It is a sad fact that the majority of horse race punters lose far more than they win. Week after week, month after month, year on year they accept regular loses as the norm and are boosted by the occasional "good" day.
Perhaps it is this type of behaviour that has brought the term "mug punter" into the vocabulary. But I cannot believe that everyone who bets and loses on the horses are mugs. So why are there so few successful punters? I think that there are ten reasons or if you wish mistakes that most backers make. In this series of articles I will highlight these ten mistakes in the hope that if you identify any of them in your gambling habits you will be able to correct them and turn lose intro profit.
You must have a Betting Bank
Not very many punters set aside a sum of money, separate from there normal finances, purely for the purpose of betting on horses. This sum of money is your "betting bank". Most gamblers treat their betting as hobby because they do not rely upon it as their main source of income. But this is the wrong attitude, instead consider your gambling as a business and your Betting Bank is the capital for your business.
Whatever method or system you are using, whoever you are following or subscribing to or however your own bets are calculated, you are better off with a "Betting Bank" that has built -in advantages that can help you. It needs to be independent from your own personal finances and needs to be protected from factors that can threaten it. This can take a lot of emotion out of the decision making process. Emotion is a factor that threatens all punters.
The size of your betting bank will depend on several factors and you are the only person who can decide which is the correct amount to put aside for your bank. Once you have established your betting bank you need to consider the size of the stakes you intend to wager in relation to your bank. For example if your bank is £100 and your normal bet is £5 that represents 5% of your bank. If you wager £1 then this is 1% of your bank. In my experience I usually wager 2% of the bank so if I had started with a £1000 bank and it had risen to £1200 then I would bet £22 but if the bank had dropped to £800 I would bet £16.
As your bank grows you can either build it up to a pre planned level increasing your stakes as you do. Alternatively you can draw off the profits when your bank climbs to a set level. In all transactions you should keep the idea of protecting your bank in the front of your mind. This will help you to avoid placing fool hardy bets chasing loses.
The other important factor is that you should know at all times how your betting bank stands. Therefore keeping records is a major aspect of running your betting bank.
The size of your betting bank will of course be dependant upon your own individual circumstances and free capital available. An analogy to the world of shares perhaps may be that no financial advisor worth his salt would advise you throw all your capital into the stock market alone.
The vast majority of punters fail to use any form of set aside bank. They bet randomly with what ever money they have in their pocket at the end of the week or go in too deep with stakes far in excess of their personal safety levels.
A punter with a professional attitude will set aside what he can comfortably afford to invest and then determine the best use he can make of that fixed sum of capital.
With a fixed sum of capital available we can in the next article move on to the next reason for failure.
Perhaps it is this type of behaviour that has brought the term "mug punter" into the vocabulary. But I cannot believe that everyone who bets and loses on the horses are mugs. So why are there so few successful punters? I think that there are ten reasons or if you wish mistakes that most backers make. In this series of articles I will highlight these ten mistakes in the hope that if you identify any of them in your gambling habits you will be able to correct them and turn lose intro profit.
You must have a Betting Bank
Not very many punters set aside a sum of money, separate from there normal finances, purely for the purpose of betting on horses. This sum of money is your "betting bank". Most gamblers treat their betting as hobby because they do not rely upon it as their main source of income. But this is the wrong attitude, instead consider your gambling as a business and your Betting Bank is the capital for your business.
Whatever method or system you are using, whoever you are following or subscribing to or however your own bets are calculated, you are better off with a "Betting Bank" that has built -in advantages that can help you. It needs to be independent from your own personal finances and needs to be protected from factors that can threaten it. This can take a lot of emotion out of the decision making process. Emotion is a factor that threatens all punters.
The size of your betting bank will depend on several factors and you are the only person who can decide which is the correct amount to put aside for your bank. Once you have established your betting bank you need to consider the size of the stakes you intend to wager in relation to your bank. For example if your bank is £100 and your normal bet is £5 that represents 5% of your bank. If you wager £1 then this is 1% of your bank. In my experience I usually wager 2% of the bank so if I had started with a £1000 bank and it had risen to £1200 then I would bet £22 but if the bank had dropped to £800 I would bet £16.
As your bank grows you can either build it up to a pre planned level increasing your stakes as you do. Alternatively you can draw off the profits when your bank climbs to a set level. In all transactions you should keep the idea of protecting your bank in the front of your mind. This will help you to avoid placing fool hardy bets chasing loses.
The other important factor is that you should know at all times how your betting bank stands. Therefore keeping records is a major aspect of running your betting bank.
The size of your betting bank will of course be dependant upon your own individual circumstances and free capital available. An analogy to the world of shares perhaps may be that no financial advisor worth his salt would advise you throw all your capital into the stock market alone.
The vast majority of punters fail to use any form of set aside bank. They bet randomly with what ever money they have in their pocket at the end of the week or go in too deep with stakes far in excess of their personal safety levels.
A punter with a professional attitude will set aside what he can comfortably afford to invest and then determine the best use he can make of that fixed sum of capital.
With a fixed sum of capital available we can in the next article move on to the next reason for failure.
