[blue4578]

It's not just about picking winners. Even if you are good at that, you have to have a sensible staking plan (I see loads of people in this forum doing massive accumulators - not a wise move for many reasons) and discipline.

Having the self-control not to do stupid things when something has gone against you is the number one thing to being successful at gambling IMO. B)

[H_B]

zonker84, on Jan 5 2008, 10:48, said:

If you're smart, there's never been a better time to be able to win than now though.

Correct. Betfair has been a shot in the arm for punters, and made it all the more embarrassing how much of a take the traditional bookies have.

I find it very difficult to believe it possible to make a long term career out of punting without having insider knowledge. Certainly the guys who are pro racing punters (like Dave Nevison for instance) will have ins with major stables and jockeys.

Your punter from Fife with a laptop and the Racing Post aint going to make a living very easily. ditto for betting on football, unless you only bet for/against a team which you are privy to insider knowledge.

[blue4578]

I'm a professional gambler myself and know an awful lot more than 5 others who do the same thing. My main sport is football so make of that what you will. If you know what you're doing, it's not too tricky to win.

[uberman]

Ron Burgundy, on Jan 5 2008, 13:55, said:

well that is a direct quote from one of britains most successful gamblers angus loughrin who gets phone calls from bookies looking for advice, but I spose you might no more about it than him.

I will admit this information is pre-betfair type stuff but I still truly believe the figures are sound.

Statto, Statto!!

[BerwickMad]

Haitch, on Jan 3 2008, 16:26, said:

My next bet is on Saturday Norwich to beat Bury. I expect to get somewhere in the region of 1.33. Obviously this is likley to win hence the odds, but that is my whole point. I only back games where I think the odds are in my favour. If this match was played 100 times, (based on current squad + stats etc) I would not expect Bury to get a result 33 times. hence the odds are in my favour.

Reasoning:

Bury have picked up 1 point out of the last 21. Norwich have picked up 14 out of the past 21. 9 game unbeaten run for the canaries. Bury on the other hand have not won in their last 7 league games.

Bury are only in the 3rd round courtesy of a kind draw against non league opposition to date and even then it has taken late goals in both games to win (and home advantage!)

I know this is not the place to be putting up bets but I disagree with Ron Burgundys points.

I do agree with your main point though. However you have to be very disciplined. Some weeks it might not be worth putting anything on.

[Owsley]

I find it very difficult to get my head round the idea of someone being a professional gambler on mainly just football. Look at yesterday. Perhaps the pro gambler wouldn't touch FA Cup third round day but Haitch lost £100 and going by his system will take 2-3 weeks to make that back, and that's assuming he doesn't suffer another big loss. I had a small amount on Rochdale yesterday. They'd just stuck three past the tightest defence in England in midweek(Darlington) and were at home to woeful Lincoln, third bottom with only seven away points. They lost 2-0. How can you legislate for results like that? Or Berwick scoring two goals in the last five minutes to snatch a draw. Safest home on the entire coupon was surely Norwich.

[Wug]

Owsley, on Jan 6 2008, 12:42, said:

I find it very difficult to get my head round the idea of someone being a professional gambler on mainly just football. Look at yesterday. Perhaps the pro gambler wouldn't touch FA Cup third round day but Haitch lost £100 and going by his system will take 2-3 weeks to make that back, and that's assuming he doesn't suffer another big loss. I had a small amount on Rochdale yesterday. They'd just stuck three past the tightest defence in England in midweek(Darlington) and were at home to woeful Lincoln, third bottom with only seven away points. They lost 2-0. How can you legislate for results like that? Or Berwick scoring two goals in the last five minutes to snatch a draw. Safest home on the entire coupon was surely Norwich.

The safest bet was Arsenal at 1/3 instead of Norwich. Obviously that's easy to say now in hindsight but if I'm betting large at short odds I like to sort of trust the team that they're going to win, i.e. make sure it's a good team you're relying on and not some inconsistant Championship side (see Real tonight - my only bet of the weekend)

Maybe that's a good rule...

Something like "only bet on good teams at short odds"

[dubs]

Going by the logic of the earlier post that said he knew a guy who just put on one single every week, yesterday who would everyone have put on? In my mind I'd have went for the Stevenage bet but I could've also bet Brechin as well. Whatta holocaust that would've been.

The moral is, you will never beat the bookie - simple.

This post has been edited by dubya: 06 January 2008 - 20:01

[JCBino]

dubya, on Jan 6 2008, 21:01, said:

Going by the logic of the earlier post that said he knew a guy who just put on one single every week, yesterday who would everyone have put on? In my mind I'd have went for the Stevenage bet but I could've also bet Brechin as well. Whatta holocaust that would've been.

