Winning Online

This month we have a chat with Steve of Winning Online.

Hi Steve and many thanks for joining us this month. Would you start by telling our readers a little about yourself and your background?

Hello.

It’s rare I’m ever asked to talk about myself so I hope On Course Profits readers find this Q&A interesting.

My introduction to the betting industry came straight out of university (a few days after I’d finished my final exams actually) when I landed a sort of admin/logistics/general-do-anything job at a company called The Winning Line. That was in the summer of 1995 and at the time The Winning Line was Britain’s biggest and most feared horse racing tipster business.

Back then, and for the next 10 years, I was on first name terms with many well-known racing professionals such as Mark Coton (Racing Post Pricewise founder), Nick Mordin (writer and systems whizz), Dave Nevison (author, broadcaster and professional gambler) and Patrick Veitch (someone who has relieved the bookmakers of millions of pounds as your readers will no doubt know).

I even used to call Lester Piggott early in the morning during the Flat season to discover which horses should be passed on to our members.

Needless to say it was a fantastic, real-world education for someone fresh out of university (with a geography degree!) and I stayed at The Winning Line for a very happy decade.

What have I been up to since I left?

Well, from 2005 until now, I’ve continued to try and help regular punters and extra income seekers generate more financial freedom from horse racing, sports betting, trading on the betting exchanges, as well as occasionally dipping my toes into other areas which personally interest me like financial betting and alternative investments such as Peer-To-Peer lending.

So, from The Winning Line to Winning Online, what led to the move and what does Winning Online offer its readers and subscribers?

The catalyst for me ultimately leaving The Winning Line was due to a takeover of the business by a stock market listed health and leisure company called Crown Sports plc. The upshot was it led to me getting an insight into the corporate world which I didn’t like at all.

I’d never previously felt I was employed at The Winning Line (we were a very small and tight-knit team), or considered what we were doing to be complicated or even hard work. Then all of a sudden I had senior management and bean counters from the plc wanting me to compile budget forecasts and go to countless meetings. It certainly wasn’t my cup of tea so I decided to branch out on my own.

In terms of Winning Online (www.winningonline.co.uk), my focus is to always offer professional, elite quality income-boosting opportunities which I spend a lot of time researching and developing.

Most of these winning opportunities revolve around betting-related advisory services covering greyhounds, horse racing, football and potentially other sports such as golf and tennis.

This leaning towards betting services is partly due to my years at The Winning Line, but also the fact that punters are no different from everyone else nowadays – they’re time poor. So I tend to stick to a very simple approach of tracking down specialists in a particular sport or betting niche who then supply me with bets which I then share with subscribers. Delivered by email and text message, all members have to do is place the bets and get on with their day.

As you can see, I’m basically a matchmaker between winning professionals and regular punters.

I’m not a professional gambler and I’m never the person who advises bets or comes up with specific strategies for any advisory services, publications or software I create and offer within Winning Online.

Does Winning Online look to offer up possible solutions solely for those interested in horse racing or do you feel that you can offer other advice and opportunities for those interested in other sports too?

Winning Online doesn’t restrict itself to one particular sport or type of opportunity.

Yes, because horse racing is still a major betting sport, it’s always on my radar.

For example, for over a year now I’ve been in close contact with a couple of machine learning experts – one guy is a data scientist and the other runs his own risk analytics and sports data intelligence consultancy. My aim in 2018 is to launch a brand new advisory service called The Winning Machine where bets are generated by high-tech algorithms.

I actually find the whole area of artificial intelligence and machine learning really fascinating and human tipsters certainly need to be on their guard! I’ve written a piece called The Dinosaur Report about this very subject which your readers can access by visiting www.winningonline.co.uk.

Aside from horse racing, I’m constantly delving into lots of different sports and other money-making areas to see what opportunities I can potentially introduce to Winning Online.

