SIMON NOTT blog: Lumping On

This blog is aimed at people like me, who bet on a daily basis, and don’t have any ‘inside information’.

By that, I mean the sort of info an owner might get from his trainer. Something like, ‘Your horse’s recent bad form has been down to a niggling back problem that we hadn’t noticed, I’m pleased to say that we’ve sorted it, he’s on a great mark, jumping out of his skin and looks like a day to have a good bet’.

You know, the type of message that we’d all like to get.

If you get those types of messages, this blog isn’t for you, good luck when you open your shoulders.

No, it’s for the rest of us, people who bet daily, wagers based on either your own toil studying the form book or following selections from tipsters. I fall into the latter category and, yes, there are plenty of genuine, successful tipsters out there. Fear not though, this isn’t an advertising piece, but it is from experience.

In a recent blog, I mentioned the perceived glamour that surrounds having big bets. My betting ring blogs revolve around the news of lumps flying around the ring, the fact I’m still writing them in one form or another decades after I started hopefully bears out the interest that there is in that sort of business, the big bets get the headlines.

However, this is where the fun stops, anyone who has watched any of my #BettingPeople interviews with professional punters will read between the lines that most of them don’t bet in house brick-sized wads of cash, virtual or otherwise. Apart from the obvious problems of actually getting on at all, unless they are betting on course, it’s because they all accept that losing runs are inevitable. It doesn’t matter who you are. They need to bet in stakes realistic enough that they don’t knock themselves out when that run comes.

Of course, confidence is something that is a useful tool for punters, but overconfidence and losing runs are the bookie’s best friends. Writing from a personal perspective I think bookmakers that restrict punters too soon are missing a trick. If they sat back and let human nature take over, they’ll often get their money back with interest from most ‘winning’ punters. In his latest #BettingPeople interview, professional punter Shane Reville says that he knows what’s ahead of him this year, bad runs where nothing goes right and good runs where nothing goes wrong and that neither can be controlled.

In his previous interview with me, he talked about a five-month losing run. That’s right, five months. We are talking about one of Ireland’s most successful professional punters here. If he can get it so wrong over such a long period of time, is it any wonder that many punters can hit a purple patch long enough to think that they have the game by the bollocks?

That’s the day that thought enters their heads and they work out how much more they would have won had they had more on, that’s also the day they decide to double or treble their stake. It’s the next day that Lady Luck has her head turned by Sod’s Law and the row of gleaming trumpets start to tarnish.

From painful personal experience, I know that the best judges and tipping services have periods where they simply cannot do anything right. You need to be prepared, mentally and financially for those dark days. You need to be betting small enough with a tank hefty enough not to have sleepless nights when it all goes horribly wrong. When you think that Shane didn’t win for five months, work out how many bets you’d have in your own personal battle with the bookies then count up how much you have to bet with, that is money that won’t affect your life at all if you lose it. Go on, do it.

Now divide what you have by the number of bets you would have had. If that means that you are only betting £5 of £10 a point or less that’s your level. If you don’t think it’s glamourous or exciting enough to have bets that small, think about it this way. How glamorous would it feel to lose the lot? We do like to be positive though of course, those stakes will increase with your tank as you keep chopping it off.

Boring, isn’t it? This sort of betting isn’t going to get you many views if you do a TikTok video having your skydive on. If you are just getting into the game, this advice may not follow what you have always believed about professional or even profitable punting, but it is good advice, trust me.

SIMON NOTT

Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

Simon Nott is author of: Skint Mob! Tales from the Betting Ring
available on Kindle CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS