Good morning , i hope all you may have a good Sunday...
i will like to comment today on some questions i've received from some guys and worth an answer.
First , the comment of Albert that wrote:
"now i have a possible subject for your blog:
What do you do when you are almost 100% certain about the outcome of a match but the market offers around 1,35 - 1,6. to which degree would you follow your instict and how much would you bet relative to your net worth asuming the depth in the market is there to not lower the odds substantially. /albert"
Well , Albert , i have given a short answer to your question. But i will extend it a bit. My opinion is that bettor must have a certain plan the same way that an investor has. I'm a very big fan of Flat Staking or a variation of it the double flat staking method which has some basic rules:
1. A bet is worth to be taken or not
2. If a bet worth taken then it worths the same money and is equal with other bets
3. In some special conditions , we may do give a double stake to a bet but mathematically speaking this comes closer to this 90-100% certainly of expecting an outcome.
4. The only sure think in life is death so the only think that i can be 100% sure is my death and nothing else.
I believe in general terms that the punter is aware of just a few of the hundreds of variables that could lead a team to a result. E.g. we may have some good preview on match , may know some factors as the referee trend , stats , form , etc... but there are dozen more variables that we don't know. For example , if a player was rejected sex by his wife and he is a bit down in phsychology , if some players wish to send the coach away (this is a long process of usually 3-4 matches that conclude to a 1-4 or 1-5 loss at home) and many many more. Theoritically speaking , all those variables together are added in order to create a percentage of estimation always on our mind.
As i know that i have only one fraction of those variables available i know that is impossible to reach a 90 or 100% on my estimation for an outcome. Ok, there are some exceptions. But always and as i told you some unknown variables could easily lead a "fixed" match in the opposite outcome.
So , my opinion is that having the arsenal of information that i do have i give a GO or NO GO situation to an outcome and i take this bet on a flat stake. When my confidence is significally higher i may take a double stake but this is all. This is my own approach , wrong or right , this is where i have been lead after some years.
This is a question Mike. Concerns more Greek readers but at the end of the case is still applied to everybody.
"More than 50 or 60 people now say they have been with George Paraskevas on his old site. In reality how many people have been there?"
Well, let's say that in your early twenties you have used to go in the gym , you had money , good looks and a nice car. You have been the king of the ladies. Now in your forties you have no money , no nice car , and you are 20+ kilos and women avoid you like rotten fish.
I'm really tired with this. Some people that trying to cash on a job they had 5 or 10 yrs ago. So you may have been with George Paraskevas 2, 5 , 8 or 10 yrs ago , in the best betting website of the world then but this is the past. And in betting what you have been doing 2 ,3 or 10 years ago has nothing to do with what you are right now. Some people , just use this strange argument in order to sell themselves now but in reality those that do follow this tactic just try to hide their fall and deterioration.
It seems funny nowdays , this argument sounds like some guys that show you a girl and say "i was with her 10 years ago" OR "i was a big player" , so what? if you have been a good player on the past that means you are still today?
In my eyes this is just a pure , un-ethical and dirty way of exploiting a dead man's memory for their own profit and shows clearly how rotten the market and those people are in Greece. On the other side it shows that this man even after his loss is still infuences people and that shows how great he was on this.
Let the man REST IN PEACE!!! Please...
Good Afternoon
Thursday 26 June 2008
News or "News" ?
Hello,
sometimes i feel like writing about the excellent job people of the site do concerning the way they inform members. Maybe this example concerns the Group but in reality it's applied to other websites or information sources.
Many old school tipsters - journalists - etc say that news play an important role to the education of the punter as those help the punter to decide his own , to evolve his betting style and in general create his own way and that tips are just a temporary solution as the punter just copies the desicion of somebody else. But is this the real case? what is the difference of news and previews of a tip? how we can say that preview of a tip couldn't be far more important than two pages of info considered as a new?
I read the preview of the match written by Galata yesterday, and how we moved me to bet on Euro 2008 even if i said that i will not take a single bet.... let's have a look...
"here’s huge problem in Turkish centre backs. Gokhan Zan, the only true back, is more gifted on headers but rather slow on grass and in my opinion he needs the game of his life to stop Klose. The other back, Mehmet Topal, is really a defensive midfielder, not so tall and totally inexperienced in this position at this level. "
then
"Plus totally unstable goalie Rustu, who was never good when it came to clear a phase inside his area. He’s good in blocking shots from outside, but he will have problem for sure with tall Germans in set pieces."
then
"Even if
Now look on the video and she how the goals were scored...
Who cares if player X or player Y is away? does this matter? you will have read thousands of those useless news articles by specialists or masters of writing but the real news could always be found under 2 or 3 short paragraphs. That matters... I don't have an idea who is Topal , no idea who is Zan but the person who writes and knows gave me the chance to know why those players have an important role and why those players make the writer decide on the bet... The other just read that this player is out and the other player is in... So what?
