Lori,

Excellent post mate. Excellent.

Lori , I know you mean well and usually gas good points and advices.
Only way you get it wrong imo is when you approach everyone as if they depend on making plenty of money from their gambling.
Imo most people on here aren't prepared to put in the time and effort it takes to be a long term winner/fulltimer.
Most people on here will lose long term and the only important thing when losing is not to lose so much money that it becomes a problem.
As far as I can see the OP hasn't said anything about this affecting his daily life. He has lost roughly 1 k a year and to most people that is no disaster.
He clearly likes to gamble and as long as he can afford it I don't see why he should stop. He should find out exactly how much he can lose without it creating problems for him and his family.
The important thing is to stop gambling when you have reached your maximum loss wether this is for a week , month or a year.

You can't change the past realise you have a problem and deal with it. In the past I found out that I was drinking to much and eventually I gave it up since then two of my friends have died from alcohol abuse but I survived.

Maybe the losses could be seen as good thing in the long run if you feel really ** and a bit desperate today maybe its worth writing down your feelings just to remind yourself if your tempted to go back to gambling how much losing large amounts of money hurts and how bad it felt.

Lying to their partner and bad luck stories ??
That must be the daily life for something like 95 % of all punters.

To make the money you 'seem' to want to make takes time and effort aswell as a LARGE bank.

What everybody has said previously is great advice all i want to add is - do you see this as a carrer or a bit of fun/hobby?

If a hobby then £5 to £10 bets should not be a problem.

IMO - you see yourself as being able to make a lifestyle change by 'gambling'. To do this you need to put the hours in (like any other well paid job) and that probably means 12 to 16 hrs a day, which means no other job and/or no family time.

I personally have my own(successful) business and thought I could do this 'gambling' lark full time and make just as much - I now realise that I didn't have the time or commitment to spend the time required to be succesful.

Now I play a quite a bit but realise my main income is from my business, which I am good at.

You are a mug gambler, and you beat yourself up about it.

Pack it in.

You need to knock it on the head Barry. When money has been lost it's gone all your posts focus on getting that money back, seemingly as quickly as possible, which will only lead to more rash bets and ever increasing stakes. Pack it in, tell the mrs and enjoy the rest of your life.

It's frightening that you're even considering even lumpier bets than you've previously done!
If you do these bets where offers the best price? Are you only considering these because you THINK they're nigh on certainties? If you lose you may think you'll quit but no doubt you'll be back with a 3k bet to attempt to recover losses again!
Option 4 is the correct option and should be sitting at 99.9%

If I told you you had a 19% chance of having terminal cancer, how would you feel?

That's where you're going with your 1.23 shot.

I think the problem youve got mate is that to lose so much in a short space of time hurts more than losing that over the space of a year, say £10 a day or something. Your thinking of quick fixes for a quick mess which invariably go wrong. Your idea of recouping long term (£7 a day or whatever) is the safest way to go although this plan isnt straightforward either as lori and others have explained.

Your vision is clouded by the large losses and can only start to become clear once you downsize stakes. After initial thoughts of 'why bother betting £20 when its only going to recoup another £30 from my losses', you will start to concentrate more on the actual bets rather than 'what happens if this one loses as well?'. The amounts will look after themselves until such time when you fall off the rails and bet big again.

Because we have no way of predicting luck, you cannot assume that one more big bet will solve everything. I hate having to reduce stakes, take time off or anything else which has the potential to reduce returns. However i tell myself that the potential to make a situation worse is greatly inflated during these times so you could argue that theoretically, i am still gaining during these times by not losing as much during bad spells.

Hope this makes sense, im not a gambler (the stereotypical type anyway) but have tried out and out betting and am offering these experiences to you.

As I said before i had a problem with drink a few years ago and I gave it up and my two friends didnt and they are dead, so in fact all three of us gave it up, the other two cant have a drink anymore either because their dead.

I thought I could not possibly give it up but I did and even if there are times when it is a bit borring not having a drink I am glad I am alive. Theres many compensations about not drinking, better health, money saved and no days in which you feel utterly appauling because you have drunk so much previously. But in truth I dont think not having a drink really bothers me that much now. I believe after a while you' ll probably wonder why not having a bet ever really bothered you.

no moves

Your post is tinged with sadness but I am thanksful for your thoughts and wish you well.

I am leaning towards option 4 I must say, options 1 and 2 are no longer options and I have alot to keep me occupied - jobs round the house, watching DVD's, playing on the wii, exercise etc. plus family time when I'm off.

My partner hates the fact I'm glued to the pc watching meaningless footy sweating over bets and she doesn't really notice when I win but she can certainly tell if I have had a big loss.

The more I type these things then option 4 becomes a no brainer. Believe it or not I did switch off for a few months and didn't even open BF up, but then slowly you have a strong feeling about a match and boom it's got you again.

No bets for me today and I'm happy that I haven't lost anything - I need to not dwell on the money that has gone and keep reminding myself of the feeling if another big loss comes along.

Barry

Unless you self-exclude (you can do this by either phoning Betfair up or I believe you can do it yourself from the My Account section), no matter how strong-willed you think you are, given everything you've said so far, you're very likely to end up where you are now before long.

Hit the self-exclude button and then you can rest more easily, knowing that temptation won't lure you back (not on Betfair at least).

Barry if you read this thread again, option 4 should be over 90% in terms of what you should do.

The frightening thing for you though is that is probably a 10% or less chance of actually being the course you take.

how do you bet? is through debit cards? Do you need cards for your every day living, if as couple you need debit cards to exist get your partner to keep them. If you personally have no way of inputting money into betfair or bookmkers accounts this form of gambling will be impossible for you to access however much you get the urge.

Avoid bookies, its my opinion that the more the money is controlled by your partner this includes cash the less likely you are to lose control.

Barry

you sound like a decent bloke

why don't you do something with your life

put your time and effort that you spend on here into bettering yourself.

People sometimes mistake Betfair as a way out of their normal lives. It's not

Its full of sharks waiting to screw you along with the bookies.

barry if u lost a grand on the street would you spend the next 6 months trying to find it ......?

Your an idiot get the foook off gambling sites before u destroy ur life ,u appear to be betting on
things u dont have a clue about ,u are a million
delete ur bank cards and cut them up, as for
credit cards what number is this one ur on ?
u must be struggling big time with the repayments and are hoping for a miracle
get out ,it wont happen .you will lose everything
your family ur job ur house the foooking lot ,
u will have plenty to occupy ur mind then ...

barry,
you need a hobby,
take up fishing,takes up plenty of time and while you are doing it you can contemplate the important things in life.
ps if you want to get the losses back just lay liverpool against stoke

There was a bloke on here about 2 years ago who was like you, he just couldn't stop.

He only posted once.

He came on here (or the horse forum) to say goodbye and to warn others.

He said he tried to dig his way out of a large loss by betting more and more.

By the end of year 2 he had lost £130,000 in cash, his house, his wife and his kids.

I hope I have underestimated your will power Barry as you definitely need to give the game up as soon as poss.

Of course Betfair won't exclude you. You need to make any decision like that yourself.

You are just the kind of mug punter this site needs in abundance to survive. They'd love to have thousands of customers like you.

Hopefully you will see the light and make the right decision. Good luck.