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betting/life maxims

Haven't found much to rant about today, so I thought I'd reprint some very useful betting philosophies I've found on different sites. This batch were originally found on the Slipperytoad blog.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. James Joyce - Irish author (1882 - 1941)

When everybody thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong.

Losers think of selecting the winner and beating a race. Professionals think of betting for value and beating the races.

Never succumb to anyone who just wants to let you know what you are doing will never work.

Don't fall foul of the favourite/longshot bias i.e. Horses with short odds (i.e., favourites) tend to win even more frequently than indicated by the final market odds, while horses with long odds (i.e., longshots) win less So, during tissue compilation, don't underestimate the chances of preferred contenders and overestimate the changes of marginal contenders.

The best handicapping literature in the world are your own records.

The crowd is smart ... so let them do the handicapping and analyse them.

The difference between success and failure is small. Therefore you need to continually work to maintain your edge and continually work to improve your performance.

Successful punters think in terms of chances., not fancies and certainties. They try to assess the true chance of a horse in a race and bet on the basis of their evaluations.

Value is all-important - not winners. The secret is not getting more heads than tails, its winning more when a coin comes up heads than you lose when it's tails.

Common sense dictates that you cannot outsmart the public if you are handicapping with the same information and methods as the public.

The successful punter never allows items of news, "whispers" or thoughts of others override his train of thought when assessing a race's runners for betting purposes.

Following the herd is fine until they all run off the side of a cliff together.

If you want to make money ... big money ... do what nobody else is doing.

To be a winner, one must know or perceive things which the public must not grasp. If there is no special insight then there will be no special odds, no bargains, no overlays; the more that information is used by the public, the less it pays off at the bookies.

To be successful you've got to have had some failures in your career - and learnt from them - otherwise you have probably been too conservative.

Picking winners is easy. Beating the odds is not.

In order to make money betting on sports, you must either have information that is not being used by the betting public, or you must have a superior ability to process the information that is public

"The aim of any entrepreneur is to make more money than you lose" - Theo Paphitis

Knowing the moment to sell is what separates the successful entrepreneur from the also-ran. According to George Soros's son, the hedge fund billionaire sells out when his back starts playing up.

The market is incredibly efficient; don't buck the analysis done by others who determine the market.

Comments

  1. Hi Scott, it is interesting to read those betting/life maxims. The psychology of betting is often talked about but I'm not sure how much professional research has been conducted especially in the UK, which is probably very little. I will have a good read in the next couple of weeks and try to put a few thoughts together as it would make a decent read.In many ways being a successful gambler is the same as being successful at anything - which generally comes down to knowing that little bit more than most and the reason why specialising is always a good point. Enjoying your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the mention Scott

    Mike
    www.slipperytoad.co.uk

    ReplyDelete
  3. no worries Mike, credit where credit is due...

    ReplyDelete

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