Tmr i will return with the Theorem of the Frog
Deep Sea Diving
The theorem should be applied to crisis management and the way that bad streaks can be faced carefully. As i wrote in a previous blog and i guess you all have seen in the past , there is a big possibilty of a very long and painfull bad streak. Imagine that you had a bank of 100.000 and you have lost 80.000. What happens then?
An inexperienced punter will add more risk and will end up losing the whole bank sooner or later. In the frog theorem the investor is compared with the diver (or frogman) as deeper as he goes the more time he needs to return back to surface.
Actually , the bigest problem of the punter , always IMO is not how we is going to gain some winning knowledge , the problem is how we will do face those deep crisis on his betting career. Many say money management is essential and surely it is but a crisis is imminent and must be expected , if the crisis could be fought with a good manner then success seems the one-way road for the punter.
Going on the theorem , the rule says that when you are close to bankrupcy , the one wrong step brings the other. And that happens because when we lose the 80% of our bank we still act as we have the 100% and not 20% meaning that our stakes and risk stay on the levels of a 100.000 bank and not 20.000 bank after the bad streak. I have been a big supporter of the flat staking technique , for me you either wish to follow a bet or not so this 1/10 scale is uselless as on my eyes every bet is worth or not worth to be taken.
So in order to avoid being bankrupt if the bad run continues , we must level our stakes after a very bad run to the new amount of 20.000 and not carry on betting as we have 100.000. That will allow us to take a small breath and recover slowly but with more safety by minimizing the risk of going even deeper. At the end of the day , a very deep dive and a fast return could easily bring a bigger fish but with the same ease could bring us to a near death experience. A diver may recover fast for one or two times but sooner or later he will go to the deep instead of the surface...
Have a nice weekend...
ps. Albert i will try to extend my answer on your subject at a latter entry.
Wednesday 25 June 2008
An army of ants...
Hi again.
i like to see that some readers have this bug inside them and do really think about it. That was obvious on the emails i received concerning the way we approach betting. I'm on the scene for more than 15 years. The early days where Coral and Hill where trying to cut off the local british tax(British readers will remember the classic question' You wish to pay the tax now?) by oppening the internet door and Gibraltar licencing , the golden days of Latin American Soccer where the sportbook had no idea and published unimaginable prices on outsiders , the opening of the Asian Markets in the early 2000's and now we are in the days of trading , live-betting and everything is betable.
My experience just taught me one think. The times have changed , the "sport" becomes more and more difficult , maybe some basic rules apply but prices move so fast , news are getting digged out so easily and sportbooks are more aware(BetRadar or HolyRadar). One person is now too difficult to broke through , maybe this person can do well for 1 , 2 or 5 years but time always takes its toll and certainly sooner of later you will enter a bad run. I have counted that in a time window of 10 years it is normal for a good punter to enter have 12 - 18 months of bad run. This could happen partially , e.g. 1 or 2 months per season or sometimes you may enter a bad run of 6-8 months.
There is only 1 way to avoid paying this bad months. By simply creating a cell , a cell of people you trust that you can follow and put your money on their thoughts. By creating this cell you will avoid those bad months or runs and you will be covered. The basic idea we had with my partner Argie was that when we started planning the website.
Maybe is time to do the same , you have a friend that you rate good? Join forces and you will see that plus is getting bigger. You have a friend that you count weaker than you? Help him , make him learn , he may help you on the future (most of the times he doesn't but guys let's be optimistic).
I remember something i've read in a book written by a great Tibetan leader , Saskya Pandita on my University days.
"When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants."
Try to build the colony and kill the cub... But remember we talk about genuine ants :)
Have a nice day...
i like to see that some readers have this bug inside them and do really think about it. That was obvious on the emails i received concerning the way we approach betting. I'm on the scene for more than 15 years. The early days where Coral and Hill where trying to cut off the local british tax(British readers will remember the classic question' You wish to pay the tax now?) by oppening the internet door and Gibraltar licencing , the golden days of Latin American Soccer where the sportbook had no idea and published unimaginable prices on outsiders , the opening of the Asian Markets in the early 2000's and now we are in the days of trading , live-betting and everything is betable.
My experience just taught me one think. The times have changed , the "sport" becomes more and more difficult , maybe some basic rules apply but prices move so fast , news are getting digged out so easily and sportbooks are more aware(BetRadar or HolyRadar). One person is now too difficult to broke through , maybe this person can do well for 1 , 2 or 5 years but time always takes its toll and certainly sooner of later you will enter a bad run. I have counted that in a time window of 10 years it is normal for a good punter to enter have 12 - 18 months of bad run. This could happen partially , e.g. 1 or 2 months per season or sometimes you may enter a bad run of 6-8 months.
