Emotional Betting Part II – Throwing Your Toys Out Of The Pram!
“That bloody jockey has let me down AGAIN”
I'm sure we've all been there when our horse looks to be on the home run and then gets pipped on the line.
Or, our beloved football team is 1 – 0 up at 90 minutes and then the opposition blast 2 goals in within the space of injury time!
The betting slip gets ripped up or the smartphone chucked to the side as our frustration comes to a head.
We've lost another bet!
The most common reaction is to blame someone, or something else.
I used to manage betting shops 10 or so years ago and these were the general reactions from customers –
Losing customer –
“That bloody jockey just gave up on that horse, then. Did you see that? It's corrupt, I'm telling you”
Winning customer –
“I told you that was going to win, didn't I? I'm a bloody genius!”
You've got two sides of emotion there. The frustration of the losing customer that got it wrong. Followed by the ego of the winning customer, who got it right.
Betting, in its simplest form, is monetising our opinions.
This is why, when we get it right, we feel good. Our ego is stoked up with how clever we were to predict the outcome of something.
When we get it wrong, our ego takes a knock, as we weren't quite so clever in our prediction.
And, this is key to understanding how our emotion can play havoc with our betting. More importantly, how it can STOP us from making a profit.
Let's look at an example.
I recently ran a system that had 10 selections over a period of two days. Of those 10 selections, 7 of them came second or third(horse racing). I lost my stake as I had backed them to win only.
However, I'm completely fine with that. Had those 7 selections come last, I would start to review the system and its credentials. I had 3 winners and came out with a small loss.
Another system that I operate had 3 football teams to win over the weekend. They were all winning by the 80th minute. One team drew, as an equaliser was scored, and that was a loss, but again, I was happy that my opinion was pretty close. I picked up a profit from the other two games, which also negated the loss from the horse racing bets. Overall, I made a profit.
If you want to learn how Portfolio Betting can make you a winner when some of your bets are losing, then check out this article.
So, what am I getting at here?
We shouldn't be getting frustrated or complacent when we're not making a profit as long as we're getting close. There's no point in “throwing your toy's out of the pram” when your selection is narrowly beaten because you were simply, unlucky in-running!
If we then get frustrated, this clouds our judgement and will almost certainly affect our decision making when it comes to placing our next bet.
On the other “flip” of the coin, if we get a winner, we also need to keep our calm and not let the euphoria take over our betting decisions.
Next week, I'm going to write about some exercises that you can actually perform after placing a bet and this will help you to manage your emotions when betting.
