Gambling and betting strategies

There are probably as many different types of gambling strategies than there are people on the planet. They range from fantastically complex systems that only someone who had advanced qualifications in mathematics would be able to understand to systems that are amazingly simple.

But the first question is, does a system have to be complex in order for it to work? The answer is…..not necessarily. Although a really simple system has the added drawback that it is all too likely already known and in widespread use!

In this sense, poker is no different. There are many simplistic systems in poker but these tend to be aimed at novices and this makes them only marginal money making systems at best. There are certain criteria that I look for with regards gambling systems and I have seen many down the years.

Firstly if a gambling system involves risking large amounts of money to win very tiny amounts then this sets off alarm bells in my head straight away. I don’t like systems (however intricate they may seem) that entail having to risk large amounts of money to win very tiny amounts.

There are well known roulette systems that do this and they do create the illusion of working for quite some time. Trading systems on the betting exchanges and other types of gambling systems often have similar characteristics. For instance I often see systems like the ones in Tennis where some traders look to trade around the see saw nature of the game.

For instance if say two equally matched players start their match and both are around evens (expressed as 2.0 on the exchange) then some traders look to maybe back the player who has lost the opening game on their opponents serve when they are serving themselves looking to level the score at 1-1 in the first set.

Often this will be a successful short term strategy as this player will more often than not, hold serve and make it 1-1 in games. However if you backed this player at say 2.04 after losing the opening game, even if they held serve then you could only lay them back at about 2.00 again.

This locks in a small profit but the problem is that this has a tremendous downside in that if this player then had his own service game broken then it is possible that they may never end up getting even or in front and the price may never get below the initial 2.04 that you backed them at.

This could be offset by you immediately getting out of this situation with a small guaranteed loss although the situation is still fraught with danger even then. What if you had an internet connection problem? Or you were called away for some reason or your computer malfunctioned? If you are risking say £100 to win £1 or £2 then your strike rate has to be phenomenally high and it also has to stay that high as well leaving you almost no room for error.

I much prefer systems that risk very little but have massive potential upsides. Even if this is at the expense of the strike rate being reduced! While the example with Tennis “swing trading” may not have been optimal. What I hope that this shows is that risking large amounts of money to win relatively tiny amounts has never been a solid policy unless you happen to know that the bet represents value or in some extreme cases, the result is already known to you.

If you want to develop a gambling system then keep in mind what you want the system to do and also what strike rate you will need to make money. The higher the strike rate, the less room for error and the less room for error, the more chance that it has of going wrong at some future point in time.