Gambling has a major undeniable role in the UK and Global economy and key players in this production are;

• The Recreational Gambler (the Good guys) who gamble well within the rules set before them.

• The Professional Gambler (the Bad guys, may we hasten to add that is from a Bookies point of view not ours) who finds a way to ensure they win consistently.

• The Bookmaker, who can use Ugly tactics to combat the threat from the Pro’s.

How this plays out in the world of gambling is that there’s a constant battle between professional gamblers and the bookmakers, that you may think, doesn’t really affect the recreational gambler but if we look a little deeper, you’ll see that it does.

To understand this a little more, let’s take a look from both sides of the minted coin they both cherish.

A professional gambler makes a living from gambling, some sceptics may say they don’t exist, however armed with exceptional mathematical tools (both organic and mechanical) we can assure you they do. 

To make a living from something, what you do needs to be consistently profitable. Therefore it is safe to say that Professional Gamblers don’t like to lose on a regular basis, they can’t afford to. So they look for Value and may use Arbitrage which can be loosely described as finding differing odds between bookies and finding a no-lose situation.

If there was only 1 bookmaker in the whole world, it wouldn’t be absurd to suggest that Professional Gamblers wouldn’t exist and if they did they’d certainly be less populous.

So to summarise the Pro Gamblers, in general, over time they WIN, the nemesis of the Bookmaker.

Now let’s jump over the fence, the Bookmaker. They also can only truly survive by making a constant profit (nothing new there, they’re a business after all) and let’s face it the profits they make are truly obscene. We won’t go into how Bookmakers work here but it’s all about the over-round and if you’re interested in how multiple bets are their cash cow (an Accumulator being the Daddy of them all) take a moment to visit here (link to another blog).

Therefore it’s safe to say that a world full of Pro Gamblers would kill the Bookies off and as they are a real threat to their profit, the Bookmakers implement ways to halt them in their tracks, some fair and some suspiciously underhand. 

To highlight one of these areas, they run a rating system. If you lose all the time by maybe chasing that 12fold Accumulator and constantly hand over your cash then you might become a VIP, they will LOVE YOU. Here's another offer coming your way. However, if you start to Win on a regular basis this rating comes down which is termed “down-rating”. This affects how much they’ll let you wager as you are more of a danger to them.

Why do they do this? Well one sceptical reason may be that they simply don’t like winners and just want losers on their books. Another plausible reason is to counteract Pro Gamblers, to down-rate or even ban users they see leeching on their tiny profits. Some may say that’s understandable, it’s an ultra competitive industry and they need to be dog eat horse or whatever spin you want to put on it. 

However, caught in the crossfire and unfairly punished is the recreational gambler, the punters who’ve finally caught a winning wave only for the lifeguard to then replace their surfboard with a railway sleeper. Thou shalt not do that again, please return to losing ways.

You may be wondering how big this battle is? Well Justice 4 Punters wouldn’t exist if everything was all fair in love and war, so we’ll let you make your own mind up on that.

As you can see, Bookmakers lose money to Pro Gamblers and make up for it by generally hammering the recreational gambler and sadly those susceptible to addiction or  those who wrongly believe themselves to be a Professional.

It’s quite clear that this is a never-ending war but there are ways to avoid being badly scarred or killed in the process and a genuine example of why pool-based betting is the fairest way to gamble. After all, there’s a reason it might not appeal to Pro Gamblers and an even bigger reason why Bookies don’t offer it in the mainstream.