Perhaps initially you were lucky and then you were less lucky. What we do is gambling it's random. There is a skill to maintaining an edge in the long run, but in the short term (and short can mean a run of any length, in mathematics long term means n as n approaches infinity!) you can't assign results to judgment either way.

You should be grateful that you had a 6k winning streak before a 2k losing one. For many it comes the other way around, and they never get the opportunity to win the 6k after doing their nut first.

I agree though that excessive meddling (excessive redding or greening) is a problem, but usually because it's a symptom of the bet size being outside of one's natural comfort zone.

This is why I bet with liabilities under a tenner (nearly always usually under a fiver or even much less), because it means I can set a deposit limit so low that even if I were to deposit every single month from here to eternity I can say I'd be annoyed but not distraught or home-broken.

I always ask myself "What if I lose the next 10 bets?"*

*Whatever stakes you bet at, unless you always back sub 1.5 then this isn't hugely unlikely!)

Betting a % of bank is a bad and ruinous strategy. The obvious example is the (bet 100% of bank, all in strategy), but here's another startling one:

Imagine the following scenario, I offer you 2.05 (with no commission) on heads on a coin flip.

You always bet with 10% of your bank.

If heads comes up 50 times out of 100 you'll have lost 25% of your money, despite getting better than evens on a shot that came in evens.

If you'd staked level stakes you'd have made a quarter of a stake.

Unless you have an edge - YOU WILL NOT WIN

Your betting is too random - and your price range of under 1.5 will be very hard indeed to find value on a regular basis

good luck

Depending on who you ask:

i)   A myth, betfair is too efficient for value to exist after commission. The people making money on betfair are the market makers who get matched both sides. PC was introduced to make money because they make large amounts of money at little risk. (And therefore very low effective commission).

ii)  An excuse to keep gambling.

iii) What keeps you in profit.


Strictly speaking your edge is the difference between your effective odds (odds after commission) and the 'true' odds of the event. You'll never know the true odds. Just because Stoke beat Blackburn 3-1 doesn't mean the odds of them winning were too high, or that the odds of 3-1 were too long.

Only over a very very long time can you judge whether you have an edge without commission (Step 1), and whether you have an edge after commission (step 2).


Here's a tip, although given every pretends to make a profit it won't work, take your 3month P&L. Now look at the total commission paid over the last 3 months. If you've made a loss in the last 3 months, would you have made a profit if not for the commission you've paid? If that's the case you're probably making OK bets which are OK value but not exceptional enough to beat the commission. If you've made a profit but it's smaller than the commission then what percentage of your profit is it? Betfair estimates it's on average 25% (20% of gross profit, leaves 80% net profit and 20% commission which means the commission is 25% of net profit, before anyone jumps on the 25% figure).

You need to be beating that 20% consistently. This is difficult.