THE MAIN REASON AS TO WHY MOST PUNTERS LOSE


Ratings2Win Educational Article

Statistics will reveal that the majority of punters (somewhere between 95 - 98%) lose on a long term basis. There are a multitude of reasons that this occurs and you will hear different theory's that describe what the Number 1 major cause is.

To me it revolves around issues such as poor money management, staking, and the basic failure to understand and accept the realities in regards to betting for profit. Below we will attempt to summarise these issues.

Poor Money Management

I'm going to state the obvious:

Don't bet more than you can afford to lose; and
Determine the size of your betting bank in real dollars that you have set aside, and then using a disciplined approach stake your bets intelligently and in a consistent manner.

Staking

The principle objective of betting for profit is to maximise the amount of profit in real dollars whilst protecting your bank within a predetermined risk threshold that you are comfortable with.
Doing the above will help you balance the relationship between profit and risk.

Bet Size

Getting your bet size right is critical to realising the principal objective of betting for profit.
If you bet too small then you are costing yourself profit; and
If you bet too big then you expose yourself to the inevitable likelihood that your expected losing runs will result in much bigger drawdown's of your betting bank relative to your risk threshold that could in turn wipe out your betting bank.

Optimal Bet Size

This depends on three well known but key factors:

-The horse's probability profile (strike rate);
-Your assumed betting edge over the marketplace; and
-Your personal risk threshold (the percentage of your betting bank that you are willing to lose during normal long term betting cycles.

Realities of betting to profit

Assuming you get your money management and staking right you still have to be able to learn to understand and/or overcome other key factors that will determine your betting success.

These can be summarised as knowing and having an understanding of:

-Winning and losing cycles (the psychological effect these can have on you and how understanding standard deviation will provide you with the knowledge of how much your results can and will fluctuate over different sample bet ranges (e.g. 100, 500 bets);
-How your strike rate determines how volatile your results will be;
-Why you need to have a realistic expectation of what each of your bets winning chances are (to achieve this you need access to accurate probability assessments for example the R2W IR ratings);
-That you should only bet when you are getting value (to achieve this you need access to accurate probability assessments for example the R2W IR ratings);
-That you should make an effort to obtain better prices about your selections (see our article titled Obtaining better prices about your selections);
-How to measure your betting success correctly by focusing on bank growth and not just simply relying on POT - profit on turnover (see our article titled --How to measure your success as a punter );
-Not falling into the trap of repeating your previous mistakes; and
-The need to remain consistent and disciplined in your approach whilst maintaining good quality records of your bets that can be used for analytical purposes at a later stage.

We hope you enjoy our articles and more importantly through our help learn the skills to becoming a winning punter.

__________________
Regards


Paul Daily - Ratings2Win Pty Ltd (Director)
R2W Axis - Axis is Australia's leading horse racing software and database; with sophisticated form analysis tools and accurate performance ratings that include Hong Kong.
http://www.ratings2win.com.au/