New Year's Resolution for Bettors: Stop Emotional Betting

How did you do betting this year?  Did you make money?  Lose money?  Do a bit (or a lot) of both?  How did you react to your wins and losses?  Did they compel you to put more money on the table and maybe lose more of it too? 

Whatever your mistakes or regrets from last year, a new year is fast approaching, and you have a clean slate on which to build.  This can be the year that you stop betting emotionally.  Emotional betting comes in numerous different forms:

• Betting on a particularly player or team because you want that player or team to win, or betting against another because you want them to lose.  Since many people start sports betting this way, it is easy for rookies to forget that they need to have an objective reason to place a bet, and they need to leave their feelings about the sport at the door.

• Wagering a lot of money or taking subpar bets in an attempt to “win it all back” after you lose money, because you are angry, scared, frustrated, or dealing with other negative emotions.  In the casino world, we refer to this as “going on tilt.”  It is just as applicable in the realm of sports betting.

• Going overboard when you are winning.  Sometimes punters go on tilt not because they are dealing with negative emotions, but because their positive emotions have galloped out of control.  Maybe you were feeling particularly proud of a really great win, or you felt like you were on a “lucky streak,” so you wagered a lot more than you should have, or took bets you would normally avoid—and then you lost money.

These are all forms of emotional betting, and all of them will ultimately cost you.  You can never give up your emotions completely, but you can try to be mindful of them and not allow them to influence your betting decisions.  This year, decide only to wager based on what your betting system tells you to do.

Emotional betting can easily spiral out of control and turn into something much worse: problem gambling.  If you have become addicted to sports betting, give yourself a long break this year.  See if you can learn how to make disciplined bets on paper without real money, and if you can break the cycle.  If you find you can, you can start betting live again—but only so long as you stay accountable.  If you start making problem bets again, you will have to give yourself another break.

If you can get these emotional habits under control, you can start getting back to profitable sports betting.  It isn’t easy, but it is worth it!