There is only 1 way to avoid paying this bad months. By simply creating a cell , a cell of people you trust that you can follow and put your money on their thoughts. By creating this cell you will avoid those bad months or runs and you will be covered. The basic idea we had with my partner Argie was that when we started planning the website.
Maybe is time to do the same , you have a friend that you rate good? Join forces and you will see that plus is getting bigger. You have a friend that you count weaker than you? Help him , make him learn , he may help you on the future (most of the times he doesn't but guys let's be optimistic).
I remember something i've read in a book written by a great Tibetan leader , Saskya Pandita on my University days.
"When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants."
Try to build the colony and kill the cub... But remember we talk about genuine ants :)
Have a nice day...
Tuesday 24 June 2008
Rate (also) the preview…
We really should mention some things about previews. As our subscribers know any of EBI-Group bets is posted with a full preview available, explaining accurately the main reasons pushing us to put our money to this and advice it to our service. Some of our subscribers do not even read the preview and follow our bets “blind”, however in our eyes the preview is not useless, but the exact opposite. It’s the main tool we have to support our service and that’s why we strongly advice our clients to read all previews before betting.( Even if we feel proud and more responsible for some people who we have convinced with our work so much, to take our bets without even reading our views).
In our eyes the preview is more serious that the bet itself. The preview is a result of a carefull (sometimes exshausting) news reading procedure, a statistical analysis, plus our experience and hard-tested betting logics. If what we mention in the preview is proven right, then our job is well done. The other things are a matter of luck. And as any punter knows, you cannot deal with luck every time.
The feeling that we analyzed the match in a right way is extremely important for a punter’s psychology, regardless the outcome of the bet. Of course there have been matches where the team adviced by EBI-Group dominated but didn’t win (and some other, unfortunately less, where we got some lucky wins). But the loss looks heavier when you find out that a player you mention as absent plays and scores, or a fine pitch looks like mud after a heavy rain…
For me personally the “preview psychology” is a good trick to overcome the bad days. And in my personal archive I rate differently the matches lost by bad luck or by bad judgment. As I mentioned before, you cannot deal with luck, so you leave it alone as a sleazy factor. Luck comes and goes in circles, you should have mentioned that there’re time periods when you lose everything and others you win everything. What remains in the end is hard work in reading, analyzing and thinking about the matches advised. So even in a bad day I could go to sleep without concern and next day think and play without bad memories from last night, without thinking “to get money back” or advice with poor psychology due to latest results.
So we want EBI-Group to be rated not only for the results, but also for the previews. Of course people do not subscribe to any punter’s service just to read good previews (when given…), but to make money. However the preview is a mirror of a service’s fate. The most well-documented is a bet advised, the most stable the service will be.
In our eyes the preview is more serious that the bet itself. The preview is a result of a carefull (sometimes exshausting) news reading procedure, a statistical analysis, plus our experience and hard-tested betting logics. If what we mention in the preview is proven right, then our job is well done. The other things are a matter of luck. And as any punter knows, you cannot deal with luck every time.
The feeling that we analyzed the match in a right way is extremely important for a punter’s psychology, regardless the outcome of the bet. Of course there have been matches where the team adviced by EBI-Group dominated but didn’t win (and some other, unfortunately less, where we got some lucky wins). But the loss looks heavier when you find out that a player you mention as absent plays and scores, or a fine pitch looks like mud after a heavy rain…
For me personally the “preview psychology” is a good trick to overcome the bad days. And in my personal archive I rate differently the matches lost by bad luck or by bad judgment. As I mentioned before, you cannot deal with luck, so you leave it alone as a sleazy factor. Luck comes and goes in circles, you should have mentioned that there’re time periods when you lose everything and others you win everything. What remains in the end is hard work in reading, analyzing and thinking about the matches advised. So even in a bad day I could go to sleep without concern and next day think and play without bad memories from last night, without thinking “to get money back” or advice with poor psychology due to latest results.
So we want EBI-Group to be rated not only for the results, but also for the previews. Of course people do not subscribe to any punter’s service just to read good previews (when given…), but to make money. However the preview is a mirror of a service’s fate. The most well-documented is a bet advised, the most stable the service will be.
Sunday 22 June 2008
Pro or Semi-Pro
Uffff... another weekend ends here and i could say i'm not happy at all about it... As you may understand from the previous phrase you could assume that me , my partner and all the guys here at the site do actually have a normal everyday job.
I decided to write this post as many friends of the site ask as usual if we are proffesionals or not. For me , this term tends to be a very strange one. Do we wish to work for ourselves and make vacation two or three months per year? who doesn't wish that actually... On the other side and judging from some previous occations i have saw in the past years , i could say that turning into a proffesional punter could easily get really nasty for somebody. Personally i saw people that one day had 1 or 2 millions of euros on their bank accounts and then i listen about them in 1 or 1.5 year and i heard that they are in deep , deep troubles. And those examples tend to increase nowdays in a very big number. I talk about people i've met in forums during the half - late nineties and early two thousand , i knew them very well and i felt very happy when i learned that they broke this wall. So what happened to all those guys? The one million question is actually How they may lose 1 or 2 millions of euros?
