The Times Magazine 21the word go I loved the thrill of watching a
roulette wheel spin. I gambled on Hungarian
handball, considered myself an expert on
American horse racing from Santa Anita,
California, and even found myself gripped by
Ecuadorian U23 football. The extent of my
addiction meant I once won close to £20,000
on a basketball accumulator based on the
points scored in each game, despite not having
heard of any of the teams, let alone players,
involved. In the course of that very night
I then lost every penny of the win, predicting
which team was going to score the next try
and whether the conversion would be missed
in an Australian rugby league game between
Cronulla Sharks and South Sydney Rabbitohs.
Knowledge or informed judgments ceased to
matter – I just needed to bet.
There were occasions when I won big
enough amounts to erase my debts and walk
away. At one stage in 2016 I had more than
£96,000 across my many online gambling
accounts – enough to get me out of trouble,
but not enough to satisfy my addiction:
I always wanted more. If I had £96,000, why
not tick it into six figures? But that wouldn’t
have been enough either. A few days laterI lost it all and was back to square one,
scratching around until my next payday.
Money would become truly worthless, just
a means to bet. At the same time, I stopped
spending money on essential items. I didn’t
buy clothes and, even though I desperately
needed to, I wouldn’t pay to go to the dentist
because I considered it too expensive.
By 2018 I’d no money left. In fact – I’d
much less than that. Aged 24 I’d become a
teacher at a private school, partly in the hope
that the routine and responsibility would deter
me from gambling. It didn’t work. I’d begun to
supplement my salary – which had averaged
about £32,000 per year – in increasingly
desperate ways. I’d taken out 23 bank, payday
or unsecured loans. I’d borrowed money from
loan sharks and drug dealers. I’d borrowed
money from the parents of children I’d taught,
and from colleagues. I’d borrowed money from
friends and family. In total, since my gambling
began, I’d borrowed money from 113 different
people, adding up to £497,000. The necessity
to repay some of these loans and the odd
hefty win meant not all of this was debt. Thatsaid, I still had £238,000 outstanding, that was
effectively due to be repaid immediately.The final descent began 12 days before I stood
on Slough station. I’d received an email that
made me lie awake all that night, racked
with anxiety. It was from a parent of a child
I taught whom I’d previously borrowed a
significant amount of money from. He was
asking why the repayments had dried up. The
email questioned whether my issue was, in
fact, gambling. If it was, he said, that made the
whole thing worse, and he’d have no choice
but to inform the school.I persuaded one of my many VIP managers
at an online bookmaker to give me £100 in
free bets, and I sold a couple of tickets I had
for the Thursday of Cheltenham festival to
a friend of a friend for a good whack – £300.
The tickets had been a freebie from another
gambling company. They lavish their biggest
losers – those who gamble the most – with
compensatory gifts.
And then came a phone call. As someone
with two lives, I hated phone calls, preferring
to communicate via WhatsApp or email. But
I was desperate. I contacted a wealthy figure I
respected greatly and had borrowed from
before. I explained how a close family member
had received devastating news about their
health. Their chances of survival relied on
urgent treatment that would come at significant
cost when done privately. The cost, I said, was
£10,000 but that I would be able to pay the
loan back when the surgery was done and my
family member was able to access their funds.
Not a word of this was true and my real
belief, of course, was that I would be able
to pay back this person – and countless others,including the parent badgering me – when
Cheltenham was over and I’d completed the
simple task of turning 10 grand into 150 grand,
which was the figure I thought would get me
out of trouble at school and spare me jail. I’d
won big before. Easy.
Just before 5pm, this person came through.
Flooded with relief, I could scarcely believe it.
Then came a period of intense study: working
out how I would use my pot. I opted to be
consistent in who I backed, choosing the
Gigginstown House Stud, the trainer Gordon
Elliott and the jockey Davy Russell. I wouldn’t
back them exclusively, but they would be the
focus of my more elaborate bets.
Tuesday and Wednesday? A blur. I tried to
balance teaching, gambling and watching what
I was gambling on – which, by the way, wasn’t
just Cheltenham, but racing at Fontwell Park,
cricket in the Pakistan Super League and, in
the evening, any football that was on. I finished
off each day with a trip to the virtual casino.
There were early wins, but they tailed off. I
was increasingly despondent, feeling physically
sick and, by Thursday morning, ready to give
up. I had only about £2,000 of the loan left.
But during a free period, I’d placed a series
of bets based on a hunch that this would be a
good day for the Irish and for Gordon Elliott.
Among them was a “Lucky 15”, which is
among the most complicated bets available,
but is familiar to the seasoned gambler. It
includes four single bets, six doubles (in a
double, you bet on two outcomes and need
both to be successful), four trebles (in a treble,
you bet on three outcomes and need all of
them to be successful) and a fourfold (in a
fourfold, also known as a quadruple, you bet
on four outcomes and need all of them to be
successful) across four different events. Each
of the above bets stand in isolation. However,
with every win, the odds for the next bet
increase, and the final selection is worth
double odds from the outset. My stake was
£2 (so a total of £30 across the 15 bets), and
I backed a few of my selections in standalone
bets too, just in case. I thought nothing more
of it as over the years I’d made hundreds of
bets with such seemingly insignificant stakes
that were all very unlikely to come good.
But slowly, as I watched in the pub after
school, they started coming in... Shattered
Love, ridden by Will Kennedy and trained
by Gordon Elliott, roared home. Then Delta
Work, a French horse ridden by Davy Russell
and trained by Gordon Elliott, did the same.
So too Balko Des Flos, defeating a massive
favourite (I’d also backed the favourite as a
contingency). I was in complete shock.
Having calmed myself down using the tried
and tested combination of Stella Artois and
Marlboro Lights, my fourth horse, Storyteller,
won the 4.10. My £30 stake had returned
£28,672.60. Not only that, but I’d backed allI OWED MONEY TO THE PARENT OF A PUPIL.
NOW HE THREATENED TO TELL THE SCHOOL
At his wedding to
Charlotte in 2019COURTESY OF PATRICK FRASER