Making the Markets

Ian Hope leads the team at MakingtheMarkets and runs hopeia.com which is the official shopfront for the products detailed on this site.

Ian has been a professional gambler since 1989. He first became interested in horses while a post-graduate student in the late 1970s and even then started to maintain a database and write programs to calculate markets for Australian horse races. In fact he was sent down from his Ph.D studies for inappropriate use of the university mainframe computer systems in this regard. A career in computer programming and analysis followed along with a continuous data based racing and punting interest.

In the mid 1980s Ian began working closely with a team of horse racing punters in Adelaide headed by the Manuel brothers (Ferncourt). By the end of the decade he had joined the team professionally as the head programmer and IT manager, as they led the way in computer assisted horse racing betting. Always profitable the group began to branch out, firstly into Hong Kong racing and then into Sports Betting focussing on Golf and Tennis from the late 1990s. Ian left Ferncourt in 2006 to pursue a smaller but still very successful punting partnership which is current to this day.

MakingtheMarkets have complete databases for all the racing and sports that we get involved in. Our markets are statistically and data driven and do not rely at all on subjective factors. From these prices we then suggest possible bets based on overlay criteria.

In Australia, all metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney horse racing meetings are covered. Some significant meetings from other major Australian racing centres will also be presented. All Hong Kong horse racing meetings are covered.

We produce markets for each stroke play event on the US PGA golf tour. Additionally, the British and Australian Opens are usually covered.

Australian Rules Football, specifically AFL match prices and suggested bets for each round are also provided.

There maybe some periods thoughout the year where we are unable to provide the full services described above but these will be rare and well notified.