10 Top Mistakes in Betting

The first step to formulating a solution, is to define
the problem.
The following points are areas of betting where
many punters often get it wrong. My views arise
from long personal experience and years of
communication with successful and unsuccessful
punters alike.
My aim here is to highlight these common areas of
failure in the hope that I can speed up your
learning curve towards successful betting.
Read the following thoughts and you may be able
to side step many of the pot holes others have
fallen into in the past.

1) Failure to Use Betting Banks
Most gamblers fail to understand that the best
method of achieving a healthy and sustained long
term profit from racing is to set aside a sum of
money away from your main finances, solely for
the betting of horses.
Whatever method or system you are using,
whoever you are following or subscribing to or
however your own bets are calculated, you are
better off with a "Betting Bank" that has built -in
advantages that can help you. It needs to be
independent from your own personal finances and
needs to be protected from factors that can
threaten it. This can take a lot of emotion out of
the decision making process. Emotion is a factor
that threatens all punters.
The size of your betting bank will of course be
defendant upon your own individual circumstances
and free capital available. An analogy to the world
of shares perhaps may be that no financial adviser
worth his salt would advise you throw all your
capital into the stock market alone.
The vast majority of punters fail to use any form of
set aside bank. They bet randomly with what ever
money they have in their pocket at the end of the
week or go in too deep with stakes far in excess of
their personal safety levels.
A punter with a professional attitude will set aside
what he can comfortably afford to invest and then
determine the best use he can make of that fixed
sum of capital.
With a fixed sum of capital available you now move
on to the next reason for failure.

2) Failure to Stake Correctly
It is vital that you consider your betting bank as
capped in amount. You do not have an endless
pool of resources to dip into. Betting by its nature
carries inherent risks. These risks include periods
of low strike rates and long losing runs. Your
betting bank and staking should be adapted for the
method you use.
You must in advance, prepare yourself for the
possibility of a worse than average sequence of
losers through adoption of a sufficient number of
units in your betting bank.
Correct methodical staking in addition to the
mathematical advantage, can also help overcome
the risk of emotional reaction to a sequence of
unusually positive or negative results.
Take the Price-wise column in the racing post as
an example. Long term if you could get on at the
advised prices, it would have returned a decent
profit overall. During this time however followers
would have to have endured runs of up to 40
losers in a row!
Despite the overall long term profit I suspect the
vast majority of Price-wise followers would have
been terminated either by a failure to set aside a
sufficient amount of points or through failure to
cope with the emotion of the losing run.
in essence key to winning money is to manage
your accounts in a way that protects them as far
as possible from the element of risk that the game
presents you. With a long term profitable approach
at level stakes you need to plan for and anticipate
lean or losing periods.

3) Chasing Losses
Chasing losses at first sight may appear to be an
easy way to guarantee an eventual profit but the
true story is it is a game for fools and statistically
will not work unless you generate an overall level
stakes profit.
Chasing losses is a game for the ill informed who
do not want to make the effort to seek value in
their bets. Bookmakers have to price
up every race. Punters don"t have to play in every
race, they can pick the races they want to bet
in ,and that is the main edge that people fail to
understand. If you have had a losing day, by
attempting to chasing your losses you give up that
advantage and bet in the races that you should not
be betting in. You are therefore betting the way
bookmakers want you to and not in the way to win.
Many punters will alter their stakes in the last race
either to
"chase" losses or "play up" winnings. Its no
coincidence that the
bookmakers have ensured that the last race on
each day is often a handicap or one of the hardest
races that day . There will be more racing the next
day and the day after that. The secret is waiting for
opportunities and only betting when you know you
have circumstances which favor you and not the
bookmakers. You must never change your
approach, or deviate from sensible staking as there
is no such things as "The Last Race"

