Giving yourself a chance in horse racing

I want to tell you a story about one of the most widespread problems in Horse race betting today and people who try to bet for a living. Let us say that your name is Bob and you have done a little research into a certain way to bet on horse racing that you think will be profitable. It is nothing more than a strong hunch that your strategies will be profitable but you are very confident. You have set aside £5000 as your betting bank that you are “prepared to lose” and your stake is £100 per bet so you are never betting more than 2% of your betting bank.

But you go on a short downswing of £500 and now your betting bank is only £4500. Suddenly and without warning you cease operations because the £500 loss has scared you. If you do this then at no stage did you ever have a £5000 bankroll! It is clear in this instance that £500 was your own personal stop loss limit and the point in which you suffered enough psychological pain to get you to stop.

It is never a bad thing to stop but if you look closely at this situation then you can see that Bob stood little chance of success from the very beginning. This was to do with the level of variance that is in built into all gambling activities. The reason why you need a bankroll is so that you can ride these almost certain fluctuations. Bob actually only dropped by no more than 10% of his bankroll.

It wasn’t the figure of 10% that scared Bob, it was the figure of £500 which was more than he was mentally prepared to accept. Bob would be almost certain to go on a run like this but if he were to stop every time that he lost in this way then he would simply be losing a succession of smaller amounts of money.

So his horse race betting bank of £5000 was an illusion even though he physically had the money. As soon as the going became even semi-rough then Bob turned and ran and he never gave himself a chance. Only in the very rare event of Bob having huge initial wins and a very powerful opening winning streak will he achieve the confidence levels to go ahead.

But this is a big problem with many gamblers because at the very outset then they lack perhaps the greatest asset that a gambler can have and that is confidence in their own methods. It is amazing how confidence can and does evaporate in ones own methods when you start to lose money. This for me is the greatest obstacle that people who gamble or try to gamble seriously need to overcome.

You may very well possess a good winning method but you are not going to have the confidence to know this until you have a long history of doing it. I have always maintained that until a gambler experiences a bad negative run and comes through the other side then they are simply not qualified for a career as a professional.