Beating the odds at the TAB

GRAHAM REID talks with Justin Swift, one of the TAB team setting the odds.

Justin Swift admits he has a job many men might want. He's paid to watch sport.

As one of five TAB risk managers - bookies in street parlance - his brief is to set odds on cricket matches, rugby league games and the gallops.

So this BA graduate from Victoria University ("maths, a bit of law, some philosophy and classics as interest subjects") spends his days watching television, reading sports pages, scanning the Internet for results and bookies' odds, and doing what many consider a leisure activity.

"Yes, there are a lot of things which don't seem like work; there'd be 20 hours of this job I'd have to squeeze into my social life if I didn't have it," says Swift, acknowledging being single makes managing that social life, or lack of it, easier.

Setting odds means never being able to say you're available. During the cricket season, if New Zealand is playing in Britain, he's up early, reading overnight news reports to anticipate new odds for the next day's play. He watches cricket test matches six hours a day, five days a week - plus doing other work. There are night games after office hours ...

"It's very time-consuming. And I've noticed sport annoys me more than it used to. I find myself getting irate with the television when we've staked an opinion one team is going to win, and the other is playing well. I used to just watch sport and enjoy it. It cuts more deeply these days."

Swift and his colleagues are the subject of a Monday night television documentary Odds Fellows (TV1, 8.30 pm), an insight into a multi-million-dollar business at the intersection of mathematics, instinct, information and luck.

At 28, Swift has been a risk manager for two years. With fellow risk managers he discusses team performances, match conditions, variables such as weather or track conditions, how a particular referee will impact on a game, and anything which could make a difference to the way a race is run or a game is played.

Within the Wellington TAB, office managers have specialised portfolios, interests, contacts and data bases. The odds set are mathematically expressed opinions based on the best information available. The trick is to ensure, especially when one team is clearly favoured, odds remain attractive to punters.

"When everyone knows one team will win, you need a good betting proposition to encourage people, but not take a bath yourself."

He cites last weekend's All Blacks versus Tonga match, where punters could bet New Zealand would win by between 1 to 30 points, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, or 91 plus.

"We got most of the betting into 31 to 60 and 61 to 90 brackets, so 102-nil was a good result for us. It's a trickier proposition than having two even teams and figuring out where the odds have to be."

Previous form is the best guide, but factors such as the influence of a referee can be significant.

Rugby referee Jim Fleming is notorious for blowing the whistle frequently and therefore giving penalty opportunities.

"In league, Tim Mander doesn't generally seem to give the away-team a chance to win. In his first 18 games this year, only once did the away-team perform better than what the bookmakers' line on the game was."

That's not to say Mander will do this every time, but it's something to factor in.

"The key is identifying when you've got a favourite you think will lose, so we can attract money on them and reap the rewards, which is much more beneficial than if picking an outsider to lose."

Swift says it's not simply how they see the game, but anticipating how the market will read it. Last weekend's New Zealand Maori game against Scotland, won by Maori 18-15, for example.

"We thought the average score would be Maori winning by about 30 points. We got shown wrong because they played poorly and the Scots were good.

"But the betting public, even though it saw the odds favouring Maori to win by that much, was still betting on Maori to win by that, or more. For us it was a good result because, even though we were wrong, they were more wrong. So the way the public sees it is crucial."

In league, New Zealanders favour Wests Tigers from Sydney and the Warriors more than Australian punters do, so our odds offer smaller returns on them than Australian bookies, "although there are a lot of people here who love betting against the Warriors, and they do all right."

The TAB handles two types of betting: the traditional horse racing of Totalisator Agency Board (established in 1951) and fixed-odds betting (established in 1996), where risk managers play the same field as all other bookmakers - there are almost 100 legal on-line bookies today - and try to set the most attractive odds across a number of codes and fixtures.

Last year's TAB turnover on 358 betting days was $1.056 billion, with $849 million paid in dividends and $62 million paid to the racing industry. There has been an incremental increase in Internet betting, up from around $180,000 weekly a year ago to around $400,000 per week today.

Bets are permitted on sporting fixtures where the TAB has contracts with the national body of the code as recognised by the Hillary Commission. Such contracts allows them to take bets on international contests. No arrangement with the Olympic and Commonwealth Games associations means no bets taken for Sydney 2000. And you can't speculate on whether Todd Blackadder will be All Black captain for more than two seasons.

Sports betting manager Neil Sorenson says the TAB doesn't take boxing bets because there is no current contract, "but, to be fair, boxing has been tarnished in the past. Then again, with what's happened with cricket it would be hypocritical to say only boxing is tainted. It's one we'll reassess."

The early part of the week is spent analysing the weekend's results, researching and pricing, and firming up opinions about forthcoming events. Latter weekdays are spent monitoring odds and changes.

"And Saturday and Sunday are the big trading days," says Swift. "We pretty much sit in front of the terminal watching money coming in."

If too much money moves in from a single source, alarm bells go off. Literally.

"We set limits so if a bet pushes over that liability, no more bets will be sold so things don't sneak out of hand."

These days, Swift feels, there is almost too much sport to watch and post odds on, and only so many discretionary dollars. The racing dollar may be reinvested eight times ("people go along with $20 and end up spending $160 and come home with nothing") but a Friday night All Blacks match often means the weekend league dollar will be down, "until the All Blacks have paid out, and at 9.15 pm a flood of money will come in."

Swift enjoys the occasional flutter, but only on the Tote. Risk managers are not allowed to bet on fixed odds because they might be in a position to influence the outcome, although "the boys doing fixed-odds have accounts with Australian bookmakers, so they go offshore."

The TAB system here is transparent and tightly audited, and risk managers paid well. All of which discourages any temptation to work the system to their advantage, says Swift.

He's not a Nick Leeson in the TAB then?

"Oh no, I'm just trying to set myself up. I've almost got my student loan paid off."