Patrick Veitch - Enemy Number One: The Secrets of the UKs Most Feared Professional Punter

W ILDEBEEST look very cool munching on their daily diet when they dont perceive any obvious threat. When the lions arrive its really only a question of how quickly they can run away, although the most dangerous lions will often succeed in making a kill. Sometimes, when a pack of lions are particularly well organised, they will make repeated kills over a sustained period.

In this book you can read about lions and wildebeest, about me and the bookmakers. You can also read about brain surgeons, mad axemen and thunderstorms, and about the 20 million that I and my allies have taken from the bookmakers since 1999. They havent enjoyed the last few years as much as I have, many even changing the way they operated in an attempt to stop me winning.

Over the years, Id rely on a total of around 200 agents to place my bets. Id learn to use what I termed guile accounts to mislead the bookmakers. And, on a busy day at the races, Id sometimes take 14 mobile phones with me. The Racing Post described me as the bookmakers public enemy No. 1. Others have called me Keyser Soze, after the man who wasnt there in the film The Usual Suspects, branding me a mystical figure reputed to be behind many major gambles. I was repeatedly told that it was my business that the major firms feared the most. Not only can I hit them for a million pounds in a matter of weeks, but I exert strict control over my betting so the overall risk to my capital is very small.

Of course, I still backed many sizeable losers and had to deal with unprofitable periods that lasted as long as four months, but over the years Ive made a profit of 16.7 per cent on my turnover despite having to take well under the going rate to obtain a large enough stake. Another professional punter, the big-staking Harry Findlay, has been quoted as saying that no punter on the planet wins more than eight per cent on his turnover. Although Ive needed to be secretive about my location over the years, Ive always been on planet Earth.

But its not all been a high-rollers paradise. Without warning, my life was threatened and I was forced to go into hiding, changing my name, my circumstances and my location to make sure that I wasnt found. The ramifications of what happened affect me even now. For the period in which my life was turned upside down, I wanted compensation and the bookmakers were my target.

It was only by waiting for a period when I took a break from racing that it was possible to tell the full story. Im fortunate to be in a position where I dont have to devote all my energies to taking on the bookies. A sabbatical gave me time to write the book; it also allowed me to make some key changes to the way I placed my bets and created some distance in time from the most detailed stories. This ensures that I havent assisted the bookmakers in their obsessive desire to track my activities. Ive been able to provide every detail on the key years of 1999-2004, as well as the important highlights after that.

This book is not a betting manual, but Im sure there is enough information here to provide some guidance and plenty of information for those who wish to take their punting more seriously.

But there is one key reason for writing this book. It keeps a promise I made to myself when at my lowest ebb, in the second half of 1998. When I was right at the bottom, I told myself that I would return to racing when it was safe to do so and later tell my story, although it hasnt always been an easy task. This is the story.