Some Thoughts on Betting

   Two of the most popular sports betting are probably the least predictable – football and greyhound racing! In the UK at least, greyhounds are big business with over a hundred races a day and millions of pounds wagered.

   So what makes greyhound betting so unpredictable? Firstly, the dogs have no riders so as pack animals, why would they want to be first even if they are the fastest? Secondly, the often crash into each other and upset the outcome. Thirdly, just because a dog has the fastest time, it does not mean he will run flat out today – in fact, it’s very obvious that most dogs are cruising along at 80% full speed!

   Now what about football? With 22 players and a big football pitch, the variables are astronomically huge. Luck plays a very large part and no matter how skilled a player is, under the stress of the game he is unlikely to shoot with perfect accuracy. Even if he does, the goalkeeper (or another player) will likely stop the ball. Yes, in the long run the top teams obviously come out top but often get beaten by vastly inferior teams in a single match that people bet on…

   In fact, I would say it’s most likely that the most knowledgeable football expert would lose money betting. Remember that the odds reflect two things: 1. they pay less the more likely the outcome and 2. They more accurately predict the bookmaker’s chance of winning rather than the football team’s chance of winning. You only have to look at tipping websites to see they get it wrong more often than right. Pick any honest enough to show past results, do the maths and you will see that by following them, you will lose money!

   Take a look at any paid tipster site and you will see incredibly poor results. For example the leading and one of the most expensive, bettinggods.com shows it’s top 6 tipsters on the home page and currently, they average 13% a month (and 3 out of 6 are for horse racing where ‘inside knowledge’ can indeed help).

   Gambling is literally an addiction unless (like us) you take it strictly as a business and don’t get hooked on the highs and lows. As an ex psychologist, I know that gambling is such a big addiction because of something called ‘Intermittent Reinforcement’ which is the most powerful form of control known to man. Everybody should have a thorough understand of what this is as it applies to relationships and everyday life. I would highly recommend you watch this video for a good explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_lakRMIA7Q It’s angled at relationships but applicable to everything.

   Back to football betting. Why do tipster sites fail? They do do mainly because predicting outcomes for every single match is bound to fail as it is millions to one to get every match correct! Even getting 25% correct would be incredible - which is why we only select 'the best' one per day. We now only bet on draws as this does not require picking a winner and the odds are always high enough to withstand many losses. 

   Since it is almost impossible to beat the odds, the only way we can do it is have a very, very strong selection process and use recovery betting to recover the inevitable losses. We can do this by increasing stake size after every loss and this will recover the loss plus give us the original profit we were targeting. This ia high risk but given good maths and sensible money management can be safe.

   Many football tipping sites predicted draws. Usually 6 - 10 a day and many days they are all wrong! So, betting against the draws selected would be profitable (except on the days when luck gets most of them right) and this highlights the fact that precise predictions are always more likely to be wrong than right.

   After a lot of trial and error, we concluded that selecting the single game most likely to make a profit whether it be by a straight win, over/under goals or both teams to score was the way to go. Even with the best selection process you are unlikely to beat the odds in the long run so we employ low enough stakes to allow recovery betting so that the next win recovers all the previous loss.

   The point I am making is that there is no way to gain an advantage by betting on many games because the odds are always slightly against you in the long run, whatever you do! A few people claim to get round this by ‘trading’ on exchanges. This involves cashing out for a small guaranteed profit ‘In play’ during the game. For example, lay the draw and cash out after the first goal. These seems like a good idea and many people remain falsely confident that this is the way to go but there is a big flaw in this theory. Why? Because your winnings are extremely sure but occasionally there will be a full loss which wipes out five of your previous wins. Also, do the maths and you will almost certainly find that holding on until the end of the game would give better profits if more stress!

    On a final note, it is often possible to get better odds on Betfair (for most bets) by inputting a slighter better number than is available and hoping it will be matched soon after the kickoff. However, this does not work when betting on the draw because the odds decrease with time so long as no goal is scored.