3 times up, 3 times down

As your bank grew, the amount of bets you strike may have increased, before with limited funds you were maybe being very selective, looking at a number of possible bets, comparing them, and then backing one and walking away from others, but with a larger bank you may be backing them all, the work you put into selecting your bets becomes less and you get more complacent as your bank grows.

Thered, if you can keep taking £20 and turning it into £300, that seems pretty good.   At the point at which you hit £300 and then started losing money, what size of bets were you placing compared with the size of bets being placed when you had just £20?   

I'd imagine the problem is that you keep hiking up the bet size, and that means that any run of bad results (which happen to most punters) will be enough to wipe out everything you've made. Having turned £20 into £300, you ought to have a lot of room for things to go wrong, so overstaking and (perhaps as Coolhand suggests) underanalysis might be the things you need to watch.

Also out of interest, before you hit the £300, roughly how many bets would you be placing a day?

Thered_96, it sounds to me that what you've experienced is completely normal, I mean if you're backing 1.1 shots you will on average win 10 times and lose once, losing overall slowly to commission.

Withdrawing at £300 is illogical if you have a winning method, but sensible if you don't. So the age old question, what would you say your edge is? What percentage gain should it be giving you per 10 bets? You have to have one to succeed not by luck.

Thanks for the replies lads.

I wasn't making that many bets, but betting on average probably 50% of my bank, giving me a 50% margin of error each time...

So the bank starts growing quicker at the top end... but like you say, the odd bad couple of bets is knocking me down, and I think it's at that point i'm getting rash with my selections.

Also, when the bank starts going down, I can see myself betting on things I know nothing about (such as risky bets towards the end of a football match in Albuerquerque ;)

It's all a learning game for me, and I am trying to learn whilst thinking of my 'risk' as the original stake.

I'm also enjoying doing it :)

When you say 'edge' Trev, what exactly do you mean?

Sorry for the totally newbie question :)

When you say 'edge' Trev, what exactly do you mean?

Sorry for the totally newbie question :)

An edge is your method of beating the market, it basically means obtaining value though, which is more or less the only way to win.

Your staking is waaaaay too high! Personally I use 0.2% of my betting bank per bet, but most would say that's a tad conservative, but IMO you shouldn't be risking more than 1% per bet.

And the risky bets are known as 'chasing' which is also a big no no.

And continually thinking of your risk as the original stake is a negative way of thinking. Your risk is your new balance which you don't want to throw away.

There's loads to learn when you're at the beginning, but if you're keen and dedicated you could do it, although most fail of course.

Thered, as your bank gets bigger, you should be reducing the percentage of your bank that you're putting at risk. If you're risking 50% when you have £20, you're presumably betting around £10 a time. By the time your bank has risen to £100, you can afford to be putting £25 on a bet. That means you're putting on considerably more than the £10 you were originally. But now your risk is just 25% of your total bank and so you can afford to lose around four times rather than just the twice.  Obviously, as you bank gets bigger you want to be betting more money, but at the same time you want to be putting less and less at risk all the time.

And you definitely need to cut out the betting on things you don't know about. You need to consider your bets with at least as much care when you've got up to £300 as you did when you were down at £20. If this means withdrawing part of your money (so that you can't gamble it away in frustration) then that's what you must do.

Boss advice, thanks for that lads.

LordBobbin, that is EXACTLY what I needed to hear, thank you.

This all started at my mates wedding... I'd never previously laid a bet in all my 35 years, and he made make one with him to celebrate! Needless to say, it lost (on an accumulator - which I will never do again).

I am trying to look at this like a business that I can make money from, and believe I can. Not the silly Suarez to score first in a 3-0 win stuff my mate does ;)

This advice is just what I needed.

Also good to see that whilst there seem to be some strange posters on here, there is also some very good ones!

Cheers :)

LB,
Thats what i was trying to say

Trevh's comments should help keep discipline; And continually thinking of your risk as the original stake is a negative way of thinking. Your risk is your new balance which you don't want to throw away.

look after what you earn, there is no shame in earning slow and steady, be patient, there are few good bets, but plenty of bad bets, it appears you are aware of these bad bets, the ones you know nothing about, whether they win or lose, they are still bad bets, and the sooner you can reduce them the better you will do.

Good luck

Yeah, that's also good advice from Coolhand - the more patient you are (in other words, the less you increase the bet size, and the more you decrease the amount of your bank that you're risking) the more likely you are to succeed. 

You should expect to make an awful lot of mistakes at first, and the less you're risking, the more times you can afford to lose. So don't overstake. And try and learn from every losing bet - the losing bets are way more valuable in terms of what they tell you then the winning bets.

And you should be trying to focus on value - the 'edge' of TrevH's posts. When you place a bet, you want to be thinking that the market has got it slightly wrong - the chances of your bet succeeding should be greater than the market believes they are.

A bet priced at 1.11 should be winning around 90% of the time (100 / 1.11). A bet priced at 1.25 should be winning around 80% of the time. If you think the bet is a 1.11 shot, but the market is offering it to you at a price of 1.25, you're getting yourself some value!   Over time, that 'edge' should allow you to make money. (If you're buying a genuine 1.11 shot for a price of 1.11, you're not going to make any money over time, even before you take into account the added cost of commission.)

Yes, value is everything, so Thered_96 you should be thinking in terms of how to identify it, then how to get matched at it. And like the good Lord said above, you will make an awful lot of mistakes, and it would be unlikely for you to become successful straight away, so minimum stakes is a good way to start.

I'm teaching a friend who is now in his fourth month, and starting with a £50 bank using 1% stakes (yes that's below the minimum rule) he is now up to £540 and £5 stakes. The bank will soon be looking decent and he will withdraw a wage. He did have a small amount of prior experience and failures, but by starting with tiny stakes you can learn and grow with the bank, that's far far better than starting with large stakes and wrongly thinking your bank size will make you profitable - it won't.

Btw, are we all football bettors here? We have 193 matches going in- play tomorrow! Jesus!

My betting style is to bet big on short odds (the opposite of mates who bet smaller on never-gonna-happens).

exact description of how i used to be