4) Lack of Value Appreciation
Appreciation of "value" in a bet is core to long
term success.
To profit over a long series of bets you must be
betting at odds greater than the true chance of
winning your selection have. To do this however
over the long term, you need to concentrate on
each race individually and seek the value bet in
that race.
There is value to be had in every race. The key to
it is understanding
where that value is. Many times a punter will
screw up a losing betting slip and say "At least I
had some value". There is absolutely NO
relationship between value and prices. A 33/1
chance may be diabolical value yet a very short
priced favorite may be supreme value. It does not
follow that the bigger the price you take the better
"value" you have . The value is sometimes clear
but more often well hidden and it takes a trained
eye to see that.
Everyone has this "Foresight" on occasions, it is a
game
about opinions after all and nobody is always right
or wrong. Value can be the most expensive word
in racing if you can"t bet winner. The old cliche is
that value is about betting a horse whose true
chance is better than its price reflects. That"s only
a small part of it. You also have to make sure that
you bet in the right way and in the right races as
that is the only way you can keep strike rates high
and protect a betting bank.
You should continually strive to increase value in
your bets. Once you have a selection you feel is
value do not just take the first acceptable price that
comes along. Seek to improve it by shopping
around the various bookmakers or try and top the
best bookmakers price by looking to the betting
exchanges.
Marginal improvements on odds on each bet you
make can have a dramatic effect on long term
profits.

5) Greed For Instant Wealth
Many punters seek the thrill of a life changing bet
that will produce huge gains of instant wealth for a
small outlay. Bookmakers play on your natural
desire and go out of their way to encourage you to
bet exotic multiple selection bets that can in one
hit, turn a small stake into a large sum.
Professionals however rarely bet in multiples. Most
professionals bet singles and steer away from the
multiple bets. Bookmakers relentlessly promote a
host of multiple bets with exotic names such as
Yankee, Lucky 15, and Goliath. The reason they are
heavily touted is the profit margin in the
bookmaker"s favour increases the more selections
you add to your multiple bet.
Say you select any random 5/1 selection. If you
bet this as a single the bookmaker may have a
theoretical edge in his favor of 15%. Taking two
such selections however and betting them in a win
double, the bookmakers profit margin rises to
about 30% !
Yes your win double can produce a much bigger
win from the same stake however over the long
term the bookmaker is eating away at your capital
at a much faster rate.
It is a waste of time debating which type of
multiple bet is "best". Unless your prediction skills
are supernatural or you are incredibly lucky, then
betting in singles is more often the best option.
You may say that many "Pros," do bet in multiples
in bets like The Scoop 6 or the Jackpot, but that"s
only because they know there is plenty of "Dead"
money in any given Pool and they are betting
against people who don"t understand the
dynamics of those types of bet. There are times
you should bet in multiples but in truth they are
few and far between.
You can"t approach this as a "Get Rich Quick "
scheme. It is a long slow process of serious and
sustained profit and not a game for Get Rich Quick
schemers. If you go Into any Betting shop, have a
look at all the posters on the wall offering "special
offers", "enhanced terms " and "bonus offers". You
will see they are all multiple bets. Bookmakers
want you betting in multiples and it is easy to see
why . They carve most profit from them. You never
see a Bookmakers promotion offering extra"s on a
win or each way single. Ask
yourself why .

6) Lack of Discipline
Lack of Discipline is the big hurdle for punters
trying to turn a losing
hobby into a winning one. Bookmakers know that.
That"s why in every
betting office you can bet on numbers, lotteries,
ball games, racing from all over the globe with
horses nobody has heard of before and even now
computer animated, or as they call it, virtual
racing.
Bookmakers just believe that its a case of punters
sitting all day betting on what ever is put in front
of them and sadly they are right in many
cases .They are simply thrill seeking and don"t
care what they bet on, as long as they can bet.
There is no methodology at all and many betting
office regulars are simply a bunch of headless
chickens prepared to pay long term for the
warming buzz of the occasional win.
Even more experienced regular gamblers who are
savvy enough to turn down bets that they know
are stupid always let themselves
down by continually bleeding their profits with a
fun tenner here and a fun tenner there.
It takes great discipline to NOT bet at times. It
takes discipline to walk away from a horse when
the price isn"t right. It takes discipline to say no to
that small fun bet. It takes discipline to keep your
money in your pocket and deny yourself the
emotional buzz of watching your runner.
Punters come in all shapes and sizes. Even the
shrewder punters who could win at the game, fall
into the trap of lack of discipline
of study. After a winning period they forget that
what made them winners in the first place, was the
effort they put in. They fall victim to
over confidence, laziness and indiscipline.
Being a long term successful punter is like
swimming against the tide. It takes an effort to
stay still, even greater effort to move ahead and as
soon as you relax or slack off you start to go backwards.

