The principle of bookmaking is to accept bets on several horses and maintain a spread which will ensure a profit regardless of the outcome of the race. The assumption to this is that the total amount wagered is equal on most horses or within a certain percentage of equality. An imbalance results in higher amount of risk to bookmakers. The bookmakers are generally known to adjust their prices in an attempt to balance wagering so that they get profit at the end of each race. This is a form of arbitrage.

Is this practice still prevalent in India? No says Aashish Abraham, a leading bookmaker in Bangalore. Unlike most Indian bookmakers, Aashish is highly educated, having been a qualified Chartered Accountant. ''In the present scenario where disproportionate money is attracted by only a few horses in a big field that is in the fray, any one going strictly by the principles of bookmaking is exposed to great risk. It is only a matter of time before he winds up. Bookmaking concept worked in the past but now, with so many violent fluctuations in the market, instant communication, various factors influencing the performance of a horse, a bookmaker has to adopt different strategy to ensure his survival. He must have his ears to the ground.

''Bookmakers have greater chance of survival because a punter backs one horse whereas the bookmaker gets several bets in a race on different horses and only one of them is a winner. A mixture of calculated risk and gambling and gut feeling is what gives a bookmaker better chance. It is not bookmakers always make money. Many of them lose because nobody can survive without gambling himself. A punter may gamble on a horse and a bookmaker gambles by taking higher volume of bet on a particular horse without bothering to balance the book,’’ he added.

The urge to gamble is universal. A gambler is one who lives on hope. A punter may lose consistently and may quit the sport for a while. He can never leave the sport permanently. The only punter who never comes back to gamble again is the dead punter! A punter always lives on hope which acts as a dope because he always revels on the good days rather than the bad days. One good day in a race day is good enough to keep him going in the hope that he may have many more such days. Gambling is a quick way for a billionaire to become a millionaire!

Most punters don’t know how the odds on races are made. The odds are common all over the country whether it is for racing in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore or Mysore. There is no organized system by which the odds are created but there is an invisible system which sustains it. Though there are hundreds of bookmakers, it is only a few who take an active part in creating odds. Only a few bookmakers in the country provide odds, a day prior to racing. The odds are opened based on previous performance of a horse, the inputs from track reporters, privileged information flowing from stable hands. Then there are punters who want to jump at these odds in the belief that the odds may come crashing down and they hope to get a margin by the difference in odds. They generally back at higher odds and take it back at lower odds and keep a small margin. They will be looking for risk free money.

The odds take some shape due to betting action in the night (which of course is not through legal channels) and they are adjusted as per the flow and market expectation. The odds on the morning of the race day are opened based on the business the previous night and from then on it stabilizes to take a concrete shape. Now the field is open for everyone to come in. Violent fluctuations can result from then on. If the connections of a horse decide that the price offered on their horse is not adequate, negative vibrations may start, causing the price of a horse to drift alarmingly even if the correct horse has been identified. The price keeps changing constantly so much so that due to flow of money, a horse which opened originally as a cramped favourite may end up getting deserted and some fresh horse may corner all the betting in its place. The drift in odds has a bearing on the result but not necessarily all the times. The confidence of the connections also has a bearing irrespective of the merit of the horse. If the innate merit of the horse is not recognized by the connections that may fear another competitor in the race, then the price also goes up. Seeing the price going up on a horse, a punter deserts the merited horse and looks for some other option which is also the reason why a punter loses more often. A street-smart bookmaker exploits the situation and twists it to his advantage.

Many may be surprised to know that some of the most successful bookmakers in India don’t even buy a race book till an hour before race time. They may not know how to pronounce the name of a horse and generally identify a horse by its number rather than by its name. They start their operations after getting the odds which would have settled in some shape close to race time. Their instincts guide him rather than any racing knowledge. Of course, some of them are so well connected that they know which horse is negative in a race which helps them to take more risk on them. A bookmaker surely has his own intelligence network and connections which also help him to be better prepared than an unsuspecting punter who merely goes by hearsay or theories that he thinks are unbeatable and fall into a trap. A bookmaker is never dogmatic about his beliefs unlike a punter and this is why the former always has an edge. He reacts to the situation where as a dogmatic punter refuses to budge from his conviction. Some don’t have any conviction which is also the reason why they have less hope against the seasoned bookmaker. Some bookmakers operate strictly on margins by taking bets and passing them on to others at a small margin.

A bookmaker’s odds are also influenced by one or several large betting made on a particular horse. Bookmakers generally are wary of accepting big bets from ''professional gamblers’’ who are known to strike whenever they put their bets out. These sharp sharks are quite often forced to put out their bets through several of their agents with different bookmakers simultaneously to ensure that the desired money is cut out at more or less the same price. With lower stakes that are offered by race clubs as compared to the high costs of purchasing a horse and its maintenance, barring a few sporting owners, most treat racing as a commercial activity and thrive on betting and bringing off gambles. Whether they succeed or not is another question.

Most punters are guided by the odds in the bookmakers ring because they strongly believe in market forces. Market forces quite often also conspire to make a horse without merit as a favourite due to hype generated by a horse. A bookmaker has greater chance of surviving because a punter does not play equal amounts on all horses irrespective of odds. He tends to back more on a horse which is at cramped odds and then places a token bet on horses which offer big odds and this where he is defeated. He can never balance his betting with this kind of an approach. What also contributes to greater loss of a punter is the violent fluctuations like the ones seen during Mysore races where horses which are nowhere in the betting, suddenly gets slammed and those which started out as fancied runner exits without a race. These fluctuations also affect racing at Pune but the odds are more or less settled for racing held at Bangalore and Mumbai where there is greater method in madness.

Bookmakers always have the last laugh because a punter can never hope to win consistently. Some of them are also known to resort to unfair practices and influence the greedy professionals. A punter may win for a reasonable period of time but in the long run, he tends to lose however intelligent he may be. Have you ever seen a poor bookie?