Most of those guys told me that simply losed the meaning of the value of money. Let's see an example. Normal people do have a monthly income of 1000 to 3000 euros per month and from this income they pay their mortgage , rent , car loan , food , etc. All punters start to use a fraction of those money in order to bet. Some lose it all (which is the usual) , some stay on their money and some win. The method and way plays no role. Let's assume that one of those guys breaks through and makes some thousands of euros , then all those thousands become hundreds of thousands. And then the person stops to care about his everyday job , as his income is big and he managed to pay his mortgage , loans and make his life far easier. This situation continues for sometime and all are fine... Though our friend starts to bet other's people monthly wages on a single bet , it is normal to lose the real value of money and then the problem starts for our friend. On a bad run he may lose big then he goes for the recovery with even bigger stakes and his bank approaches the zero... when you have lost the real value of money and even if you are close to 0 it is very easy then to bet thousands of euros with the same ease of betting a few hundrends...
Concerning people i know , that was their biggest nightmare. Some of them recovered , some not. This is normal. And here comes the answer to your question. Is it possible to turn Pro? sure!
And why many people don't? I believe that having a normal job or anyway a normal activity (part-time , etc) keeps you on ground. You see and value those money you win and at the end of the day you always have an escape door on a bad time... Imagine somebody that stopped working on his 25 and now he bankrupted on 35 , how we will find a job now? even with a Masters degree the market already should be ages ago...
This is actually a question we all have to answer to ourselves. Some can break the wall and some don't at the end of the day.
ps. I like to see some old "friends" to show interest and comment on the blog. I wonder how they find time to read it after the huge success they had on their new project and those thousands of members followed them:)
I decided to write this post as many friends of the site ask as usual if we are proffesionals or not. For me , this term tends to be a very strange one. Do we wish to work for ourselves and make vacation two or three months per year? who doesn't wish that actually... On the other side and judging from some previous occations i have saw in the past years , i could say that turning into a proffesional punter could easily get really nasty for somebody. Personally i saw people that one day had 1 or 2 millions of euros on their bank accounts and then i listen about them in 1 or 1.5 year and i heard that they are in deep , deep troubles. And those examples tend to increase nowdays in a very big number. I talk about people i've met in forums during the half - late nineties and early two thousand , i knew them very well and i felt very happy when i learned that they broke this wall. So what happened to all those guys? The one million question is actually How they may lose 1 or 2 millions of euros?
Most of those guys told me that simply losed the meaning of the value of money. Let's see an example. Normal people do have a monthly income of 1000 to 3000 euros per month and from this income they pay their mortgage , rent , car loan , food , etc. All punters start to use a fraction of those money in order to bet. Some lose it all (which is the usual) , some stay on their money and some win. The method and way plays no role. Let's assume that one of those guys breaks through and makes some thousands of euros , then all those thousands become hundreds of thousands. And then the person stops to care about his everyday job , as his income is big and he managed to pay his mortgage , loans and make his life far easier. This situation continues for sometime and all are fine... Though our friend starts to bet other's people monthly wages on a single bet , it is normal to lose the real value of money and then the problem starts for our friend. On a bad run he may lose big then he goes for the recovery with even bigger stakes and his bank approaches the zero... when you have lost the real value of money and even if you are close to 0 it is very easy then to bet thousands of euros with the same ease of betting a few hundrends...
Concerning people i know , that was their biggest nightmare. Some of them recovered , some not. This is normal. And here comes the answer to your question. Is it possible to turn Pro? sure!
And why many people don't? I believe that having a normal job or anyway a normal activity (part-time , etc) keeps you on ground. You see and value those money you win and at the end of the day you always have an escape door on a bad time... Imagine somebody that stopped working on his 25 and now he bankrupted on 35 , how we will find a job now? even with a Masters degree the market already should be ages ago...
This is actually a question we all have to answer to ourselves. Some can break the wall and some don't at the end of the day.
ps. I like to see some old "friends" to show interest and comment on the blog. I wonder how they find time to read it after the huge success they had on their new project and those thousands of members followed them:)
Saturday 21 June 2008
When Sport Recife fields the 2nd squad and wins
Hello,
today i will copy/paste a recent post from the blog www.Punt.com , the post is named "All Money is created equal " and certainly lets a big field for thinking. Personally made me think a lot about the way i see thinks. As the experience gets hands on concerning our game , many times we forget about some fundumentals. As an example i will tell you the following. How many times we see a bet and we have our doubts , "Sport Recife goes on the field with 2nd team" , but we still take the bet mechanically. Even a punter with 15-20 years on the field and much money burned could easily fall into the trap. Try to read and decompile this post mirroring it on your own personal experiences and not clearly on the words written on it...
