I've done plenty of gambling over the last 12 or so years. Really enjoy it.
Started back in about 2004 when I got some info from a mate that Gavin Wanganeen was going to pull out of our game against the roos at the dome. I think Damon White and Brad Symes both played their debuts that game. Anyway, long story short, went down to the pub, had to get the barman to show me how to use the tab. Put $50 on the roos at $2.10 and another $20 on them over 39.5, paid $6ish from memory.
The roos went on to win by 91pts (I think), I've been hooked ever since!
Joined a footy forum shortly after that, started punting on games, hit a few winning streaks and started to take it a bit more seriously. Was making money but nothing serious.
In Oct 2005 I joined a new site by the name of Betfair.
Was getting crazy prices. The lions won in Perth vs the Eagles. The bookies paid $4.25 and I got $8.50 on Betfair. I was loving it.
I was just punting and starting to develop some systems to go with just my judgement.
The best system I had was "Last week loser vs Last week winner". Back the loser at the line this week. - Basically worked on the theory that punters overreact to the previous results. I was profitable, hitting around the 57% mark.
Punting was profitable but I was becoming more interested in the theory of betting, market percentages, arbitrage, etc.
Was going through uni at the time so had plenty of spare time, and was willing to chase the coin.
I'm a numbers man, always have been (Did Engineering at Uni and also did a finance degree as a side interest). So it came naturally to me I guess.
Learnt to trade (hence the name trader) and started to make a reasonable amount doing so.
While trading / monitoring my positions, I started to kill time by playing online poker.
Never deposited into an account, but pulled out plenty of reasonable amounts over a two-or-so year period.
Playing free-rolls, and bonus whoring were the keys. Whenever I needed to withdraw from an account I would just chip dump to a mate who had real accounts. Certainly not massive money, but for a side interest it was buying a few cartons of beer a month.
However, where I started to strike gold was back on betfair in what I refer to as "cross-marketting". This was a gold mine. Could easily lay 103%, after commission. Was getting huge turnover too, so picked up plenty of betfair points, dropping my commission rate and opening up further opportunities to cross market.
Markets became tighter and tighter (used to be able to offer 104% in H2H, now that's 100.5% at best), and Betfair brought in the dreaded "premium charge". Continued doing it a bit after that, but gave up about 18 months ago. I also finished uni and got a "real job" over that time so had less time / willingness / need to do it at the end of a work week so it was certainly an easier decision to give it away.
Still jump on betfair every now and then to trade bigger events (state of origin, brownlow medal market, AFL Grand Final week, etc), but basically would only consider myself a recreational punter now days.
Have started to move into live poker. You'll now see me in at Sky City on average 2 nights a weekend. I'm not a gun, but can confidently say I beat the rake plus a bit of pocket money. Still refining my game, but starting to get to a point that I can rely on Poker providing me a bit of splash cash for the week, not to mention 2 nights entertainment each week.