Meet the pro punter (and master of disguise) finally stepping out of the shadows after years of battling the bookies

Pro punter Moray Smith has joined the Racing Post as a new columnist for the jumps season and will be sharing the insight gained from nearly two decades of battling the bookmakers every week with Racing Post+ Ultimate subscribers.

Not a subscriber? You can sign up now at a special rate of just £20 for the first month - that's a whopping 60% discount - using the offer code MORAYSMITH20 when you join Racing Post+ Ultimate Monthly. And you'll also be able to access The Big Jump Off via the digital newspaper from 9pm on Sunday, October 19, plus all of our unmissable jumps stable tours which launch the following day with Nicky Henderson.

Below, you can read the interview that introduced Smith to the Racing Post when he spoke to Peter Thomas in September. His first column will appear in The Big Jump Off and then every Wednesday online through the season.

• It’s the signing of the season! Pro punter Moray Smith (aka Cheltenham Man) joins the Racing Post 

Take a good look at Moray Smith. You may recognise him. Perhaps as a feckless maths student at Leicester Poly; later a gifted but reluctant actuary with General Accident in York; maybe as an independent pensions consultant, married with two daughters and a goatee beard.

What he really was, though, was a man with a growing realisation that what he truly wanted out of life was to turn his part-time punting into a lucrative career as a professional gambler (becoming an adviser to JP McManus wasn't necessarily on the agenda at this stage, but if it were to happen, so be it).

Which is why, if you happened to be a betting shop manager in the broad Oxfordshire/Hampshire/Berkshire/Wiltshire area in the late noughties, you may recognise Moray as a clean-shaven geography teacher with an unconvincing wig and a borderline obsession with punting on the Cheltenham Festival. On occasions, also, a Russian spy from the Cold War era, Rab C Nesbitt or possibly a road mender.

It was disguised as these multifarious characters that Smith, by now a successful backer attempting to place in the vicinity of 800 bets each year on the festival, totalling around £700,000, sought to circumvent the mean-spirited attentions of the big firms. Usually he'd be rumbled sooner or later, but that didn't mean it wasn't worth a try.

"I started out going to a wig shop in Sandhurst that specialised in people needing chemotherapy," says Smith, now ensconced in a smart house in leafy Hants, with second wife Nicola and two more daughters.

"I was told they were hairpieces, not wigs, and they'd cost way north of a grand for a nice one, but I told them what I wanted it for and a few of them thought it sounded like fun, so they went to the rejects pile, found me one that didn't look too bad, and they let me have it for 50 quid and a tip on the Grand National [which lost].

"Then I went to a charity shop and got a sports jacket with padded sleeves, then some glasses, the wedding ring went, the goatee went, I tried to make myself look completely different, scared my girls and even startled myself when I looked in the mirror for the first time."

The tall, urbane, "sparsely thatched" maths wizard was transformed several times over into new identities that baffled the bookies, perhaps only briefly but long enough to get on a string of chunky bets that yielded the desired results. When it came to collecting the winnings, however, the game was quickly up and the latest avenue of access to 'getting on' with the high street firms was closed off. He'd tried everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, but the algorithms were closing in.

Pro punter Moray Smith in his games roomCredit: Edward Whitaker

"It got to the point where the trading staff were looking down cameras at the tills, so that even paying by cash as a stranger in a dodgy 'syrup' was no good," says the frustrated chap who discovered that he was known in trading offices across the region as 'Cheltenham Man', a murky figure feared by area managers for his impact on their bottom line.

"I know they had meetings about me and I was once shown a file they had on me in a shop, with a grainy picture of me in a terrible anorak. It was funny, but it became almost impossible to get a decent bet on."

'It's a gift, something you can't really teach'

"Don't get me wrong," says Smith, in a surprising outburst of empathy with the old enemy, "if I set up a betting shop and I'm busy taking money off pensioners and one git comes in every week and wins it all back off me, I'm not going to take his bets.

"I want it both ways, though. After all, I have no links to stables, possibly less inside information than they do, but my skill is I can synthesise all the data into the correct price, on average, better than they can.

"The game is trying to get the money on and it's up to them to stop me."

It's a struggle that has been brewing since the young Smith was lured into the attic of his family home in Grantham to be fleeced of his pocket money in an older brother's makeshift casino. With his eyes now wide open, however, the boy soon came to the life-altering conclusion that although his other older brother was a bona fide expert on pop music and the Top 20, what counted most was his own nascent grasp of odds and likelihood.

