I decided to combine these two unpopular blog ideas as I feel they are important enough to cover but aren’t glamorous.
Firstly a massive thing I have touched upon previously in betting that is a good lesson in life in general is to shop around before deciding who to place your bet with. Websites such as Oddschecker make this a fairly quick and simple process. Say you feel England will beat Australia in the first test in the Ashes. Your usual go to bookie, lets say Bet365, has England priced up at 1.62 (8/13). But if you went on Oddschecker, Sky Bet for example may have England at 1.72 (8/11). So if you placed your bet with them you would win an extra 0.10 than you would have of with Bet365. This is why it is important to have accounts with multiple different bookies and exchanges as 0.10 doesn’t sound much, but it adds up over time and if you could get more bang for your buck why would you not?
Now, discipline is absolutely crucial if you are to be a successful bettor. It took me a while to learn this lesson but that is why I am absolutely meticulous on the type of bets I will place and on which events & countries they are being played in. Now I’m not slagging off bettors that do this as there are some fantastic ones that really put the research in and have a far better knowledge base than I do, but you wont see me betting on leagues I don’t have a fundamental knowledge on. For example, South American Domestic football as I don’t have a strong knowledge of this continent and I don’t really trust the integrity of the leagues in South America. I have a specific list of leagues I bet on because I have a deep enough understanding of the league, or those leagues offer the specific markets I like to play. So my first point on discipline is always bet on what you know and play to your strengths. As I have said before if you do really want to bet on leagues you don’t know well yourself, consult others who do and use their strengths to mitigate your weaknesses.
My second point on discipline is always track your bets. https://bettin.gs/ is a great free site to do this. Tracking your bets allows you to see where your strengths lie and where your areas for improvement are and makes it easier to see where your making the most money and where your perhaps losing more. Remember knowledge is power and the more information you can arm yourself with the better bettor you will become.
Thirdly never ever chase your losses. It sounds so easy to say but if you do the research on a bet and it sadly doesn’t pan out how you expected, don’t then force another bet out to try and recover that loss. Trust your methods and do your research and you should win more than you lose long term which is where it matters. Variance is a part of betting and you will go through losing spells but don’t change your methods dramatically in a panic to combat losses. Keep calm and carry on.
Finally there is always another bet. If you miss the price on a bet or you miss something that goes onto win, for example a horse in your tracker wins and you didn’t see it before the off. Try not to get annoyed at missing it as there is always another bet to come. This is one thing I really struggled with at first when being in various betting communities. Coming back to see everyone winning on their own bets and feeling that massive regret that you wasnt on the bet. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is not your friend in sports betting as it can lead to all kinds of betting bias that will obscure your thinking such as recency bias or outcome bias.
If your looking for more in depth fantastic blogs on these and more, I highly recommend @NeilMac555 as he is a fantastic sports bettor that runs a very successful tipping website. I learnt alot from him, his bets and his blogs.
I hope this blog has explained a bit more about how it is I like to bet and certain rules and disciplines I abide by.
The Percentage Game 