Continuing the theme of coping with the bad betting times, the topic I want to discuss in this post and next, is when to drop a tipster that you’re following, and how perhaps to avoid making some pretty common mistakes.
Dropping a tipster you’re following is the easiest thing in the world to do when things are going badly; your instinct tells you to shift responsibility away from yourself and onto someone else’s shoulders and let’s face it, who is the obvious target? You’ve paid good money for someone’s expertise, but following that expertise is costing you money. The little demon sitting on your shoulder is whispering in your ear that the solution to your problems, the dead easy way to stop throwing away good money after bad, is to stop putting your cash on this guy’s tips.
Hopefully, sitting on your other shoulder, is a Guardian Angel – let’s call him Gabe (Gabrial is a touch formal, don’t you think?) – who will try to counter the temptations put your way by the devil.
Here are some of the things that Gabe, if he’s any sort of a half-decent angel worth listening to, should be talking to you about and questioning…
- Why did you follow this particular tipster in the first place? Surely you will have read an independent review about the service that included detailed break downs of losing runs and outlined appropriately sized betting banks before you took the plunge?
- You did set aside the recommended size of betting bank didn’t you? You’re not telling me you took a bit of a risk and thought you’d get by with less, surely?
- Obviously, finding losing difficult to take at the best of times, you went into following this tipster with your eyes open to the fact that the guy tips at average odds of 12/1 and losing runs are common and lengthy, yes?
- Naturally you will have set up your betting bank from funds that fundamentally, you can afford to lose? Sure, we all hope that busting a bank won’t happen but we realized it could, didn’t we, before betting the new chaps tips, and if the very worst did happen we’d still be able to cover all our living expenses and then some, right?
- And I know you didn’t back a decent priced winner early in the piece and assumed that you’d found the holy grail of betting services and so immediately raised your stake!
OK, so the way I’ve written the above might mean I’m coming over as being a little facetious, but being totally honest with you, they outline the mistakes I have made myself with my own betting. I’ve signed up to services that really weren’t for me, that relied on long-priced winners that were relatively few and far between with many spells of drought between drinks from the well. Psychologically, at the time I joined these services, I wasn’t ready and prepared to ride out the storms. I have also thought I’d get by with inappropriately sized betting banks, believing that the profits from my other tipsters would cover things if my new addition didn’t do so well, only for my “tried and trusted” to embark upon a losing run at the same time as my new service.
And yes, I did once sign up to a new tipster, back a 20/1 winner on my first day of following, and promptly up my stakes dramatically – big mistake!
Of course it is not always the right thing to do to continue backing a tipster come what may. We read so much about the “long term” and having to expect losing runs that we can forget that going to the opposite extreme – continuing to back the selections from a service that has lost it’s edge – is just as wrong as dropping a successful tipster at the first sign of trouble. The trick of course, is identifying when that tipster might have lost it’s edge.
We’ll cover that in the next post…
Betting for Tuesday 14th August – Monday 20th August
AH Edge: Staked 9pts, n/a, ROI n/a
Jason James: Staked 13pts, +2pts, ROI 15.38%.
MVS (Lite): Staked 8pts, +4pts, ROI 50%.
Fake Mug Bets Club: Staked 16pts, +8.25pts, ROI 51.56%
Northern Monkey: Staked 12.5pts, -0.95pts, ROI -7.6%.
Pilelist Racing: Staked 17.516pts, +10.891pts, ROI 62.18%.
Racing Service B: Staked 25pts, +5pts, ROI 20%.
Racing Service C: Staked 7pts, +0.5pts, ROI 7.14%.
Total for the week: ROI 26.09%, ROC 2.35%.