You may not have realised, but we all have a tendency to value money differently in certain situations. Let me begin with a story, this one does the rounds in Las Vegas, judging by the amounts of money involved I do have my doubts about the truth in it, but it does illustrate perfectly one of a few psychological problems we have with money, and it's in a gambling context, even better! It's called, "the legend of the man in the green bathrobe".
"By the third day of their honeymoon in Las Vegas the newlyweds had lost their $1,000 gambling allowance. That night the groom noticed a glowing object on the dresser. Upon closer inspection he realised it was a $5 chip they had saved as a souvenir. The number 17 was flashing on the chip’s face. Taking this as an omen, he put on his green bathrobe and rushed down to the roulette table where, not surprisingly, he bet on number 17. He let his winnings ride and eventually he was worth $7.5 million. Unfortunately the floor manager intervened, claiming the casino didn’t have the money to pay should 17 win again. Not to be deterred, the groom caught a taxi to another casino where he bet all on 17 again, when it hit it was worth $262 million. Needless to say, with such luck he bet again, only to lose it all when the ball fell on 18. Broke and dejected, the groom walked the several miles back to his hotel. ‘Where were you?’ asked his wife. ‘Playing roulette!’ he replied. ‘How did you do?’ ‘Not bad, I lost $5.’ "
This had me laughing when I read it, but then I realised this is exactly the sort of mind set that affects some people, particularly gamblers. Admitedly, no one in their right mind is going to bet $7.5m on 17, let alone $262m! But the point about how he felt he only lost $5 is perfectly apt.
Another illustrative scenario is one where you have two items to buy, one is worth £50, and the other is worth £2000. In both cases, you arrive at a store selling these items to find that they are priced at £75 and £2025, but there are locations 5 minutes drive away which have them at the correct price. Almost everyone would decide to drive 5 minutes to save £25 on the £50 item, a much smaller percentage would do so for the £2000 item. Yet both £25 savings are equated to a 5 minute drive.
Finally one more scene for you, imagine there is an item you've wanted for a very long time, but it's not quite been easily affordable. Let's say this item is £500, and you've seen a deal for one priced at £470. Later on, you are investing in a very big lifestyle purchase, perhaps a car or some expensive equipment, the cost for this is £15000. The dealer selling you this, then takes the opportunity to offer you the item you really wanted earlier as an add-on for an extra £600. Suddenly this doesn't seem like such an expense, you are already spending £15k, you take the opportunity to get something you've wanted for ages whist spending the money, "what's an extra £600 on the top of £15k?".
Each scenario slightly different in psychology, they all have particularly wide ranging importance when looking at how we manage and save our money generally, but they are also brilliantly applicable to gambling and trading. Lets deal with the last one, first.
The first thing that struck me was how easy it is to view money as cheaper the more you spend, and how often I have been affected by it. I have to wonder how often others are struck down by this mentality too. Clearly when we think of this scenario in a gambling context, we are talking about adding to losses, or averaging down a losing position by making the bet even bigger, because we see it as cheap.
It became obvious to me that this is one of the reasons a lot of people go bust or never get anywhere. In fact, the three scenarios together form a big part of whether you will win, win for a while then give it back, or go bust.
If you are losing whilst trading, it's very easy at times to convince yourself to add to your position - if you are already losing £10k, what's another £1000 ? The answer of course is £1000! And that's a lot of money. It's also money that you will potentially have to work many hours to make back. The more hours you work making back 'throw away money', the more pressure it places on you. It defeats many people in the long run. Before you know it, you are simply treading water / money, and that's if you are lucky enough to be fairly strong willed.
Don't add to losing positions. Just because you are losing money, it doesn't make losing more money any cheaper, all money is equal and it's all work. Cut your losing positions, save yourself hours more work, heartache and money.
Lets go back to the man in the green bathrobe. They call this the mentality of playing with 'house money'. Mentally you consider it the casino's money rather than your own, because you 'won' it rather than earned it. In other words, it's not real money. ...It's always real money.
This is a classic example of how people who do well for a while, give it all back many times faster than they made it. All the while justifying their actions by telling themselves that they were 'just playing with the profits', 'it wasn't really my money', 'I started with £100, I still haven't lost that, so I haven't lost anything'... what about the £5,000 you just lost then?
You put this in writing and it looks crazy, but this happens all the time in gambling and trading circles. The forums are littered with stories of 'giving it all back' etc.
Finally, lets look at our second scenario. The one where the amount of effort is worth the same amount of money, but is disguised by the amounts being spent. You have to think and act efficiently to make gambling / trading pay. That tick you gave up in order to get matched, that cost you. That time you crossed the spread, took someone else's offer, that can cost you on many levels in the long run.
