When did Noah build the ark? Before it rained.

Why backers need to think proactively in order to win.

 

Many’s the time a prospective new member to a betting service I run asks me the question…

“So how’s it been doing lately”

And I answer, honestly, good or bad – depending on just that, how the results have been over the last few days, weeks or months.

But the underlying reason for them asking this question…

The inescapable fact as to why someone is wanting to know the answer…

What 30+ years experience has taught me…

Is this.

If the results have been good, they’re more likely to join. If they’ve been bad, they won’t.

Now you might well think “Well, obviously, Matthew… why would anybody want to join a service that is losing?”.

And I get that.

I can see why some people might find it strange to even consider joining a service that hasn’t been pulling up trees in recent times.

It reminds me of the old days, when I first started out in this business, and we’d think about putting some promotional copy in The Sporting Life (remember that?) or the Racing Post.

More often than not, we’d only look to place an advert after a profitable run, or on the back of a single big-priced winner. Makes for a catchy headline, right?

        8 winners from the last 10 bets… join now.

        20/1 gamble landed… get your share today.

You know the sort of thing.

But as for placing an advert if a service was actually losing or simply treading water. Forget about it! Why would you possibly want to do that?

In this way acting no different to many punters, believing the best time to strike was following a hot streak or a sizeable success.

But the more you think about it, the less sense this way of thinking makes… if you want to win.

So when did Noah go into ship-building?

Well, our Biblical friend did so before it started to rain. Not after.

Point being, he was proactive and not reactive. Making his move before the action started, not after.

Actually doing his work when the weather was good, not bad.

Had he delayed until the downpour started, then it would have been too late. He would have drowned, along with the rest of Christendom. Not exactly a moral tale for the ages. Nor would it have given us much wildlife to enjoy subsequently.

Take this example, and apply it to your own quest to find a winning betting service.

Rain = winners. Sun = losers.

You’re actually better acting when results don’t necessarily suggest you should… when they might not seem that great (or in the case of Noah, manufacturing the ark when the sun was shining and there was seemingly no need for it).

This way you’re making your move ahead of time. Putting yourself in prime position to profit (i.e. becoming a member of said betting service) before the winners begin to flow.

This is the crux of our modern day betting fable.

Yes, I know this is counter-intuitive

I fully understand that nobody picking up the phone, or reading an email, wants to learn that the service they’re interested in joining has just advised 3 or 4 losers. Or lost money last week, or has delivered little during the previous month.

To many this would appear to be a service that isn’t worth joining.

But if you study any representative sample of data, you’ll see that as sure as eggs are eggs, winning runs follow losing runs. Just as sunshine follows the rain.

So joining when there’s a bit of a flat spell… guess what? It puts you that much closer to the next series of winners.

It echoes something I’ve written about here before.

The theory of recency bias (click here) and how a lot of observers are prone to putting too much weight on the things which happen most recently, as opposed to looking at the bigger picture.

And here it would be an over-concentration on anything negative in the past few days or weeks.

Take another situation…

The same mind-games can often influence, positively or negatively, someone looking to buy stocks and shares.

Because I’ve no doubts that many would baulk at investing in a company or commercial sector that has recently fallen in value.

But surely a drop in price could simply allow for, and pre-date, a future rise, and so a profit?

Not everything loses value… and keeps dropping like a stone. Terminally. It can and does bounce back. Just as a service will rebound from a quiet spell with a run of winners. Winners that you could be on!

Think and act in advance. It works.

And come to think of it…

We do a lot of things ahead of time in our lives… when if you think and act completely logically, why would you do them?

We queue for the cinema when it’s closed (before it opens), buy food when we’re not hungry, pay for insurance even though we have no intention of crashing our car or flooding the bathroom.

All those actions, at the time we do them, could be seen to be the wrong course of action or, at the very least, a waste of time and money.

But when you’ve got the best seats in the house, was it wrong to line-up a few minutes early?

Same goes with a betting service. And by acting early, when it might seem to be the wrong time to join, what you’re actually doing is putting yourself in prime position for when the next big winner comes along.

So if the answer to the question is “Yes, we’ve had a loser or two in the past week” don’t immediately take that to be the deal-breaker when others, shall we say “less-wise” operators, very well might.

It might just cost you a winning start to your subscription.

 

OPINION: As backers, we’re investors. We are people who should act in a more calculated, analytical, and measured way than simply jumping onto the next, seemingly good opportunity that comes our way. Conversely, we would be wrong to pass up the chance to make money purely because of short-term factors – factors which on closer inspection bear no resemblance to long-term performance. Losing runs are inevitable in betting, so don’t view them as purely negative. To a winning service they are merely bumps in the road to a profitable destination… and if you’ve just hit a pothole, chances are there’s some smooth road ahead!