Ian is a keen chess player and amateur musician, but trained in the sciences.

He 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 Australian Horse Race Betting. Always profitable the group began to branch out, firstly into Hong Kong horse 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.

In 2015 Ian started makingthemarkets.com as a means to assist punters with their selections and methodology in horse racing and some sports. Using complete databases for all areas involved, the markets are statistically and data driven, and do not rely at all on subjective factors. From prices generated, possible bets are suggested based on overlay and other statistical 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. Golf markets are produced for each stroke play event on the US PGA tour. Additionally, the British Open and Australian Open are presented. Australian Rules Football prices for each AFL round are also supplied.

hopeia is now the shopfront for these products, in order to streamline delivery and give more options to clients.  Examples of the digital products can be viewed via the Samples menu item above. There maybe some very short periods throughout the year where we are unable to provide the full services described, but these will be rare and well notified.