I've recently done a lot of work on analysing my activities for the last 15 months. Betfair were kind enough to send me through a detailed spreadsheet with all the matches that I had traded on in that time, my profits and losses and traded volumes etc. The sheer scale of what I had done was quite a surprise, even to me. 1066 matches traded and matched volumes of many £10m's, seeing figures like these made me realise many things,
My edge during that time was a tiny %.
This was the sum of all my actions, good and bad, during many hours of work.
Because of the sums traded, a very small improvement in my actions could result in a massive leap in the amount I could win.
The efficiency of my actions was incredibly important over long periods of time.
Every £ is equal ! I needed to value all money.
All the times where there had been 'throw away money', I had spent days and weeks making it back, had I not thrown it away, the profit column might look very different.
How do you avoid these psychological traps? Three ideas for three scenes.
Avoid the 'house money' mentality, by keeping physical/electronic records of your activity. Avoid accounting for things in your head, if it's in your head alone it is very easy to write off as not being real. This will also help you analyse your actions over longer periods of time.
Withdraw your winnings. Don't keep them in your online accounts, whilst they are there it is much easier to see them as just that - "winnings". It becomes tempting to mentally reassign this money as just profits and not really yours. Take the money back to a designated amount every so often. I know people that do this every day, it's a good idea.
Cut losing trades, don't add to them. Set your limits on size, don't go over them. Evaluate each opportunity and trade them as efficiently as you can - get as many ticks as you can, ask for prices rather than take them. Every action you make over the course of a year makes a difference to your bottom line. Value every £ that you play with as real.
today i will copy/paste a recent post from the blog www.Punt.com , the post is named "All Money is created equal " and certainly lets a big field for thinking. Personally made me think a lot about the way i see thinks. As the experience gets hands on concerning our game , many times we forget about some fundumentals. As an example i will tell you the following. How many times we see a bet and we have our doubts , "Sport Recife goes on the field with 2nd team" , but we still take the bet mechanically. Even a punter with 15-20 years on the field and much money burned could easily fall into the trap. Try to read and decompile this post mirroring it on your own personal experiences and not clearly on the words written on it...
You may not have realised, but we all have a tendency to value money differently in certain situations. Let me begin with a story, this one does the rounds in Las Vegas, judging by the amounts of money involved I do have my doubts about the truth in it, but it does illustrate perfectly one of a few psychological problems we have with money, and it's in a gambling context, even better! It's called, "the legend of the man in the green bathrobe".
"By the third day of their honeymoon in Las Vegas the newlyweds had lost their $1,000 gambling allowance. That night the groom noticed a glowing object on the dresser. Upon closer inspection he realised it was a $5 chip they had saved as a souvenir. The number 17 was flashing on the chip’s face. Taking this as an omen, he put on his green bathrobe and rushed down to the roulette table where, not surprisingly, he bet on number 17. He let his winnings ride and eventually he was worth $7.5 million. Unfortunately the floor manager intervened, claiming the casino didn’t have the money to pay should 17 win again. Not to be deterred, the groom caught a taxi to another casino where he bet all on 17 again, when it hit it was worth $262 million. Needless to say, with such luck he bet again, only to lose it all when the ball fell on 18. Broke and dejected, the groom walked the several miles back to his hotel. ‘Where were you?’ asked his wife. ‘Playing roulette!’ he replied. ‘How did you do?’ ‘Not bad, I lost $5.’ "
This had me laughing when I read it, but then I realised this is exactly the sort of mind set that affects some people, particularly gamblers. Admitedly, no one in their right mind is going to bet $7.5m on 17, let alone $262m! But the point about how he felt he only lost $5 is perfectly apt.
Another illustrative scenario is one where you have two items to buy, one is worth £50, and the other is worth £2000. In both cases, you arrive at a store selling these items to find that they are priced at £75 and £2025, but there are locations 5 minutes drive away which have them at the correct price. Almost everyone would decide to drive 5 minutes to save £25 on the £50 item, a much smaller percentage would do so for the £2000 item. Yet both £25 savings are equated to a 5 minute drive.
Finally one more scene for you, imagine there is an item you've wanted for a very long time, but it's not quite been easily affordable. Let's say this item is £500, and you've seen a deal for one priced at £470. Later on, you are investing in a very big lifestyle purchase, perhaps a car or some expensive equipment, the cost for this is £15000. The dealer selling you this, then takes the opportunity to offer you the item you really wanted earlier as an add-on for an extra £600. Suddenly this doesn't seem like such an expense, you are already spending £15k, you take the opportunity to get something you've wanted for ages whist spending the money, "what's an extra £600 on the top of £15k?".
Each scenario slightly different in psychology, they all have particularly wide ranging importance when looking at how we manage and save our money generally, but they are also brilliantly applicable to gambling and trading. Lets deal with the last one, first.
The first thing that struck me was how easy it is to view money as cheaper the more you spend, and how often I have been affected by it. I have to wonder how often others are struck down by this mentality too. Clearly when we think of this scenario in a gambling context, we are talking about adding to losses, or averaging down a losing position by making the bet even bigger, because we see it as cheap.
