A Punters Phenomenon

There’s an interesting phenomenon amongst punters finding their own selections. Most bettors feel that they have to place a bet in every race or have a lot of action every day.

Why?

Do we need to have a lot of selections every day? Do we need to be able to bet in every race to make a profit?

No.

So what causes this desire to want to do this? I believe it’s a combination of things. The first is a belief that if you have a winning method then it must work in every race.

Wrong.

In my personal experience this is very far from the reality. In fact quite the opposite is true. I usually find that a method that drives profit under one set of race conditions doesn’t work in the same way in all sets of race conditions.

And… this makes perfectly logical sense.

Why would a winning strategy for all weather sprints work in long distance chase races. They are completely different races that ask totally different things from both a horse and jockey.

So the first thing to remember is not to try and make a single method work for all types of races. You should be specialising by looking for the runners that are going to be suited to the conditions of the race.

Next then we approach the subject of over-selecting. Over-selecting actually also covers a number of other areas that we’ll look at in future articles, such as rushing selections.
As we’ve decided that we’re going to be looking for horses suited to a specific set of race conditions. It follows that we shouldn’t be looking for horses in every race unless we have multiple methods of selections.

I often see bettors with a list of twenty or more selections for a day and this tells me one thing… they haven’t spent enough time on their selection process.

Okay I admit, you can make good profits from a high turnover of selections. But I’ve never seen a bettor become profitable by doing this. It’s something that comes later.

And I think this is primarily for two reasons.

The first is that the edge is generally smaller on a big turnover of selections.

And the second is that the betting psychology is harder with a high turnover strategy. You see if you’re betting twenty selections psychology hit a losing run, you could bet twelve, fifteen or even more points down in a single day.

If you aren’t used to losing runs then this is a very difficult barrier to break through,

Now imagine if you had a week of losing runs. You’re now down a large number of units very quickly because your turnover is so high.

And it’s this that most people struggle with, because the majority of people can’t cope with seeing a big loss take place very quickly.

That’s why I urge you. If you’re looking for selections in every race using the same selection process, or if you’re finding a large number of selections every day.

Think again.

Is this actually the way you want to bet? You may find that only finding a single selection a day suits you better. It’s easier to develop, it’s easier to manage, the biggest losing run you can have on a single day is… 1!

I would suggest that this approach, starting with a single selection every day, suits the majority of punters better than having a large number of selections. It’s all-round less stress and easier to maintain and it’s where I would be starting if I was not profitable or break even on my betting.

Of course, once you’re making profits, you can then branch out into new areas, strategies and more selections.