would have paid more than $60,000.They glumly sat on that Friday night contemplating what could have been. The pair admitted that had the quadrella been successful, they would have tap-danced their way onto Flemington for the Grand National Hurdle meeting the next day.As they licked their wounds, they decided to construct another quadrella and include three selections in each leg at Flemington. They decided they were not prepared to chase their money €” even if it was only going to cost $20 each.After debating whether they should go ahead with the bet, they decided their confidence was so battered that they would simply watch the meeting at Flemington.The $40 quadrella bet they would have had snowballed into a $46,000 dividend, with the two mates still coming to terms with their second cruel blow in just 24 hours.As one of them remarked this week: "I don't think there's been a better axiom than the one that says: 'money lost €” nothing lost; confidence lost €” everything lost' ".Well, $46,000 worth of confidence, to be exact.
© 2009 The Age