The moral is, you will never beat the bookie - simple.

That was me that posted that.

He rarely goes for really short odds and it helped him yesterday as he went for Airdrie ar 4/6. He did get slightly lucky on that I felt with goals in the last 10 mins. I was telling him about this thread and he said he basically picks a 10 team accumulator with odds from roughly 1/2 to Evs. He then scores them out 1 by 1 on who he least fancies out of the 10 until he is left with his choice...........simple but true.

£100 on 4/6 so he was £66.67 up yesterday for a wee bit of research and discipline. He reckons he wins 4 out of 5 weeks on average.

By the way Hamilton burst my accumulator. Never bet against yer own team!!

[Raving On]

dubya, on Jan 6 2008, 20:01, said:

Going by the logic of the earlier post that said he knew a guy who just put on one single every week, yesterday who would everyone have put on? In my mind I'd have went for the Stevenage bet but I could've also bet Brechin as well. Whatta holocaust that would've been.

The moral is, you will never beat the bookie - simple.

How do you explain Betfair then? If you're becoming the bookie surely you can't lose!

I do a steady drip and I'm approx. 4x of my starting value at the start of the season up. I'm by no means a professional gambler and started it more as a fun thing just to see how I'd get on; I'm actually doing better than I expected.

Saturday must have been a pish day to be a pro, so many results went the way folk wouldn't have expected although I suspect an on the ball professional may have stabbed at a couple of the FA Cup shocks. Despite this the coupon still threw up a couple of complete curve balls.

[blue4578]

You guys don't seem to understand betting at all.

Firstly - big accumulators are ridiculous. Why? You might get the odd lucky win but large accumulators are the bookmakers' biggest friend. No bookmaker is going to have the best price on every selection. Most traditional bookmakers have around a 10-12% profit margin built into their odds. If you place a 10-team accumulator with a 10% margin on each selection. The bookmakers profit margin is then around 259%. What does this mean? Let's say you've put £1 on @ 1000/1. You'd win £1000 if it won, but the true odds are more like 3590/1 (259% higher). The bookmaker is happy to pay you out if you happen to get lucky and win because he makes piles of money from people in betting shops placing these type of bets every week.

Secondly, why is everyone assuming that you have to bet on short-priced favourites? Betting is a very simple game - all you're doing is estimating the probability of something happening then applying it to the odds. For example yesterday I layed Hamilton on Betfair @ 1.35 because the odds were falling all day because everyone wanted to bet on Hamilton. I probably would've bet on Hamilton myself if the odds were 8/15 or higher, but because they fell so much, they were lower than they should've been if they were representing the true chance of Hamilton winning (in my opinion). If you can get it right more often than the people you're betting against (bookmaker/other people on exchanges) you can win.

It's never been easier to win at betting than it is now. You've got all the information you could ever need on the internet. There is no 9% or 10% betting tax like there was a few years ago. The bookmakers no longer insist that you bet on at least a 5-fold if you include a home selection, you can bet singles on anything you like. There is also so much competition between bookmakers and layers on exchanges, that you have pretty much 100% books on most events. If you can pick out value consistently (selections that are priced higher than they should be given your estimation of the probability of them being successful), you can make money long-term.

[mid-table]

blue4578, on Jan 6 2008, 21:39, said:

You guys don't seem to understand betting at all.

I would like to think I have a grasp of what I'm doing, in fact your first point was covered by me 6 months before you were even a member of this forum.

And I am always going on about the concept of value.

Thanks for your input though.

[the_russian]

blue4578, on Jan 6 2008, 21:39, said:

You guys don't seem to understand betting at all.

Good way to start a post

I take you actually thought my post was serious?

[blue4578]

Sorry my reply should've read "most of you guys". I actually realised that I shouldn't have tainted everyone with the same brush just after I posted I just found that some of the posts were incredibly naive. No offence was meant to anyone, just trying to push people in the right direction when it comes to gambling.

(PS I have been a member of this forum for a long while, but needed a change of username)

This post has been edited by blue4578: 06 January 2008 - 22:04

[Owsley]

Why do I keep coming back to one word - luck.

Choosing a really good team that you trust? Tried that. So many examples. Arsenal drawing 1-1 at home to Newcastle last season, costing me over £200. Although they were poor last season they were still good at home. Liverpool at Reading recently. Leeds first dropped points, me again. Celtic 0 Dunfermline 1 a couple of seasons ago. Mates lost out on £98 each due to Liverpool drawing with Wigan in midweek. Teams on great runs all of a sudden have an off day when I pick them. Hence my big(for me) bet on Dundee to win the league.

From the little I understand about betfair I think I should steer clear. Having to pay out on people's winning bets instead of the bookie? You need a big pot, which I don't have and you need a lot of luck, see above!

