along with his deputy has been cleaning up the bookmakers for years. The Sheriff's job became considerably easier with the launch of peer to peer betting exchanges at the turn of the millennium bringing gambling out of the wild west and in to a new era.

For the first time ever this revolutionary introduction of a new betting system allowed the average Joe in the street the opportunity to act as a bookmaker legally, without holding a license. As with anything there will always be dishonest people in life who try to beat the system and attempt to spoil it for everyone else but, on the whole , we feel that this is a very small element in comparison to the amount of people that will use the service on a daily basis and the risk is minimal.


The best thing to do to avoid any kind of conflict or sour grapes is to avoid laying horses in very low grade races I.E. claimers and banded racing (class 7), these races are incredibly hard to predict and when the runners are competing for about a £1000 purse we would rather not get involved.

Try and base your reasons for opposing a selection on a set criteria.

1) The horse has never run before
2) The horse has had a few chances and you do not think he or she is up to much
3) You can find at least two runners to oppose the favourite or your lay selection
4) The price: try not to lay anything bigger than 2-1 as your liability is too great
5) The going: very soft or very firm ground can be a factor
6) The weights: if the selection has won and gone up in the weights (carrying a penalty)
7) Fillies taking on Colts
8) Younger horses taking on older horses.

We have been doing this for over ten years and feel that if you are going to gamble and would like to make a secondary income this is a safer way of doing it rather than perhaps playing on roulette machines in bookmakers where you have perhaps a 1-35 chance of winning. If you lay a horse in a 10 runner race you have an effective 90% chance of winning, although it is not quite that simple.

We still back horses to win or each way with some success but the laying strategy is much more profitable.