Plenty of punters do heaps of work, take punting very seriously and still lose. Sure, there are a lot of so called 'mug punters' around who only punt on tips and favorites and do very little or no work at sorting out the complexities of the punt, but it would be wrong to describe all losing punters as mug punters who don't put the hours in.

When betting on humans [the jocks and trainers etc.] and animals, there will always be 100's of variables that are impossible to work out or know before a race. That's the main reason punting is called a negative expectation game.