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That’s missing my point judge
Is it?
The amount involved has nothing to do with the consideration and effort given to the punt
My point is that this is not always true, it depends on the individual. Maybe you’ll do the same bets whether you bet a grand or a pound but a lot of people might take a different view.
Just to give an example I can think of many days when there’s one horse or bet that i’m very confident on, and I’m umming and aahing between just backing that and spreading my outlay on several more bets.
I know if I only bet tenners I’ll end up putting four or five bets on. The one horse I’m “confident” on ends up winning but I end up down overall as the throwaway bets inevitably lose.
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Probably you have identified yourself where you may be going wrong. It’s called self control, no one forces you to part with your money.
I’m quite happy having one or two bets a week which are mainly televised and having a 10p e/w yankee on the others that are shown. I still get the same amount of enjoyment out of it.
In essence I agree with you but this doesn’t completely answer my main point- that if as a gambler your records are showing that you are down, does this have a negative effect on your betting choices in future? And as a consequence of this, wouldn’t it be better to operate under the logic that “ignorance is bliss”
When it comes to money management ignorance is only bliss if you find poverty blissful
If you’re betting within your means for entertainment and hence have no overriding concern to make it profitable then, to repeat, there’s little point in keeping records; and as you say to do so and discover how much you’ve lost might impinge negatively on the entertainment
However if you’re having difficulty funding life’s necessities due to partaking excessively of your chosen entertainment, then record keeping would be a salutary lesson; and if this shocks you then the accompanying negative feelings towards it can only be a good thing
If you take betting even remotely seriously then you owe it to yourself, and more importantly to your nearest and dearest, to indeed take it seriously and manage your money correctly by keeping records
Loss to the serious punter should not engender negative feelings, though that admittedly is the default emotion, it should harden resolve to sort the wheat from the chaff by endeavouring to discover what caused the loss and then learning from the mistakes made – from those records
No more to add
Maybe I’ve lost the thread of what I was trying to say… anyway I think it’s extremely difficult to make money from betting.
One of my best friends is a professional gambler, he often struggles to make it pay. Let’s face it you are starting with a handicap. If you sat there all day, playing heads up poker against someone of similar ability and paying five percent to the house you’d lose heavily. That is effectively what you are doing against the bookies.
And the bookies employ large teams of people working for them, setting the odds. Computer programs and vast knowledge of the industry among other things are also involved. They have a huge advantage over even the so called “professional” who works by himself, let alone the casual punter. That’s why when people make statements like less than 1 percent of those who post on betting forums lose, I just laugh.
It’s extremely hard to win in the long term so maybe my question about whether you should keep a record was just a kick-off to talk about betting in general.
As drone and botchy and others have alluded to it’s a discipline game. although I would also argue that’s just one component of it, and if you don’t have a defineable edge then the discipline side of it is irrelevant.
I think the comment thats made “only 1 % of people on betting forums lose” is a piss take designed to make us laugh. Unless you have pinpoint accuracy on why you selected each horse to bet on its useless to analyse the profit and loss side of things. The most important part of betting is to have a consistent selection strategy, when that work has been done you wont need to over analyse P&L as the selection strategy itself should be discarded if no profit results. Selecting a profitable system or method through P%L seems to me putting the cart before the horse. Knowing which of your selections win, and why, is a far more important grounding.
Maybe I’ve lost the thread of what I was trying to say… anyway I think it’s extremely difficult to make money from betting.
One of my best friends is a professional gambler, he often struggles to make it pay. Let’s face it you are starting with a handicap. If you sat there all day, playing heads up poker against someone of similar ability and paying five percent to the house you’d lose heavily. That is effectively what you are doing against the bookies.
And the bookies employ large teams of people working for them, setting the odds. Computer programs and vast knowledge of the industry among other things are also involved. They have a huge advantage over even the so called “professional” who works by himself, let alone the casual punter.