[blue4578]

You just proved my point Owsley

Luck doesn't come into it. Sure over the short-term, say a week or even a month, you can get unlucky. Over a full season however, you'll get some lucky things (deflected last minute winners or dodgy penalties and so on) going against you. You'll also get your fair share going in your favour over a longer period.

Why would be best on the same "trusted" team each week? Sure if you'd bet on Arsenal every game this season you'd probably be in front but each game in an individual event and you should analyse them all independently. There are places where you can get the level stakes profit and loss for each individual team if you'd backed them in every game over a season at the best bookmaker prices. Very few are in profit, and the ones that are tend to be the less fashionable teams have unexpectedly good seasons. Backing the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, Rangers and Celtic every week over a season would usually always end up with a loss.

Backing favourites all the time isn't the wrong thing to do as such, providing you do your research and shop around for the best price all the time. Placing accumulators on several favourites with the same high street bookmaker each week will almost certainly lead to losing long-term for most people unless your judgement is exceptionally good (or you're lucky).

Finally, Betfair does give you the option to lay other peoples' bets if you want to. You can also back teams just as you would at any other bookmaker and you can usually get better odds on average.

[mid-table]

I view laying something as backing it not to happen.
No difference really, if you lay something at odds on you are really backing all the other options at odds against.

I spend probably as much time shopping around for the best price as I do coming up with my selection, during the summer it was getting really tricky to remember where all my money was, as I was betting with the company offering the best odds, and had money in loads of different accounts.

I generally try and split my bets out between 'entertainment bets' (generally under £20), and 'business' bets (generally over £50). For some reason I never seem to bet amounts between £20 and £50.
At the moment everything is an entertainment bet, come February I might get back into the swing of things and start another steady drip, I'm due a bonus from work so might put £1,000 of it into an account and start again. Getting the best price in every bet is vital in a steady drip, because you are betting a percentage of your bank each time, the compounding of the money means that getting 8/11 instead of 4/6 can make a big difference a few months down the line.
Although my last steady drip was successful, I need to refine a couple of things; the staking of bets after a loser, and how I do research, as it was taking over my life and I was seeing numbers and odds when I closed my eyes at night.

[Owsley]

So picking Leeds when they've been 100% and they put your sensible five team acca down isn't bad luck? When i backed Arsenal they'd beaten Liverpool 3-0 at the Emirates the previous week. Maybe probability comes into it, the likelihood that a good run has to end sometime like with Leeds. Maybe I should have seen that result coming, but come on, backing a quality team that blows most teams away and then lets you down is bloody rotten luck. What have you done wrong? You're aware of the form. I had a wee bit of luck yesterday with Carlisle coming back from 0-2 down, but then that was really Carlisle's quality showing, which is why I picked them in the first place.

Someone, may be the russian, has had three big doubles come up in a row. Good luck to him. My last double included Ipswich at home, did my research- a quick glance at the league table did that- and they won. The other one was Forest at home to Northampton. Did my research, although Forest do seem to get the jitters at home, weight of expectation and all that, they still have a fine home record. I also noted that Northampton were poor away and were missing their top scorer Andy Kirk. Forest scraped a 2-2 draw. Again I made no obvious blunder, just rotten luck. I will insist on running over black cats.

Shopping around for the best price- I do that too but it matters not a jot when they lose.

[Raving On]

Owsley, on Jan 6 2008, 22:41, said:

So picking Leeds when they've been 100% and they put your sensible five team acca down isn't bad luck?

He's not saying its not bad luck, he's saying that luck will even itself out over time and by betting on an accumulator you're exposing yourself to more opportunities for bad luck.

[Raving On]

On the subject of laying bets; it's something I've not done a lot of, although when I have I've generally been successful. My mind struggles to see value in that regard as it would when backing for something - I don't know what because, as mid-table says, you're basically betting on something not happening.

It never really crossed my mind to lay Hamilton yesterday because I was close to certain that they would win, although not certain enough to bet at 1/3 or suchlike.

[mid-table]

Sometimes these things just happen, I made a note of the 7 most tipped teams on the betfair forum on Friday, only 1 of them won yesterday.
They were;
Cardiff 2/9, won
Everton 1/5
Birmingham 8/11
Norwich 2/5
Tottenham 2/5
Rochdale 4/6
Brechin 4/5
I would say that yesterday was an exceptional day for hotly-tipped teams getting turned over, on the flip side it seems that everyone and their dog won on Wednesday.

As mentioned earlier, over time these things should level out if you are doing things correctly.

[dubs]

Surprised Stevenage weren't one of the most-backed teams as pretty much everyone I knew had them, as well as most of the folk on p&b.