It became obvious to me that this is one of the reasons a lot of people go bust or never get anywhere. In fact, the three scenarios together form a big part of whether you will win, win for a while then give it back, or go bust.
If you are losing whilst trading, it's very easy at times to convince yourself to add to your position - if you are already losing £10k, what's another £1000 ? The answer of course is £1000! And that's a lot of money. It's also money that you will potentially have to work many hours to make back. The more hours you work making back 'throw away money', the more pressure it places on you. It defeats many people in the long run. Before you know it, you are simply treading water / money, and that's if you are lucky enough to be fairly strong willed.
Don't add to losing positions. Just because you are losing money, it doesn't make losing more money any cheaper, all money is equal and it's all work. Cut your losing positions, save yourself hours more work, heartache and money.
Lets go back to the man in the green bathrobe. They call this the mentality of playing with 'house money'. Mentally you consider it the casino's money rather than your own, because you 'won' it rather than earned it. In other words, it's not real money. ...It's always real money.
This is a classic example of how people who do well for a while, give it all back many times faster than they made it. All the while justifying their actions by telling themselves that they were 'just playing with the profits', 'it wasn't really my money', 'I started with £100, I still haven't lost that, so I haven't lost anything'... what about the £5,000 you just lost then?
You put this in writing and it looks crazy, but this happens all the time in gambling and trading circles. The forums are littered with stories of 'giving it all back' etc.
Finally, lets look at our second scenario. The one where the amount of effort is worth the same amount of money, but is disguised by the amounts being spent. You have to think and act efficiently to make gambling / trading pay. That tick you gave up in order to get matched, that cost you. That time you crossed the spread, took someone else's offer, that can cost you on many levels in the long run.
I've recently done a lot of work on analysing my activities for the last 15 months. Betfair were kind enough to send me through a detailed spreadsheet with all the matches that I had traded on in that time, my profits and losses and traded volumes etc. The sheer scale of what I had done was quite a surprise, even to me. 1066 matches traded and matched volumes of many £10m's, seeing figures like these made me realise many things,
My edge during that time was a tiny %.
This was the sum of all my actions, good and bad, during many hours of work.
Because of the sums traded, a very small improvement in my actions could result in a massive leap in the amount I could win.
The efficiency of my actions was incredibly important over long periods of time.
Every £ is equal ! I needed to value all money.
All the times where there had been 'throw away money', I had spent days and weeks making it back, had I not thrown it away, the profit column might look very different.
How do you avoid these psychological traps? Three ideas for three scenes.
Avoid the 'house money' mentality, by keeping physical/electronic records of your activity. Avoid accounting for things in your head, if it's in your head alone it is very easy to write off as not being real. This will also help you analyse your actions over longer periods of time.
Withdraw your winnings. Don't keep them in your online accounts, whilst they are there it is much easier to see them as just that - "winnings". It becomes tempting to mentally reassign this money as just profits and not really yours. Take the money back to a designated amount every so often. I know people that do this every day, it's a good idea.
Cut losing trades, don't add to them. Set your limits on size, don't go over them. Evaluate each opportunity and trade them as efficiently as you can - get as many ticks as you can, ask for prices rather than take them. Every action you make over the course of a year makes a difference to your bottom line. Value every £ that you play with as real.
Friday 20 June 2008
Best “data list” is bank account
Suppose you search for a valuable tipster service to follow. What do you do? Thank God, there’re many choises…
1) You follow your friend’s advice and subscribe to an ultimate… news service, where “the news is everything”, but… all people there care about picks, not news. But, of course, the news compilers-tipsters have not any verified picks list. They just publish their picks whenever they like, with odds they like, they celebrate in case of a temporary win, but they hide in case of losing. And when they keep losing all the time they… invent some winning tips. Someone could possibly say “you know, some days ago, before the Russia-Sweden match, I took Russia to win Euro 2008 @46. And now I’m laying it @19. What a good dealer I am, don’t you think? Oh, sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I was very busy writing news”…
2) You visit a verifying picks service and look for the bests sites in the list. And when you subscribe to the “best” service and wait to gain profit you realize that the picks are untakeable, your mega-tipster with the excellent data survives only by doubles which are offered nowhere, or offered with limits not exceeding 20-30 euros, advising picks with odds found only in his dreams, or (even worse) some of the lost picks don’t appear on his list, just to keep him in winning side…
3) You don’t have money to spend on search for an “amateur” or “semi-professional” or “fully professional” punter publishing picks in Blogabet or other services like that and after a few bets you realize that the deep green in data is existing just because your “friend’s” picks the best odds offered by OddsOddsOdds, regardlees if the bet limit is low, the betting company seems unreliable. Or (even worst) your “friend” decides to change his betting tactics all the time. And of course he doesn’t have to give the slightest explanation on that, it’s a free site…