Yes, Fraser was right, Abba's Dancing Queen was the most likely song to be number one this week, but his 5-2 should have been more like even-money, and little brother's pocket money was quickly regained with interest.

"You can have all the science and all the data but the rest is something you can't really teach, it's a gift," muses Smith half a century on, reflecting on a punting journey that began when his bank manager (and keen punter) father agreed to boost the appeal of a family sweepstake on the 1975 Grand National – a Terry's Chocolate Orange to the winner – by placing a bet for his youngest son on his selection L'Escargot.

The race that started it all for Moray Smith: L'Escargot and Tommy Carberry (right) win the 1975 Grand National from Red RumCredit: Gerry Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

In the ensuing melee, as the excited lad badgered his father about the winnings on a £1.50 bet at 13-2, his mother stepped in with a withering condemnation, leaving his father "a broken man", also a man who had not only forgotten to put the bet on but had neglected to buy the Chocolate Orange.

Smith had duly received his first ride on the gambling rollercoaster, with all the elation, disillusionment and disapproval that accompanied it, but, undeterred, he was soon set on a path of trying to get the better of fruit machines, quiz machines and corporate accountants, by fair means or foul.

"It's a grubby life," he concedes, "taking a cut of losing punters' money while your brothers are teachers, doctors and policemen. Sometimes you wonder what you've done with your life, but all you can do is try to do good with the winnings, for your family."

'Cheltenham Friday this year was a low point'

It's normally around this time of year that Smith starts to think about stretching and yawning after a Flat season spent in hibernation. He decided back in 2007 that, financially secure thanks to his consultancy work and rental properties, he could make the switch from recreational punter to professional, as long as he concentrated on what he had come to realise was his strength: the big races.

"I like to have a break over the Flat season, because I'm totally immersed in it for six months and can't think of anything else," says Smith. "I can't afford to miss anything."

With the internet all but useless to him now as a betting medium, the shops are key, although the diesel and shoe leather involved have become a grind over the years.

"I call it 25/8, not 24/7, for four or five months, the driving around, getting bets on," he says. "I get my positions with the bookies, then trade them on Betfair nearer the time. I've worked out that I've given back about three-quarters of a million that way, but I don't know if I could take a losing Cheltenham, so I'll happily condense all my figures into smaller pluses and minuses."

He leaves the immaculate minimalist kitchen – which I've done my best to mess up with crumbs from the cookies provided – and comes back with a colossal wad of losing slips from the last Cheltenham Festival that he's ready to chuck out, now he's sure there's nothing to come, all evidence of the nitty-gritty of the life of a pro punter.

"On the sports betting terminals you can only have a £35 stake, so you've got to do it again and again and again," he says. "It takes 20 minutes before you can have another bet, so you go to a shop down the road, ten minutes there, ten minutes back, and do the same again."

Once upon a time, that wad of slips would have been even bigger, the stakes heavier, were it not for the increasing struggles to get on that have hastened Smith's decision to emerge fully from the shadows with a full-throttle autobiography, Cheltenham Man: My Life In The Shadows. He shares his punting records, which reveal a profit of £2.2 million since he started punting full-time in the 2007-08 season, but more recently it's been a battle to get the profits towards six figures for the year. All of which makes the details of March 14 even more painful.

Poniros's (right) Triumph Hurdle win was a nightmare for Moray SmithCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

"Cheltenham Friday this year was a low point," he offers with feeling when I ask him for a tale of dismal failure that will reassure the rest of us mere mortals. "I thought there had never been a horse more certain to be in the first three than East India Dock in the Triumph, so he was my biggest bet, all each-way, 16-1, 10-1, 8-1.

"Lulamba would have been a very good result as well, I backed the leading Irish horse and at the last minute I decided to cover everything else in the race, no matter what the price, all to win the same amount.

"I was a bit pissed off when Poniros came and did Lulamba and East India Dock, but at least I'd covered it at a big price. Only, when I went and got my laptop, there was a huge red on him. I'd done every single horse but accidentally missed him. I should have had £250 at 100-1 and I'd missed it. I picked my glasses up and threw them across the room.

