Betting psychology

How many bets do you place in a month?  In a week?  In a day?  Do you feel impatient when you are not betting?  Do you actively search for opportunities to bet even when you feel like you are in a dry season?  Do you take wagers you would normally ignore if more opportunities were available to take better bets? 

If so, you might be over-betting. 

Over-betting happens when you:

As a sports gambler, you probably spend plenty of time daydreaming about the huge wins you will one day make.  You might also dream about the day you can quit your day job and walk out of your office forever.  You might look forward to buying a big house and a sports car.  But before you can live it up, you have to learn how to live down your failures.  As hard as they are to think about, they will happen.  And if you are not ready to cope when they do, you will fail harder and more often.

In the first part of our series on achieving a work-life balance, I talked about the dangers of investing too much of your time and energy on sports betting and not spending enough time on your other obligations.  When you are impatient to start making serious money, it is easy to forget about the rest of your life.  But when you do that, your physical and psychological health suffers, your relationships erode, and you lose much of the important perspective you need to make new

As a serious sports bettor, you have to put in a ton of time and energy in order to see results.  If you have been wagering for a while, that is something you know from experience, and if you are a novice, it is something you are probably beginning to find out.  While the problem for a lot of gamblers is a lack of discipline and hard work, the problem for other gamblers is the complete opposite.  You can easily become lost in your pursuit of wealth and achievement and forget to maintain a proper work-life balance. 

Whether you have been betting on sports only a short time or you have been at it for years, you probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to make it big.  You likely do not spend a lot of time thinking about what you will do when you do strike it rich.  There are a couple of forms a financial windfall can take.

In our previous article on money shock, I talked about the forms a financial windfall can take, as well as some of the different emotional responses bettors can have.  While we all want to make lots of money betting on sports, a lot of punters are not psychologically prepared for the reality of a sudden change in their fortunes.  Guilt, fear, or excessive excitement can all lead the unprepared punter right back to the poor house.  How can you deal rationally with a financial win

If you are serious about making money as a sports bettor, you will need to learn how to set useful goals.  One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a novice is to neglect this aspect of your betting psychology.  Why?  Unhelpful goals can mislead you and cause you to make poor decisions.  They can lead to disappointment in situations where you should actually feel encouraged.  They can actually ruin you over time.

With 2014 behind us and 2015 still mostly ahead of us, I have been taking a lot of time lately to talk about making changes through New Year’s betting resolutions and leaving bad habits behind.  Here are some changes that I suggest:

Sports bettors are a varied bunch with varying levels of success.  Some bettors take a very systematic, cautious approach to gambling, and succeed at winning more than they lose as a result.  Others bet more randomly, without regard to rules, and blow account after account.  There is nothing wrong with betting on sports for fun instead of for profit.  Entertainment is a perfectly reasonable motive.  But there is a point where entertainment can cross the line over into addiction.  Are you a fun-loving sports bettor wh