Let me tell you a little story about my first ever betting system.
Well I call it a betting system… It was really just good way for me to lose my money.
Maybe it’ll remind you of yourself when you were younger, maybe not.
Either way you should get a good laugh at my stupidity.
Here we go.
I was 16 at the time and thought of myself as being pretty clever. Hardly some kind of Mensa level child genius by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly smarter that the average bear. Looking back, for for as much as I thought I was clever, I must have been twice as naive.
Only I didn’t think I that I was naive at the time.
If you accused me of being naive at the time my reaction would’ve probably been something like this – “Me? Naive?, No – Never”
One of Mark Twain’s famous quotes rings very true here.
– “It aint what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just aint so.”
At 16 years young I knew there must be a way to beat the bookies, if only I had some sort of edge, and I also thought that I was smart enough to outsmart the bookies. (I guess I was half right, but that wouldn’t happen for at least a few more years.)
I had already lied about my age and set up an account with an online bookie.
This was surprisingly easy to do at the time. Although I’d reckon it’d be a lot trickier to do today with the “know your customer” requirements.
No proof of ID or age was required.
No questions were asked.
I had an account all set up and I was ready to take on the bookies and win.
So what was 16 year old me’s big grand plan?
It was simple…
Embarrassingly simple, and equally stupid.
I thought that I could bet on football teams that were ahead by 2 goals at half time. The odds would be pretty low though, so I’d have to stake big if I was going to win a reasonable amount of money. So I decided I’d stake £100 a bet. I thought these bets would be certain to win so I didn’t mind staking big.
After all, how often does a football team lose after they are two goals ahead at half time?
More often than I had originally thought was the answer to that question.
My plan started off well with a few winners, but then greed sunk in and I wanted to win more.
So I started staking more.
First £200, then £300…
And it was that £300 bet that was the one that lost, leaving me with a overall loss of around £100.
I wrote my first “betting system” off as a failure and went back to the drawing board.
There’s a few reason why this plan never worked. First off, there was no reasoning behind the selection process (other than the team being 2-0 up at half time), and I had know idea whether the odds I was betting were good value (the most likely weren’t). I was also staking too big in relation to my total bankroll, and didn’t have any sort of staking plan in place.
My betting has come a long way since then, and I can now happily say that I am beating the bookies.
But I’ll be the first to admit that I’m always learning and I’ve still got a long way to go.
The point of me telling you this story is to emphasize the point that we all start somewhere.
Most of us will have started off as mug punters.
But that doesn’t mean we have to stay mug punters forever.
I you have the desire, you can easily become knowledgeable enough about a certain sport (or a certain area of a sport) to be able to make a profit from betting on that sport.
I don’t know how far along you are in your own betting journey, but what I do know is that no one can be knowledgeable about every aspect of every sport.
Which is why it never hurts to also follow the selection of tipster you trust who specialises in areas that you don’t, making your betting more profitable.
You can find a list of all the tipsters I use myself at the link below.
http://WinnersOdds.com/Tipster-Portfolio
Until next time,
Kenny Turnbull
