'Are you fired? I thought you were': how to breathe life into the tipping game

The other night, after three or four pints in a northern drinking establishment local to me – named, aptly, North Bar (no, they're not all called that) – a pointed discussion arose about the relative merits of following people who are paid to tip horses while advertising themselves as 'experts' or 'pros' in their own right versus those who keep their head down and simply profit from their own analysis by purely betting.

It’s obvious to see why this fascinated me, jack of all trades, master of none. For several years I've made at least half my income from the latter and the remainder from the former.

The point of the increasingly heated, 6.5 per cent IPA-fuelled discussion (note to self: future hot take 'Isn't booze STRONG these days?') was that without a certain amount of skin in the game, how can you claim credibility when advising bets? It's one thing to tell your followers to 'get on at 10-1' when the price is gone after ten minutes and prices are unobtainable for all but the earliest of birds; it's another to try to get a decent wedge on yourself.