Conclusion: The best “data list” is your personal bank account. And that’s what you should follow. There’s a lot of dirt in betting business, as everywhere the money seems easy to gain. And we’re not Robin Hood to fight all this mud of lies, but we’re getting more and more annoyed of some cases like these mentioned above. And we know that many of our subscribers have “suffered and learned” from this…
1) You follow your friend’s advice and subscribe to an ultimate… news service, where “the news is everything”, but… all people there care about picks, not news. But, of course, the news compilers-tipsters have not any verified picks list. They just publish their picks whenever they like, with odds they like, they celebrate in case of a temporary win, but they hide in case of losing. And when they keep losing all the time they… invent some winning tips. Someone could possibly say “you know, some days ago, before the Russia-Sweden match, I took Russia to win Euro 2008 @46. And now I’m laying it @19. What a good dealer I am, don’t you think? Oh, sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I was very busy writing news”…
2) You visit a verifying picks service and look for the bests sites in the list. And when you subscribe to the “best” service and wait to gain profit you realize that the picks are untakeable, your mega-tipster with the excellent data survives only by doubles which are offered nowhere, or offered with limits not exceeding 20-30 euros, advising picks with odds found only in his dreams, or (even worse) some of the lost picks don’t appear on his list, just to keep him in winning side…
3) You don’t have money to spend on search for an “amateur” or “semi-professional” or “fully professional” punter publishing picks in Blogabet or other services like that and after a few bets you realize that the deep green in data is existing just because your “friend’s” picks the best odds offered by OddsOddsOdds, regardlees if the bet limit is low, the betting company seems unreliable. Or (even worst) your “friend” decides to change his betting tactics all the time. And of course he doesn’t have to give the slightest explanation on that, it’s a free site…
Conclusion: The best “data list” is your personal bank account. And that’s what you should follow. There’s a lot of dirt in betting business, as everywhere the money seems easy to gain. And we’re not Robin Hood to fight all this mud of lies, but we’re getting more and more annoyed of some cases like these mentioned above. And we know that many of our subscribers have “suffered and learned” from this…
Wednesday 18 June 2008
The theory of the recycled market...
For sometime i check many websites , forums , blogs , etc that publish tips. A very strange phenomenon appears to exist. I called it "recycled market" phenomenon. It seems that most of the market's tipsters follow nearly the same blog , sites , paysites and in general they do react as one entity when a play is published from one of those market moving guys. The only that a prosperous tipster or newcomer should do is to find those market movers , change the lines a bit e.g. a -1/4 tip to be changed into -1/2 and start walking the path of glory in the tipster's world.
So where is the good and the bad of this situation. First , when those market mover guys lose , the majority of the market loses and the majority of the sportbooks go to plus. Second , those matches advised on open free forums , blogs , sites , etc go into the basket of public bets. If you meet and talk with proffesional punters , the majority of them will tell you that only a tiny % of their bets concern public bets. Bets that are highly circulated on markets. I wouldn't go directly into the classic "dirty" explanation but let's phase a reality. Before a market mover tipster publishes a bet , the line could be different , as first he played himself , then his close friends , then somebody on a close forum and the final product is that you receive on the free website. A line could be easily changed once or twice before you buy the bet and that certainly puts you under the sportbook's belt. On the other side , big money on a game always increase the danger for the known reasons.
All in all , the majority of the profit made by sportbooks (profit not turnover) is on those 2.5 dead months of the summer....
The conclusion (if there is any) :
The market moves , a new type of tipsters appears , those i call pickers. The picker is the one who doesn't follow leagues , he just follows tipsters and picks which bet is good or not. The question is : Would you trust your money on a person with small or no knowldegde of a league to one of those pickers?
Good Afternoon...
So where is the good and the bad of this situation. First , when those market mover guys lose , the majority of the market loses and the majority of the sportbooks go to plus. Second , those matches advised on open free forums , blogs , sites , etc go into the basket of public bets. If you meet and talk with proffesional punters , the majority of them will tell you that only a tiny % of their bets concern public bets. Bets that are highly circulated on markets. I wouldn't go directly into the classic "dirty" explanation but let's phase a reality. Before a market mover tipster publishes a bet , the line could be different , as first he played himself , then his close friends , then somebody on a close forum and the final product is that you receive on the free website. A line could be easily changed once or twice before you buy the bet and that certainly puts you under the sportbook's belt. On the other side , big money on a game always increase the danger for the known reasons.
All in all , the majority of the profit made by sportbooks (profit not turnover) is on those 2.5 dead months of the summer....
The conclusion (if there is any) :
The market moves , a new type of tipsters appears , those i call pickers. The picker is the one who doesn't follow leagues , he just follows tipsters and picks which bet is good or not. The question is : Would you trust your money on a person with small or no knowldegde of a league to one of those pickers?
Good Afternoon...
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