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Just a bit of fun..... Really?

It's fun to have an interest bet sometimes, isn't it?

You know the type - a sneaky fiver to liven up an otherwise boring televised football match, a crafty tenner on a horse when you slide in as you're passing the bookies, another tenner when you're sat bored by the pc and spot a tennis match between two players you've never heard of and whose names you can't pronounce.

It doesn't do any harm, does it? Livens up the odd half hour.

I hope you don't really believe that.

Those fivers and tenners represent a serious leak when totted up over a year. Say you have half a dozen of those kind of bets a week - you're looking at £3k a year invested in bets where you haven't done your homework and are almost certainly  getting the worst of it.

That's all well and good if you're only in it for the fun. Betting, for many people, is viewed as a form of entertainment that has to be paid for like any other. And if that's you, more power to your arm and enjoy your fun bets.

However, if like a lot of people, you have any aspirations  to make your betting pay, you need to conquer that fun betting mentality asap. I estimate that fun bets cost me £20k over the early years of my betting - and that's not calculating the profits I would have made had I been able to turn pro a couple of years earlier (something the £20k would have made possible).

"Fun" bets are most damaging when you are starting out and trying to build a betting bank. Suppose you have a £500 betting bank and you have identified a portfolio of methods that you think can treble your bank on a yearly basis. It doesn't take all that many fun bets to entirely wipe out the profit from such a portfolio.

Worst of all, fun bets are often the ones you don't record!

They're generally unplanned and unaccounted for. That's the insidious nature of the damage they do to your long term profitability -you don't even measure it! You go merrily on your way thinking all in the garden is rosy - when really your leaking like a rusty bucket.

Sometimes it can be even worse than that. Fun bets can lead to chasing, going on tilt and blowing up an entire bank!

It's much easier to be philisophical about a losing bet when you know you did your homework but it didn't come off. Those kind of bets - the ones you know you would place again given the same circumstances - won't put you on tilt. You will be able to shrug your shoulders, safe in the knowledge that you did all you could.

Fun betting losses are not so easy to shrug off.

Imagine the scenario: You've patiently built up £50 of profit with your £500 bank over the space of a week or so. You have a few 'fun' bets that result in you wiping out all that patient, disciplined work. What happens next? You feel that emptiness in the pit of your stomach. You become desperate to recoup your profit. You make a stupid, large bet on a short priced jolly hoping to grab it all back in one go. Sometimes you'll get away with it. And sometimes you won't. Two or three of those placed in increasing, blind desperation  and as a result, your bank is gone and your sat on the sidelines trying to get back in the game. No fun at all.

Eliminate the fun bets if you want to make a profit. Discipline and careful money management are, dare I say it, EVEN MORE important that your selection process. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Make it your watch word in all things betting related.

I know it's easier said than done - and even after all these years I get tempted into the odd stupid, unresearched bet. But I always know when I've done it- and I always know what they have cost me. That knowledge allows me to keep them to a minimum.

Therein lies the key to eliminating the fun bets - keep detailed, accurate records of EVERY bet you place. You will soon see that those bets are not much fun at all.

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The second thing I want to mention today is a very decent offer that Ben Aitken has put together over at Narrowing the Field. I'm the first to admit that I know very little about the dark arts of Dosage analysis - it's only come on to my radar in the last couple of years and it's never been a method I have applied myself. It utilises sire information to formulate a set of numbers that indicate a particular horses optimum race conditions and running style (It's a lot more complicated than that but that's the general gist of it!)

Ben Aitken is the acknowledged master of the method and has been running his Narrowing the Field service for several years with consistent success. He's well respected by some of the leading figures in the game.  He combines his undoubted skill in Dosage Analysis with long term race trends analysis to break down all of the top races and meetings throughout the season. He's currently offering a cracking deal for the rest of the National Hunt season and I think it's well worth a closer look.

Narrowing the Field

The results for the NH season so far tell an exciting story:

Bets: 61

Wins: 22

Win Strike: 36%

P/L: + 46 points

Profit on Turnover:  75%

Pretty darned impressive, I have to say. But more importantly than that, subscribers get a wealth of detail and information to make their own betting decisions should they choose. Ben covers all the major races throughout the season in both the UK and Ireland.

On the home page, Ben has put some of the guides from earlier in the season to give potential subscribers a good idea of the quality and depth of the work he is doing.

I really like this and I think you will too

That's all from me today

Be lucky

Kieran

 

 

 

 

 

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