Last autumn for instance I teamed up with two of Britain and Ireland’s leading greyhound professionals. With their help, insights and shortcuts to finding winners (and losers as well for successful lay bets), I wrote a guide in January called Greyhound Wealth Secrets – Your Ultimate Profit Blueprint for Generating Tax-Free Cash Backing, Laying, Dutching and Forecast Betting the Dogs.

Also, I persuaded “The Inside Man” and “The Dog Scientist” (I’ve been forced to use aliases to protect their identities) to pass on their best personal bets which they’ve been doing since mid-November. And after monitoring their performance and being extremely impressed, the Top Dogs specialist greyhound advisory service has recently gone live.

Just to say, if your readers are interested in how they can win money from greyhounds using either the blueprint or the Top Dogs selective bets, please get them to call me directly on my personal mobile – 07917 356942 – or email me to steve@winningonline.co.uk.

Do you regularly bet yourself? What style of approach do you take to your betting?

I’ll keep this answer very short and sweet as I don’t want to reveal too much about my own personal betting activities.

Suffice to say that if you had access to a lot of privileged information, some of which takes months of due diligence to release to the public, wouldn’t you take advantage of it yourself?

Would you tell us a little more about your Peer to Peer Business Lending Blueprint? How did this come about and what are your thoughts on Peer to Peer lending? How do you feel it can be mutually beneficial?

I’m an avid reader, especially of the financial press, so when Peer-To-Peer was getting some exposure during the credit crunch around 10 years ago, I did recruit a banker to help me write a publication about the online pioneer of P2P consumer loans called Zopa. I lost a few grand on this project because it wasn’t a commercial success (not by a long chalk!). By the way, as an information publisher I’m always looking to take low-risk bets with my ventures – some work well, others don’t.

Anyway, I’d always really liked the P2P concept, plus I had some spare time on my hands, so I revisited it again in August 2016, found a business banking expert and wrote The Peer-To-Peer Business Lending Blueprint.
The blueprint was actually more about me wanting to learn about P2P business lending for my own personal investing. Obviously, with the way interest rates have been at rock bottom levels for so long, trying to find some sort of yield on any spare capital has been challenging.

If you look at my Winning Online logo it says ‘Extra Income Solutions’ underneath. And this sums up why my products and services are an eclectic mix. They don’t necessarily gel together perfectly, but they’re not really meant to. I’m my own boss so I decide what I’m going to do, and much of the time, this is based on propositions and opportunities I find interesting… and obviously, potentially lucrative!

Back to the horses, we are sure that you are aware that the gambling industry is regularly being criticised for its treatment of its customers with “restrictions” and “closed” accounts often in the headlines. What would you suggest to punters who find themselves in these situations with their gambling accounts?

I know first-hand what it’s like to suffer the same heavy-handed stake restrictions on racing bets. It’s unfair but there’s little point wasting one’s energy getting angry about it.

Some business associates of mine are really pro-active in this area organising petitions to the Gambling Commission and making determined efforts to try and get UK bookmakers to adopt a different attitude. Whether any good will ever come of this, well, I’m not so sure.

How someone reacts to restrictions on racing bets depends upon how serious they are about their betting and how much money they’re potentially losing by not being able to capture value odds and get their bets placed with bookmakers.

I know professional backers who use betting shop teams to avoid undue detection. Another common tactic, although you have to be very well organised with your logistics and IT know-how, is to run multiple clone accounts in the names of friends, family and other third parties.

For most semi-serious punters who have got caught up with restrictions, the obvious alternative, and probably the simplest solution, is just to use Betfair and other betting exchanges.

A common gripe of many a punter is the number of races and poor quality meetings very often with low levels of prize money. Many race goers would rather see fewer better quality races. Is there anything that you would like to see changed within the horse racing industry and why?

Truthfully, I don’t really concern myself with the way horse racing is run, the internal politics or the future of the industry.

I’m only interested in supplying betting information to help punters win on horses.

