'Either I put my head above the parapet or the club would have ceased to exist'

They don't call him 'The Lizard' for nothing. Tony Bloom is a gambler with the patience and predatory instinct of a hungry iguana, often exhibiting these characteristics while sitting practically motionless, for hours on end, in the unforgiving heat of the poker table.

It may not be the title he goes by in his role as chairman of Brighton and Hove Albion FC, or as the owner of successful racehorses Librisa Breeze, Penhill and Withhold, but in the fields of sports betting and poker in which he has made his reputation and his fortune, Bloom is recognisably a cold-blooded and unblinking operator.

By nature he is not given to shouting his business from the rooftops. In fact, you might go as far as to call the high-rolling 48-year-old secretive. Not reclusive – certainly not since Brighton's promotion to the Premier League and the twin Cheltenham Festival successes of Penhill – but he remains notoriously tight-lipped about his work, which is best described as a data-driven sports gambling business that uses unfathomable algorithms to help clients outperform bookmakers in the same way that a hedge fund might seek to profit from the stock market.