7) Emotion
Betting is a lonely game. Its also a highly skilled
game. Emotion
undermines success in many ways . There is
comfort in knowing that as a sheep when you are
wrong it is not your fault as you were simply doing
what everyone else was doing. With betting, the
laws of market supply and demand, dictate that
long term, the sheep will get fleeced. Emotion
neutralizes discipline and long proven successful
practices. The result of any isolated race has little
or no relation to races just before that or just after
that . Races should be viewed in isolation from
each other. We are all emotional in betting but the
players at the top of the tree have this down to a
fine art and can control those emotions. Other
punters have long since been conditioned by
bookmakers to EXPECT to lose rather than win.
They have an in built psychological factor that
makes them feel like
losers and they have been conditioned to losing
by years of doing so.
Over 95% of punters are flawed emotionally.
Examples of emotive gambling include punters
following a horse ,trainer or a jockey blind . The
"Hype" horses are cannon fodder for emotional
punters. They may also follow tipsters blind as
they "hate" the thought of missing out on a
winner.
They pay no attention to the changing conditions
of a race that may follow non runners or the
ground changing. They misunderstand confidence
and can"t cope with a lack of confidence. Emotion
also prevents people from advanced betting
subjects such laying , hedging and arbitrages.
Emotion forces some punters to bet horses with
certain names that remind them of loved ones.
Names such as "Long Tall Sally " and "Susan"s
Pride " attract many to them just for a name that"s
relevant to them .
Most punters have a grudge against their own
money and winning and being successful is alien
to them. Emotional punters lose their heads in
barren times and fail to capitalize on winning runs.
They mess about with systems and staking plans
that make no sense. The more emotion you can
rule out of your betting , the more successful you
will become . You have to view everyone in the
game as your enemy and as people trying to take
your hard earned money away from you in the
same way as you would a pickpocket . Once you
can master your emotions you have made the first
big step to betting profitably .

8) The Grass is Greener
The grass is rarely Greener on the Other Side. The
truth is that the grass that isn"t working for you
has not been grown, cultivated or looked after
properly. Many punters change approaches and
methods so quickly that they don"t give any
method a true test . If they find a system that
works they don"t continue after a few bad results .
It is the same as gamblers who write down every
bet they have . Once they have a few losers they
often lose the heart to do this and stop doing so
and move on to another area .
They are like children with new toys at Christmas .
They never stay with any method long enough to
prosper . They always feel the" Grass is Greener" ,
when in truth the "Grass" they are using has been
abused and left to deteriorate.
They want the next Big "new idea " or "method "
and that doesn"t work either as the fault lies not in
the Grass, but the Gardener .
They have no long term consistency in their
betting and are constantly tinkering with what
wasn"t broke or moving on in search of the holy
grail before a full evaluation of what they are
currently examining has been completed.
A competition to win best garden will be won by
the person who
can spend most time in the garden and master its
challenges, the
gardener who is prepared to care about his garden
and invest in the tools that will help his garden
grow and keep the weeds at bay.
It"s the same with betting. You will do far better
long term if you can make a concentrated effort of
learning and research in one key area rather than
flitting from this to that.

9) Laziness
Most punters are LAZY! They have religiously
followed a doctrine of poor planning and lack of
research. They refuse to study and spend hours
looking at how they can win at betting. They refuse
to invest in the game and invest in their own
learning . You cant refuse to spend money, just
look at the racing for 30 minutes and expect to win
long term. You simply can"t get away with that in
the hardest trade of all , Winning Money at Betting.
If it was that easy , then millions would do it .You
must either invest in your betting , or pay
someone to do just that .
Natural human tendency is to try and get away
with the least amount of effort. Lazy punters are
cannon fodder for the bookmakers. They make
little or no effort in their selection process nor
make an effort to extract maximum returns from
their bets. Those who put the most work in are the
more likely to succeed.
My philosophy is simple. I believe that if a
bookmaker, journalist or odds compiler spends 3
hours on a race then I"ll spend 6 hours on that
race to gain the edge.
The famous golfer Gary Player once said "The
Harder I Work the Luckier I Get". That is true about
both golf and betting .Most people can"t spend 12
hours a day studying betting as they have families,
jobs, commitments and lead their own lives. That
is what you pay us for. We do that study for you
and re-invest money in our betting so that we can
find every edge possible to Help You Win.

10) Stupidity!
Amazingly most punters fail to learn from their
mistakes. They continue for years making the
same basic errors time and time again. Pure
stupidity.
Strive to improve your betting performance by
continually learning from the mistakes and
weakness is your game.
Your bookmaker may have been laughing at you
for years. You have it in your power however to
improve your betting and hopefully wipe that smile
from his face for good.