Please bet responsibly
Serious Bet encourages responsible betting. This means that:
- You should only bet with money you can afford to lose
- Don't borrow money to bet with
- Try to moderate the amount of time you spend betting each week. It is unhealthy to be betting all day every day.
- Remember that your betting may impact other people who are close to you
- If you lose, don't get drawn in to betting more to try and recoup your losses
- If you win, don't get over-confident and start betting larger sums
- Only bet if you are 18 years of age or over (in the UK) and you know what you are doing
- Please consider the following paragraphs, taken from the section managing risk and if you believe you are becoming compulsive, please seek help - links are provided below
Loss chasing and over-confidence
These two points go hand in hand. They are easy traps, they apply to all forms of gambling, and they are ultimately damaging to your financial well being. Discipline is the key to successful betting and there is no place for the emotions of greed and fear - greed for more and bigger wins, fear that you are losing money and won't make it back.
Betting is a discipline that requires you to have a plan - a system - that is well prepared and that you follow consitently. Remember that wins are like buses. They don't come along one every ten minutes - you can go a long time without one before three turn up at once.
If you're on a losing run you need to stick with the plan and resist the temptation to chase your losses by 'double up' or placing silly bets where little or no value exists. This doesn't literally mean doubling your bet size each time, but it does mean increasing your bet size to some degree, in the belief that you must be overdue a win and that the increased stakes will more than make up for the previous losses. Even if you really are finding value and its just a run of bad luck, this approach can cause you to come unstuck big time and lose your whole betting bank very quickly. Of course it can and often does work, but remember we're talking here about risk. Doubling up is not an approach we would recommend for managing the risk of capital loss.
A similar mentality can take over when all your bets seem to be coming in - one after another. It happens and even the best of us can start to believe we have become an infallible betting genius. The temptation here is driven by greed: we're making money and we want more of it! The result is that we increase bet size and with it the risk of losing more money than we had originally bargained for. Remember the bus analogy and you shouldn't go too far wrong.
If you are finding yourself loss chasing when losing and upping the stakes when you have some good results, be warned and continue to read the rest of this page.
Bad luck
"The ref shouldn't have given the penalty". It might be true and, yes, we all suffer bad luck in betting regularly. But bad luck alone will not be the cause of you losing money over an extended period of time - luck will even itself out over the course of a football season. Bad systems and bad discipline are, however, valid excuses for losing money from betting.
Is it compulsive, are you addicted?
Let's keep this simple. If you're losing money on a regular basis and you think you are suffering from some of the causes we have highlighted above (especially 'bets are too big', 'loss chasing' and 'over-confidence') then you may have, or be developing, in to a compulsive gambler. This is an addiction.
Like any addiction, if you refuse to acknowledge there is a problem and it goes on unchecked, it will probably end in tears, or worse. But we're not here to provide councelling and fortunately there are other websites that make a lot of sense of this growing problem. If you suspect you are getting into difficulties please check out the links below, if you're not sure then follow what we have to say regarding record keeping in the next section - you may not even realise you are losing.
External link: http://www.gamcare.org.uk/
External link: http://www.gamblersanonymous.org.uk/
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