Gambling For Life: The Man Who Won Millions And Spent Every Penny

Product Information

Bangor-on-Dee was an impossible place to get to on a sunny day and we had no chance with conventional transport at such late notice," Harry said. I’ve just finished reading this book and I can thoroughly recommend if you’re looking for some reading material currently. Charlie the Gardener was not a betting man but one morning, having listened to Findlay for weeks, he left an ice-cream tub on the gambler’s desk. He is less enamoured by the ubiquitous presence of Ray Winstone peddling Bet365 while fans watch football on TV. Harry Findlay and Paul Barber were on a high amid the throng waiting for the horse in the unsaddling enclosure.

Even Kay, who wouldn't cross the road to go racing, knew that Cheltenham had a unique atmosphere in sport. His main winning strategy has been to recognise sports superstars early - Federer, T Woods, Navratalova, etc, the keep betting them. The plan was for him to lose all of his meagre pocket money, and be convinced that betting was a fools' errand.The 55-year-old pauses, as if considering a fleeting doubt, and then says: “Don’t fucking believe it. Charles Covell Robert Pyle Wilbur Stout Quimby Matthews Horace Mcfarland Fred Edmunds Miller Jon Otto Johnson Stephen Hamblin Hugh Findlay Middleton Edwin Steffek Alex Laurie Jenkins Pfister William Benton Joseph Jeans Snoddy Carrie Dozier Roy Shepherd Smith Harry Lindley Lea Newman Herbert Martin Gale Robinson Greenlaw Miller Wann Massey Underhill Rankin Adams Sumner C. If I’d have done what everyone else usually does in first class, which is going on the piss, drinking the best part of two bottles of wine and having to use the toilet five times, the leak would have happened much earlier and the plane would surely have gone down.

Garrulous and gregarious, Findlay is coarse but coruscating company: his speech burbles along at a million miles a minute, peppered with mentions of betting markets, triumphs, disasters filtered through cockney slang. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. As they passed in front of the stands, though, it became clear that Walsh was holding Denman up in fourth or fifth place, and those ahead of him weren't exactly overexerting themselves. I've done OK betting T20 cricket at half time on 1/6 chances; also on 4x and 5x accas on the hot-pots in the early stages of Wimbledon for net odds of about evens.Before that run, there was no target for him, and we didn't know how good he was, so there were no ante-post wagers before the race, and therefore no financial pressure," Harry said. But there is a seriousness at the book’s heart, for, beyond opening with a quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Gambler, it uncovers Findlay’s consuming defeats and depression.

Kay had it worse [when her credit cards were blocked] but she would try to sort it without telling me. When Denman won his next race – the Challow Hurdle at Cheltenham on New Year's Day, 2006 (by 21 lengths) – Harry was successfully wagering a few more thousand quid on Roger Federer to win another Australian Open in Melbourne, but was back in time for a scheduled novice hurdle at Bangor-on-Dee, North Wales, on February 10.

I am sure if those in charge of today's BHA were in charge back then, Harry would have been treated very differently.

In a way Harry is the living embodiment of what we were discussing on that other thread, to be a long term winner you need to have an almost boring personality. When Clive Feltham took over the GRA they had eight tracks left and they now have two,” Findlay stresses.A great insight into the brilliant mind of a compulsive gambler,living the highlife on the edge, his chaotic,madcap,but never boring approach to life,and his empathy with the disadvantaged and downtrodden,makes for a compulsive cover to cover read, highly recommended. He ended up owning Coventry Dog track and was mortified by the politics involved and ultimately ended up bankrupt as a result. Not too impressed with borrowing off pals and relations to bet after being down to zero - but if it worked then .