Betting psychology

In the past few articles in this series Part 1 and Part 2, I have talked about what business guru Seth Godin refers to as “The Dip,” and how it can impact sports bettors.  “The Dip” happens when you are putting a lot of money, energy, time, and work into sports betting but it is paying you less and less back. 

If you have reached a point in your sports betting career where you feel like you are pouring time, money, and effort down the drain, you may have reached what business guru Seth Godin refers to in his New York Times Bestselling book as “The Dip.”  This is the point at which you have hit a plateau in your profitability measured against your effort, or maybe even suffered a drop.  Please read Surviving the Dip as a Sports Bettor, Part 1 and Sur

Have you reached a point in your burgeoning career as a professional sports bettor where it feels like you are pouring time and energy down a black hole?  If so, you may have reached what Seth Godin referred to as The Dip in his New York Times Bestselling book by the same name.  Godin’s book was about entrepreneurship, but that makes it 100% applicable to you if you are trying to launch a full-time career in sports betting.

If you happen to have a background in entrepreneurship, you may be familiar with a New York Times Bestseller by Seth Godin called The Dip.  You may wonder what that has to do with sports betting, but think about it for a moment.  If you are embarking on a quest to become a professional bettor, one of the sharps, then you are an entrepreneur building a business of your own.  That means that you may face many of the same challenges—and “The Dip” is certainly one of them.

What leads you to make a change in how you bet?  A string of losses?  A single devastating loss?  A loss that takes a toll on your confidence and not just your wallet?  How often do you make adjustments to your betting methods?

If you have decided to become a serious sports bettor, you have embarked on a journey which can be rewarding in more way than one, but it can be a taxing one too.  Conducting the kind of ongoing, detailed research and analysis that sports betting demands can really eat up a lot of your time each day.  Trying to get through all of those tasks each day so you can place smart bets can be a challenge even if you are betting fulltime.  But if you are also trying to work a day job somewhere, you have double the challenge.

On-season, you can have a lot of busy days as a serious punter.  You may be balancing a day job with your betting, and may have a lot of work to do each morning catching up on the latest developments and news for your sport.  Even if you did a lot of work in the off-season, the research and analysis involved with making smart, profitable wagers is ongoing, and can be intense. 

Problem sports gambling is something we hear a lot about.  Whether you are a long-time gambling enthusiast and you have to regularly defend yourself to others, or you are just thinking about getting into sports betting and people are discouraging you, it is a topic we all have to think about. 

One topic that we talk about a lot in betting psychology is how to set realistic goals and expectations for a sports bettor and why it is so important to avoid setting unrealistic goals and expectations.   But how do you actually figure out whether a goal is realistic or not?  How can you figure out if it is useful or distracting? 

We talk a lot in betting about setting realistic goals and expectations as a sports bettor, but one thing we do not talk about as often is why it is so important to do so.  What are some of the things that can go wrong if we set out with expectations and goals which are too lofty to achieve?  What are the dangers in aiming too high?  Can you really be too ambitious?