Patrick Veitch - Enemy Number One

[mowgli77]

Anyone read this book and what did you think? I bought it on Sunday and finished it today, a decent enough read. At times it sounded like I was reading about Billy The Punter, was going to ask if you've met him Billy or know of him etc? It was good to read of that massive gamble and how it was meticulously planned. Interesting that he says Fallon is the greatest jockey he's ever seen but does not usually let him ride his horses and the explanation of why he rates him was that he coaxes a horse into a race, progressing into the race rather than just asking for a burst a few furlongs out and is a great judge of pace in the race and flexible in changing tactics during a race dependant on pace. He states current best jockeys are Dettori and Spencer and there are numerous threads on here that are rather negative about these 2 jockeys. Feels Spencer has a great knack of getting a horse to settle and Dettori is good for giving great feedback when he has got off a horse. States he now focuses on races from 5f to 1m which interested me as I am usually favouring races of 1m+ and states you should not be looking for value as such but looking for underestimated and overestimated horses. Really does treat it as a business and spends hours repeatedly going through races, recording them to hard drive, making notes etc and can have around 25 horses running from his lists on any one day. The front page of the book says "The secrets of the UK's most feared professional punter" and I'm sure people will pick that up thinking they are going to read this and suddenly turn pro but they'll be disappointed. Reads more like a diary of bets, some background into his daily routine and covers how he was threatened by a gangster that demanded 70k from him. Credit to him, he obviously spends more time studying the races than the bookies or odds compilers and that gives him his edge, can't knock the amount of money he has won from the game and wouldn't mind being one of his agents that get the bets on. A decent read, recommended for any would be pro punters and general racing/betting fans. :ok

[BillyHills]

Re: Patrick Veitch - Enemy Number One Been looking at this one Phil along with 'You Bet' which is the story of Betfair, was going to wait for the bookstalls to slash the prices like they do after a while. Saw the Veitch interviews on RUK and enjoyed his story, i'll deffo get round to it one day.