Who's your enemy? It's the question most punters get badly wrong - and must get right if they want to win

Know your enemy – a sound morsel of advice urged upon us by Sun Tzu and Rage Against The Machine, among others. But it's not easy to follow when you're betting on horses because first you have to identify the enemy and that's not as straightforward as most imagine.

Is it as simple as saying 'all bookmakers'? Almost any outsider would imagine so because we bang on all the time about our attempts to "beat the bookies". Those impartial onlookers see two gangs at war, one holding most of the cash and the other trying to whip it off them.

It was my colleague Peter Thomas who started me thinking about this, with his seven golden rules of punting last week. "Bookmakers are not the punter's friend," he wrote. "If ever you find yourself thinking they are being generous, assume they are just tempting you into more bad habits than you have already."