Betting supremo slips away
The South China Morning Post of 28 January carried news of the death of Australian Alan Woods, erstwhile actuary and the world’s most successful horse-racing gambler.
Born in 1945 in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, Woods showed an early aptitude for mathematics at school but was a losing punter in his earliest days at university and gambling played little part in his life until his 30s. It was while working as an actuary in the late 1970s that Woods learned to count cards at blackjack and became a serious gambler for the first time in his life. He travelled the world for the following three years as a professional card-counter, undertaking all kinds of disguise and subterfuge to avoid identification by the world’s casinos.
However, his earnings at blackjack were tiny compared with his subsequent career in racing. Woods turned to horseracing in New Zealand in 1982, then shifted his life and focus to Hong Kong, and its big betting pools, in 1984. A founding partner in the earliest computer betting team in Hong Kong, which split after a dispute between the partners in the early 1990s, Woods established his own hugely successful betting operation, with employees based around the world. He had built a fortune estimated at more than £300m before his death.
Woods grew to the point of dominating the Hong Kong betting scene in recent years, over and above other successful computer teams. He enjoyed his wealth and was famed in Hong Kong racing circles for his bacchanalian parties and celebrations. Once a regular in Wan Chai’s bars and nightclubs, Woods had become more reclusive and relocated to Manila several years ago, but his operation continued to lay out between 1% and 2% of Hong Kong’s entire annual racing turnover (which totalled $64bn in the last completed season).
