Can You Be a Professional Gambler?

The idea of being a professional gambler is tantalising, yet, most punters lose considerably more money than they win.

If you're going to have any chance of success there are some important things to be aware of. Firstly, you should only bet when you are getting good value. This is an alien concept to some people eg in a horse race you might think the favourite is the best chance of winning but assess that it is too short and not back it; instead you might choose to back another horse because you believe it is a longer price than it should be. This is absolutely the right approach but takes a bit of getting used to.

Humans being humans, we find it hard to remove emotion from betting. It is vital to do this - never make a betting decision based on greed or fear or because you feel like having a bet. Also, never back a team because you like them or because you are blinded by their reputation.

There is no such thing as a certainty. Every punter has a story of a certainty being beaten - my favourite is the story about the day the racehorse Ajax got beaten at 40 to 1 on ($1.025) in a 3 horse race!

One of the best ways to force yourself to do the right thing is to keep a diary of your bets, reasons and results and share the diary with others. This will force you to avoid betting for the wrong reasons and will allow you to make an accurate judgement of whether you are succeeding or failing.

You should also acknowledge that you are not going to win on every bet, or even on most bets and that this doesn't mean you won't be successful. Eg if the average odds you receive are $4.00 across all of your bets you could expect to lose up to three quarters of your bets and still be in front.

The most important factor is judgement - and this is the x-factor. If you have sufficient knowledge of the event and follow the above rules you will be in a better position than most punters. But you still need to have the cunning, ability and perception to identify clever, good-value bets. We'll see whether the punters of the world can help you in this regard by publishing their predictions and results on this site!

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