The punter has one massive advantage Judge: the punter can pick and choose where to play, the bookie has to play in every race. The punter does not have to sit there all day and pay 5% to the house, they only have to play when they feel the deck is stacked in their favour.
I think the comment thats made “only 1 % of people on betting forums lose” is a piss take designed to make us laugh
I think the OP of that was saying only 1 % of losers post on betting forums, which is completely different and probably quite accurate. Happy to be corrected by him if not.
Mike
Try reading my post judge
A tenner may mean a lot to someone and a grand not much to another. Judging “seriousness” of bets is only within your own space not across the board
Also if you shop around properly and with margins pretty tight it’s hard to lose substantial amounts unless you are completely profligate with your betting. I don’t get that though. I go racing in jumps season up to five times a month and even with bets from home may have no more than twenty punts. If they were at 50 a time ( and they are not ) losing 5% equates to fifty quid on average over the month.
I’m not being holier than thou or anything but I cannot see how you can really find more bets than that if you are following the sport closely. That might sound perverse but the closer you look and follow the more you realise that so many races are pure guesswork and/or are probably priced about right. That’s not to mean I always step away but it’s as likely to be a shrug of shoulders
Great thread
I don’t keep a record of bets but find keeping a thread on here for a season in the daily lays and plays or general sport for football keeps me more disciplined, yes I may miss a winner in doing so but it stops a lot of losers too.
Overall over the years I’m down, but I tend to look at betting as a hobby, I don’t smoke or drink and although I’m not always very disciplined in the selection process I’m pretty good at keeping to staking to within the limits, a few bad experiences over the years but I’m too tight not to learn from then. I’ll never lose a lot and likewise never win a lot although because I keep stakes low, I do like to run up a decent stake(for me) over the months on Ante Post and do the odd multiples as a chance to win a big one.
The below is from the system section posted about 6 years ago but worth a read.
Top Ten Betting Mistakes
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 dependant upon your own individual circumstances and free capital available. An analogy to the world of shares perhaps may be that no financial advisor 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 Pricewise 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 Pricewise 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 favour 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 neutralises 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 capitalise 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.
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.
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
Fantastic post Nathan, did you write that yourself mate?
The one I find the most interesting is “laziness” perhaps because of all of the problems listed that’s the one that most relates to my gambling.
Although I do think the value of intuition is underrated. One of the worst things as a punter is that you get an instant opinion about a race, then spend hours analysing it, only to change your mind and end up watching in horror as the horse you originally intended wins.
So in that respect I think it’s a fine line you need to tread between working hard and at the same time not completely disregarding your gut instinct.
I’m also down overall over the course of my punting life. In a way sometimes I feel that I’m on “lifetime tilt” and going for that big win to erase my lifetime p and l and go into profit. That’s why I’m not sure about the “greed” one. Is it that bad as a gambler to dream? I like the notion that one poster said earlier about trying to win a row of houses, or at least give himself a chance to.
It’s my belief that most punters who lose on an overall basis don’t ever give themselves a chance to have that big win. It might be unrealistic but not as unrealistic as the notion that they won’t be ground down overtime if they just keep punting fivers or tenners, to me this seems like a waste of time betting, even if that might offend some posters.
The reason I think it’s a waste of time betting for most punters and you are better off going for that big win rather than betting small is because you have to ask yourself why you gamble.
Do I gamble because I enjoy it? Yes.
Do I gamble because I want that big win that might change my life? Yes.
Do I gamble because I see it as a long term profession, where I can do it for a living? No.
My guess is the majority of punters would give the same answers to the above questions.
And that is why I think they are better off just betting big on something they are confident on, otherwise they will inevitably get ground down over time. The odds of the bookies will beat them.
There’s also another factor which is time. It’s not just the fact that most punters lose, it’s also the fact that they spend so many hours doing so. So many hours analysing races, watching videos, poring over form. We feel we deserve a big win because of all this time we’ve invested. We’re on “timetilt” as well as “moneytilt”
and overtime I’ve become rather dejected with the same old routine, which leads to exactly the same conclusion before. So I’m making plans for that big win which can put me back in the game or way ahead, rather than being ground down like before. If the big win doesn’t come off, I’m out of the game for good
No I didn’t write it Judge.
