In A Good Place

Following a decent start to December, I am now on a satisfying run of twenty successive profitable days. My betting state of mind is in a very different place to where it was only a short while ago, when each bet was placed with trepidation. I had reached a point at the end of the tennis season where each in-play move I made seemed to swing against me, often within seconds. A few bets were placed with the expectation that I would get clobbered! Clearly, this mindset will lead to being tentative. Suddenly, instead of looking for value, you look for certainty. That is not an easy element to find in the world of sports betting.

Yesterday gave a great example of how confidence affects performance. Having had a couple of horse racing lays go against me, the swift turnaround in the Wigan / Birmingham game left me £80 down on the day at 5.00pm. Yet four hours later, without resorting to any lump-on bets, and with consistent staking intact, I had a decent profit. A few weeks ago, by 5.00pm I would probably have been feeling sorry for myself, and plotting a way to recover my money in a couple of big gambles. With a decent bank in place and the confident expectation of profit to come, it is considerably easier to move forward with a consistent mindset. It helps when you back Almeria at big odds against Real Madrid when 1-0 down, and lay them off at 1-1 and 1-2!

There will be losing days to come, so the aim will be to maintain that confidence when they do. The easiest way to a setback will be a slack lump-on bet just to recover a frustrating loss. Whether I’m feeling low or high, the discipline mantra still applies. If only I could find that confidence factor in tablet form, the future would be looking bright.