Why happy punters are winning punters
How the 98% of losing backers can cheer up, and start making money
The other day, whilst spending a few minutes surfing around the internet, I put the following statement into Google…
…are humans naturally optimistic…
And the first response which flashed up before my eyes in a mere 0.36 seconds was…
“No, Human Beings Are Not Naturally Optimistic, Study Says”
Bugger! If you’ll excuse my French.
In a split second, there went my fundamental belief that as people, you and I are hard-wired to be happy, forward-thinking, glass-half-full individuals. The kind who are by nature predisposed to believe that good things are going to happen to us anytime soon.
But even despite this search engine setback, I am still convinced that the way in which we, as human beings, live and evolve, invent and explore, create and adapt… well, it would suggest to me that as a species we are generally trying to move things on. We are working to improve the world around us. We do still think better times lie ahead.
And, what’s more, when we do… we’re all the better for it.
Take the quote of Nicholas M. Butler, American philosopher of the 19th/20th century…
“Optimism is essential to achievement”
And hitting the same nail on the head, I also came across the words of arguably the most positive of positive thinkers (certainly of our time), Nelson Mandela…
“A winner is a dreamer who never gives up”
But despite these examples of upward reflection and sheer big-heartedness (and there are many, many others out there on the web) it seems that popular wisdom remains split. And for every uplifted optimist you find, you’re just as likely to bump into a naval-gazing pessimist.
So deep down, are we happy or sad?
Who knows.
And the purpose of this article isn’t about trying to settle this toss-of-a-coin argument one way or the other. This will never be done.
Because for every one of you who identifies themselves as a happy-camper. Someone who firmly believes their team will score in the last minute of injury time to win the game and land the odds…
There’s another who feels as though their bread will forever land butter-side down. A naysayer who regards their life as one long photo-finish where their horse will always end up finishing second!!
And maybe this is the way society is split.
Optimists on the one side, pessimists on the other.
For every Nelson Mandela that offers a hopeful “Yes“, there’s a Harvard study that delivers a depressing “No“.
But I have a long-standing belief, an opinion that has been tried and tested (and generally proven correct over the past 25 years in the betting business) that whilst the world, when taken as a whole, might well be divided 50/50 in terms of the happiness scale… when it comes to betting, and punters in particular, the split isn’t this even.
In fact it’s nowhere near a half-and-half divide.
This is what made me stop and think…
My initial internet search came about for this reason.
I was following the cricket World Cup the other day. It was England’s first match of the tournament against South Africa at the Oval.
Now remember, England came into the tournament ranked as world No.1 in terms of one-day internationals. What’s more they had recently spanked Pakistan 4-0 in a warm-up series, were playing at home, and Eoin Morgan’s team were favourites to win the whole competition… nailed on to win this first ODI you’d think.
And they went off around 4/6 favourites to beat the Proteas first up.
But right at the start of the match, England’s opening batter (it seems you can’t call them “batsmen” any more) Johnny Bairstow was out first ball. Not so much a bad shot, but a good delivery. A bit unlucky.
Straight away two comments appear on the BBC website.
Neil P. – England 155 all out. Heard it here first.
Sam A. – Classic England. All the hype and then that happens. Spose [sic] I better get back to work.
We’d seen barely 5 minutes play… and there were guys out their throwing in their hand.
Writing off the form team, conceding the win, tearing up their betting slips… all on account of watching a mere fraction of the entire game (just to repeat, it was 10:36am… we were still less than 2 overs into a 50-overs per side match).
A tad premature I thought at the time.
Why not wait and see how the match pans out lads? Just a thought.
Especially given England’s strength in depth, recent form, player-for-player superiority over their opponents, home support etc…
And what happened after Bairstow’s early dismissal? England duly recovered and took the South Africans to the cleaners, winning by a country mile.
So were these premature reactions? Yes, I would argue. As would surely be the case if you asked the vast majority of right-minded, level-headed observers to interpret the comments of Sam and Neil.
But were these views totally unexpected..? Well, given my experience of the betting game, I’d have to say no.
Too often it’s heart over head when decisions are made… and that’s plain WRONG!
I see it all the time.
Anywhere you can post comments in real-time there are people who seemingly can’t wait to start the cry that “we’re all doomed!”. Writing off the chances of a player, a golfer, a horse, a team, or whatever… and on the flimsiest of evidence.
A dropped shot on the 1st hole, an early service game broken, a goal conceded in the 5th minute… and straight away, the catcalls start to appear.
And does a bad start, a poor jump at the first, or a missed penalty, automatically mean failure is inevitable. Of course not. But when it comes to punters (or the majority of punters it seems) it usually does.
“To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself”
This is what the American writer Francis Marion Crawford stated. And I tend to agree with him. In so far as losing, or rather a belief that losing will happen more often than not, can self-determine the outcome.
Similarly the mantra of the US life-coach and positivity-in-a-bottle, Tony Robbins…
“People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed… similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy”
Now on the back of this type of comment from Crawford or Robbins, or any other feel-good guru out there, it’s of course hugely simplistic to come out say that if you believe from the start that everything will go alright, then it will.
For example, you join the No.1 football betting service, or someone who gives expert horseracing tips…
You believe you’re going to win a barrow-load of cash…
And you do.
The End.
No. I’m not suggesting this.
But what I do frequently experience, and see in a lot of members, arguably the majority, is an almost immediate appearance of wild-eyed panic and doom-mongering when all that’s happened is that a bet (or two… or three) has lost.
Like it’s already in their nature, and just needs the smallest trigger to surface… as with Neil and Sam and Johnny Bairstow’s untimely demise at the Oval.
And I don’t think it’s right.
Likewise members who come onto me and say “I’m a bit of a jinx, me” … or “whenever I join a service it starts losing“… or “I knew that was going to happen“.
No. No. No.
None of this is necessarily true!!!
But it might well be the case if you don’t loosen up a bit, trust in the quality of the service you’re getting, and give it the necessary time to deliver the goods. Remember, teams bounce back from a goal down, golfers birdie par 5’s, England do win the occasional cricket match.
It was Vince Lombardi who famously said these words…
“A quitter never wins…”
I would argue that a pessimist is a quitter waiting to happen.
OPINION: If, as the stats would have us believe, 98% of punters lose, then you might say it’s no wonder that I get faced with an almost daily barrage of negativity. A feeling from punters that they are bound to lose, whatever they do, whoever they follow, whichever service they join… and, guess what, they do (so they say). But the point is this, if your mindset is defeatist from the start, and you enter every situation with a towel firmly in your hand (waiting to be thrown in at the first sign of trouble) then this is hardly the right starting point on which to build success. Because many’s the time I see members walk away from a service too early, because their “instinct” has got the better of them. And so I do believe that the predisposed nature of the punter is to be pessimistic. But ask yourself one question… do you think the reputed 2% of punters who win, do you think they expect bad things to happen every time they place a bet, or join a service? No, neither do I. So my advice to you would be to have a little more faith and optimism in your own betting (or the service you join) as this is the only way you will win in the long-term.