It was posted by another member but he wasn’t the author either had got it from elsewhere.
I thought it deserved a bump and this looked a good a place as any.Betting small may be a waste of time but better big could be a waste of money if/when it goes wrong.
I think you are hung up on previous losses Judge, I’m in no position to preach but it may be worth drawing a line under them, take a decent break, clear the mind and start again fresh.It’s not bad to dream of hitting the big life changing bet but if losing money you can’t afford to lose in the process it’s not good either.
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
I will always have a go on a Saturday at landing a big one! A mate of mine landed 30k off a 10p each way lucky 15 a few years ago…I reckon we’ve all got at least one BIG collect in us haven’t we? Another example you don’t need massive stakes much more enjoyment at landing a decent payout from small stakes…say £2.50 each way on a 33/1 winner in a 20 runner handicap or £100 on an even money winner in a small field…I’ve had both in time and know which gave me more satisfaction!
And to those saying its a waste of time recording if you’re just a casual low stakes punter like me, it’s certainly worked well for me and gave me a much better feeling about things…keeping a running total can give confidence when in front and plays a part also for me….had more winning runs this year than previous years and think that’s down to a mindset of being in front. Also see it as a personal challenge to try and beat the previous year do helps with withdrawals from wins and how much to withdraw without giving it back like I would have years ago!
I will always have a go on a Saturday at landing a big one! A mate of mine landed 30k off a 10p each way lucky 15 a few years ago…I reckon we’ve all got at least one BIG collect in us haven’t we? Another example you don’t need massive stakes much more enjoyment at landing a decent payout from small stakes…say £2.50 each way on a 33/1 winner in a 20 runner handicap or £100 on an even money winner in a small field…I’ve had both in time and know which gave me more satisfaction!
And to those saying its a waste of time recording if you’re just a casual low stakes punter like me, it’s certainly worked well for me and gave me a much better feeling about things…keeping a running total can give confidence when in front and plays a part also for me….had more winning runs this year than previous years and think that’s down to a mindset of being in front. Also see it as a personal challenge to try and beat the previous year do helps with withdrawals from wins and how much to withdraw without giving it back like I would have years ago!
True mate but when it works the other way it’s not so easy, when you’re six or seven hundred quid down it becomes demoralising writing up your results. I did think of another solution, if you’re down on a certain period, file that away and start again (a bit similar to what Nathan was suggesting) with a clean page, the previous losses can still be figured in the overall period but from a psychological perspective it’s better for your mind to start again if you’re heavily down.
The thing I keep coming back to is that it’s very tough to win at gambling. Come on a racing forum and you get a false perspective of how tough it is as the majority claim to be winners. It’s a bit like “shy trump supporters” in that for some reason those who are losing feel very uncomfortable in admitting as much. And my guess is a lot of those who claim to be ahead are telling porkies.
You look at trainer stats, if you back godolphin or hannon’s blind or pretty much any other racehorse trainer you’ll be massively down to a level stake over a long period. And these are the best trainers in the country. The same with newspaper tipsters.
Yes I think you can win if you’re selective enough and have the personality to do so. Basically I think that’s the key issue at play here- to be professional gambler you have to have an unusual personality. You basically have to be ice cold.
In that thing you posted Nathan it said how you need to control your emotions but yet it’s surely normal to get annoyed if you lose. The natural human reaction to a loss is to get angry and want to get that money back. Most of the people I know who have been successful with gambling tend to be quite boring people that you’d avoid at a dinner party, they don’t seem like gamblers as much as accountants.
Most of the people I know who have been successful with gambling tend to be quite boring people that you’d avoid at a dinner party, they don’t seem like gamblers as much as accountants.
Some of us wouldn’t even be seen at a dinner party, Judge… too busy studying.
Boring or what?
Value Is Everything
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