Theyoungracegoer.com Horse Racing from a Young Perspective

Guest Article by Paul Whelan of SkyBlueKangaroo.com

Anyone who’s been using betting systems for betting on horse racing for any length of time will know all about losing runs. This article should help you cope better with those unprofitable periods.

Today I’m going to allow you a period of R ‘n’ R : Reinforcement and Reassurance, that is. The ‘reassurance’ will come a little later in this article, but first let me ‘reinforce’ a saying I’ve believed in since I don’t know when – certainly as long as I’ve been gambling. I recommend you also try hard to remember it as well:

After a good run, you should expect to suffer a bad run. After a losing run, you can look forward to a good run.

Just like many things in life, betting goes in cycles: bad times, good times; Bull and Bear stock markets; day follows night; Spring follows Winter; your teenage son and his mood-swings; profitable weeks and losing weeks. There are many things that are cyclical.

So this is the problem: what do you do when yet another appealing piece of direct mail lands on your doormat declaring that the Holy Grail Betting System has been returning unbelievable profits in the past few month? Or maybe it’s an email that arrives to tell you that the amazing tipster John Smith is literally ‘on fire’ at the moment, his tips are so hot.

With so many winners pouring in, surely you’d be mad to pass up these offers; you should join John Smith’s tipster service today, and buy the Holy Grail betting system too, right?

Well no actually, I suggest you don’t. Remember what I said? What you should expect to happen…

“After a good run, you should expect to suffer a bad run. After a losing run, you can look forward to a good run.”

Have you seen the sci-fi film The Matrix? There’s a scene towards the end, where Agent Smith has our hero Neo pinned down on the track in a subway station. We can see down the tunnel, and we can hear the sound of an approaching train.

Agent Smith says, “You hear that Mr Anderson? …That is the sound of inevitability …It is the sound of your death…”

If someone is advertising a way to bet more winners and make more money from betting… crikey! even if you decide you actually believe them… it’s the inevitability of the approaching losing run that you should really be betting on.

That said, you remember the second part of that saying: “After a losing run, you can look forward to a good run.”

And so, encouraged by some positive expectations, how can you now deploy this knowledge and see some dividends from your betting activities?

 

Contrarian Thinking

Many pro punters apply what I like to refer to as ‘contrarian thinking’. Against all logic, they will actually increase their stakes in the middle of a losing run. Why on earth would they do this? It’s because they have a confidence in the underlying logic of that system. After all, they chose to include it in their betting portfolio, so there must be something about it they like. Make sense?

They will also have experience of the average length of losing runs based on the typical odds of the horses the system selects. So they have a gut feeling of when to turn up the heat a little, and to what degree. They are counting on that impending reversal, because … ”after a bad run, you can expect a good run.”

 

Positive Reinforcement

When I’m going through the pain of a losing spell (not difficult to recall actually, as I had one just recently!) I manage my emotions by sticking to my methods, with the understanding that bad runs are not unusual at all. Over the last seventeen years my experience has been that profit comes in fits and starts, and that for the most part I’m either standing still or steadily losing. In other words, not winning! It’s a fact, and I’ve learned to deal with it.

I use what I imagine a psychiatrist might call positive reinforcement – I recall times when I’ve won big time, I sit down and watch the videos of those races where my horse has won, and I read over my betting archives and records, all this to remind myself what has gone before. On occasions I might consider taking a brief spell away from betting altogether, to rid negative thoughts from my mind – after my grandfather died in 2001 I did exactly that, and more recently back in February of this year.

 

Develop a Portfolio of Betting Systems

Trust me, you’ll find betting way less stressful – and it’s much easier to remain focused – when you’re working with several systems simultaneously.

So many gamblers seem to be continually after that one unique betting system they think of as the Holy Grail. They’re hoping to find a wondrous system that finds makes a steady profit every week, with winners every day.

Realistically – at least this is what I’ve found – there is no such system. One of the major themes behind this post is that betting systems endure annoying losing periods, and if they return any profits at all, they come in a totally unpredictable fashion.

You’ll find a better approach is to try to eliminate the ups and downs by having a diverse portfolio of strategies and methods that collectively produce an overall profit after any significant period.

So the intelligent punter will gather together a number of strategies, methods, and systems. Systems he is able to manage comfortably. These methods will also fit in with his schedule, and match his betting temperament. At the time of writing, I concentrate my efforts on six betting strategies for horse racing and you can read more about each of them if you visit my blog at SkyBlueKangaroo.com.

 

About the author: Paul Whelan is the writer and editor at SkyBlueKangaroo. He’s a horse racing and betting systems fan, a cyclist, and hopelessly addicted to caffeine.

You can follow Paul Whelan on twitter @PaulWhelanTweet