ProGambler

10. Establish your daily routine

 

When you get caught up on the treadmill of betting it is easy to lose sight of your primary objective of slow, steady profit and building your betting bank.

 

You really must make betting work for you – rather than the other way around. And that means only betting when you have sufficient time to put the study in that’s required. When you find yourself online or manically scanning the back page or racing pages in pursuit of a bet then simply step away. The same when you are caught up in the hype surrounding a heavily-tipped horse or a big game on TV.

 

If you haven’t done your own work, or have subscribed to a tipster that has, you are in no position to evaluate the case made by journalists for a specific outcome – however plausible it seems.

 

If you only have time at the weekends then limit yourself to those two days only while maintaining a working knowledge of unfolding events in your niche during the week.

 

That discipline is fundamental in building confidence. That is: confidence in your own decisions and confidence in your ability to follow through an argument and ascribe your own accurate probabilities as to the likely outcomes in an event you want to be involved in. It is the confidence that emboldens you in the good runs and sustains you in the bad.

 

The fundamental pleasure of betting is its promise of a rare and glorious freedom; the freedom to stand and fall by your own decisions and be accountable only to yourself.

 

But with such freedoms come responsibilities – in this instance responsibilities to your own enterprise.

 

If you want to be successful at betting you will need to put the work in and put the work in under your own steam in your own time.

9. How should we respond as bettors when you find instances where professional sports are rigged?

 

Yes, I have no doubt that sports are rigged for profit from time to time. But probably not as often as conspiracy theorists assume.

 

This is especially the case in games (football) where there’s little at stake and where the participants are poorly paid and poorly motivated. The temptation must be great in this context, especially where players’ careers have taken a dive from initially fairly lofty heights. Human beings what they are it is easy to become embittered and disenchanted when dreams are dashed and it is a small step to justifying rigging a game from there – especially if the players have contempt for the game and fans.

 

Looking at betting patterns you often get a sense of it and I have personally left a few games greatly concerned that what I have seen was rigged.

 

I have also read that this is now happening at the highest level and there were jungle drum murmurings that there were rigged games at the2014 World Cup. The problem is that ineptitude often looks like corruption if you choose to see it that way….

 

That said, the betting patterns on the 2104 WC game between Croatia and Cameroon apparently saw a big late, heavy surge of money all going one way just before kick off. A game between Algeria and South Korea also came under the spotlight too, I’m told.

 

Just coincidence? Maybe the actions of a major syndicate or a response to team news? Perhaps.

 

Find the highlights of Croatia v Cameroon at The 2014 World Cup online and decide for yourself.

 

The goals, the body language, Rigobert Song’s red card, the tracking back (or lack of it), the sparse effort defending and also the fight between the two Cameroon players at the end of the game paints a very fishy picture. If the betting intel was equally suspect then a fix seems like the most likely answer, no?

 

The problem with fixed games is that they are a cancer. Once one game, one race, one event looks rigged you start to see conspiracies everywhere.

 

I have a trusted colleague, a renowned and wealthy professional football punter of over 40 years standing in the game. His solution is to resolutely insist that the game is straight from top to bottom and that despite all evidence to the contrary that everything is just as it should be.

 

His reasoning is that as soon as you pull the match fixing thread the whole betting enterprise unravels before your eyes. And given the small number of games involved he reckons it is better to assume a position of blissful ignorance . Otherwise he says, you will see conspiracy everywhere and never being able to trust your eyes’ judgement again. As a pragmatic response it is hard to argue against it. Ultimately it makes sense as a strategy as wrongheaded as it feels at first.

 

What I would say though is that football made a Faustian pact with bookmakers a very long time ago and now football needs betting action like a body needs oxygen to continue to thrive. And paradoxically, given the situation we’ve got, the betting industry is also football’s best hope of keeping football straight due to the way these companies monitor matches and their overwhelming desire to protect their own skin in the game.

7. What are the first steps for anyone gambling on football (soccer)?

Above all else: specialise. Find your own niche and stick to it whether that is a specific league, specific teams or specific betting markets such as corner betting, cards or in play.

 

It should be a niche that conforms to your personality and skill set as a football analyst.

Read as much as you can about your subject and specifically about betting and value betting in particular. This eloquent introduction to the concept is especially useful: football-data.co.uk Principles of Value Betting .

Whatever your niche, you need to understand what you are betting on and why you are betting on it. You should only bet when the odds are in your favour).

6. What does it take to be a good tipster?

I have been on all sides of the fence, as a journalist as a proofer and finally as a tipster and I would say there are a number of things to consider.

In no particular order I would say the following as advice for would-be tipsters and serious bettors:

1. Know your niche and be an expert in your field from a particular point of view. Develop proven winning methods and stick with them. BUT, also innovate and change as you go. Nothing stands still too long in betting.

2. Understand the nature of the enterprise you’re involved in and by that I mean the probabilities, betting odds, the randomness of individual results relative to those specific individual decisions you have made.

3. Consistent staking and money management.

4. The ability to keep a cool head and stick to your betting principles under pressure. The winning and the losing runs should be treated just the same. An even temperament is absolutely crucial.

5. Stamina. Betting has its own very peculiar routines and rhythms and you need to enjoy it and the lifestyle that goes with it.

6. Good clients. No one ever mentions this but every tipster needs shrewd, supportive people around them who understand the process of betting for long-term profit. Ideally, as a tipster, you want a service where the membership grows with you in terms of their understanding of betting and their loyalty to you.

There’s an article I wrote in 2006 on the subject of effectively choosing a tipster service to subscribe to: Horse Racing | ProGambler (scroll right down to the bottom of the list) that offers some good insight for potential clients of tipsters.

5. Set realistic profit targets

The profits you can expect to make from betting are always going to be relative to the size of your betting bank.

Let’s assume your starting bank is £625 and you are likely to make four bets per week at a unit stake of £25.

At these figures, that equates to an annual turnover of £5,200.

You have aimed for a profit margin of 10 per cent and assuming you’re successful you’ll lift a first year profit of £520. This would be typical of a very good football bettor for example.

As a horseracing punter you might double that return on investment figure but the risks involved are higher – due to the potential for long losing runs from horses and selections with higher odds chances of winning.

In the process of attaining that figure you’ll see winning and losing runs, various ups and downs but if you think you’ll be turning your £500 into a professional income straight off the bat you should give up now – and no-one would blame you.

The name of the game is steady, stealthy progress and realistic expectations. How and what you bet should reflect your attitude to risk and reward.