New and old punters alike often struggle to make a success of their betting. If you could give them one piece of advice to improve their profitability what would it be?

I’ve been around regular punters for the last 23 years and if I’m brutally honest, the vast majority of them are far too emotional, ill-disciplined and they don’t take their betting anywhere near as seriously as the professionals who do make a profit.

My one piece of advice?

Well, it’s two actually – control your emotions and think long-term.

I’ve seen it so many times where members have signed up for one of the advisory services I’ve been involved with, and despite all the welcome information provided about patience, prudent risk management and maintaining a long-term commitment, they just quit after an early setback.
So yes, if you’re using tipsters to help or improve your profits, don’t get too elated after winners, or too down in the dumps after losers, and more than anything else, don’t chop and change every few weeks.

We all know the phrase “patience pays dividends”, and in my experience, it’s absolutely true.

The Winning Line is obviously remembered by many from back in the day 🙂 so, are there any anecdotes you would like to / can share with our readers?

I mentioned Lester Piggott earlier. He was an absolute gentleman from the moment I went down to his home in Newmarket when we first recruited him for The Winning Line.

The only slight problem I had was getting used to his voice.

My job was to call him very early in the morning during the Flat season to ask about bets. But because many times the names of horses weren’t straightforward to spell, and I was at home and didn’t have a newspaper in front of me, I’d often arrive in the office, the boss would say “what’s Lester given today?” and my reply would be “I’ve no idea. I only know the race and the number. Let me grab the Racing Post to find out”.

What do you consider to be the highlight of your experience to date? Do you have any personal racing / betting experiences which on reflection bring a smile, or for that matter any which bring a grimace; you can share with our readers?

The highlight for me over the last 23 years is the fact I’ve never felt like I’ve had a proper job. It’s been more of a lifestyle, a lot of fun and I’ve been incredibly lucky to have met so many interesting characters!

The brains behind The Winning Line was a guy called Stephen Winstanley who very sadly passed away in 2007. He taught me a lot about betting, business, marketing and punter psychology.

I mention him because I recall driving home from the office one time when we’d been going through a really rough patch of results. Members had been chewing our ears off with complaints. When the phone rang you didn’t want to pick it up! Anyway, Stephen went maximum bet on a horse – I think it might have been Arctic Kinsman – and as I was driving home my mobile rang and it was Stephen. The horse had won and all the recent losses had been recouped. That one bet meant a lot to us all.

Let me also mention the horses which The Winning Line used to own and syndicate because they probably gave us more grimaces than smiles.

A classic example, and this is imprinted on my mind forever, was when a horse called Stretarez ran at Chester in the Ormonde Stakes in 1998. It was available at 50/1 and we didn’t advise our members to back it. You guessed right. It won. Talk about egg on our face!

Another downer was when Teeton Mill (who’d previously won the Hennessy and King George) slipped his hock when he was favourite for the Cheltenham Gold Cup and pulled up never to race again.

What do you do to relax and unwind? Do you any interests outside of the world of horse racing?

Doing what I do for a living certainly isn’t 9-to-5. And the way the sporting calendar and betting opportunities have exploded over the years, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of working all hours, 7 days a week, especially when you work from home.

I live in Buxton, Derbyshire (yes, where the water comes from) and I’m surrounded by the Peak District. So when I haven’t got my bum glued to my office chair, I try and stretch my legs, hit the hills and get some fresh air.

I watch a fair bit of sport, I’m a big reader and I’ve been known to do a bit of fishing.

Also, I hit 45 at the end of 2017 so staying fit (well relatively!) is important to me and I actually really enjoy it. Swimming, pilates and something called CrossFit are pretty much my weekly ritual.

Okay, thanks for inviting me to share a bit about me and my experiences.
Your readers can contact me anytime about my current winning opportunities by calling me directly on my personal mobile – 07917 356942 – or sending me an email to steve@winningonline.co.uk.

Next up a chat with Michael Carr of the Lucrative Racing Trust