"Nicola said, 'I cannot be around this, you turn into a different person when Cheltenham's on – you can't take it too seriously, it's just money'. But it isn't. It was all the work I'd put in, all the times I'd been refused bets, how carefully I'd had to build my East India Dock stake up without spooking the price, and all for a massive loss. That was the most I've ever let it show."

'I'm still amazed I get to chat to JP'

He may sound like a tungsten-tipped professional, but Smith has his weaknesses like the rest of us and can even succumb to the same unbusinesslike tendencies. Like the day he was introduced to McManus.

It was in the Dorchester in London's Park Lane, and when the great owner, gambler and jump racing legend descended from his suite to chat over tea and nice biscuits, all thoughts of a business arrangement, some kind of consultancy work for handsome remuneration, seemed to disappear from the Moray mindset.

"The idea was that maybe JP would pay me a fee, but it's never moved on from our chatting and me telling him what I think," he admits. "To be honest I'm a bit of a fanboy.

"We do FaceTime over the winter from Barbados and we talk about his horses, what I think they should be running in and what he should be betting on.

"Mainly, though, it makes me do extra work, gen up on his horses so I know everything about them. Maybe the novelty will wear off but I'm still amazed that it's happening."

It's not the kind of confidence that's given lightly by a man like McManus, of course. Smith has earned it through his highly profitable specialisation on the big races, and as a man who loves nothing more than communal joy among punters, he's delighted to share the tale of his best day's punting.

It came on Grand National day in 2018, when Tiger Roll was bidding for his first win in the great Aintree race. Smith had started backing him at 50-1 and then got busy once he had shown himself to be revitalised with a win in the festival cross-country race.

"I was up to about £500 each-way – including a £50 free bet with Ladbrokes [the glee here is unmistakeable] – but after Cheltenham he was still 33-1," recounts the grateful punter with an excitement we've all felt.

"I started smashing into him, going to Bicester and that part of Oxfordshire, asking for 50 quid each-way, having a coffee and asking for a bit more, and if they said they'd have to ring up to get it cleared, I'd make my excuses and leave.

"I had a bit back on the exchanges but kept a lot and won 120 grand. It took me back to the year L'Escargot won. There were tears in my eyes and I wanted to ring Dad and tell him, but he was long gone, sadly. I wanted to tell Mum everything had turned out all right, but she was gone, too.

"Normally it's just money, but that one was different – and then he nearly got caught on the line. What the f**k!"

Tiger Roll's victory in the 2018 Grand National was a particularly sweet moment for Moray SmithCredit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

These were years that highlighted the unforgiving topography of the gambler's landscape: the stiff climbs, the forbidding peaks, the doom-filled abysses and the exhilaration of the final ascent and the planting of the flag.

Even the final few yards of the climb can undo all the hard work, as the oxygen of good fortune runs out, which is where the philosophy of the long-term winners comes in.  

"You can win a lot of money but realise later that you've fluked it," warns Smith, "so you can never believe you've got the Midas touch, or fall into a pit of depression if the luck goes against you.

"All told, though, I prefer money won to money earned. You have a lot more fun spending it because you haven't had to do eight-hour shifts to get it. You're not going to shell out that kind of money on a bottle of champagne if you've had to work that hard for it."

In his book, the frustrated backer talks of the advancing disillusionment with the tedious business of trying to get the big bookies to take his money, or allow him to take theirs, but as a parting word he distils the essence of the game for the benefit of those who can still get on.

"Successful punting is part art and part science," he says. "If you have both and can operate in that sweet spot between the two, then you've cracked it. That's the kingdom of the big winners."

It's where you'll find Cheltenham Man.

Cheltenham Man: My Life In The Shadows is available to buy here

This interview has been made free to read. Racing Post+ Ultimate subscribers can read more great interviews here:

'I know what people said about me - but I didn't care because I wasn't going to jock myself off my own horses' 

'Having been a trainer, I know the racing manager is sometimes your worst nightmare' 

'I don't feel pressure - I just get enjoyment. Every time I sit on a horse, the outside world just disappears' 

Credit: Edward Whitaker

Moray Smith's column will appear every week through the jumps season for Racing Post+ Ultimate subscribers as part of the ultimate horseracing subscription. Sign up now and you can get 60% off your first month using the code MORAYSMITH20, plus you'll have access to The Big Jump Off and our unbeatable series of stable tours featuring the likes of Nicky Henderson, Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton. Available only to new and returning customers. Subscription will auto-renew at £49.95 unless you call our cancellation line to cancel.