The Sunday Slant

I haven't written a slant blog in a while, but I've a couple of hours spare this evening and wanted to cover an important topic relevant to the evolution of Exponential Bet, which is gambling and my thoughts on this. 

It's true I work on the Betfair exchange, and every day of the week bets or trades are being placed in to my accounts.  However, I do not consider myself a gambler at all with this activity.  

In fact I'll be stripping away all connections to the word tipping, and distancing myself as far as possible from the notion that what I am selling is related to the mainstream notion of gambling.

Investing in stocks and shares, property, cryptocurrency, and sports trading or betting using the Betfair exchange is a risk, but I'm not encouraging anybody to gamble.  

Let me explain.  I love to gamble as a recreational activity, for example going the casino with my buddies, a day at the races, a box at the match with table service, going to watch a big fight, whatever it might be where we can place a bet for the hell of it, this can be exciting and something I may enjoy for fun.  It's the experience of it. 

I love to gamble like this and I'm incredibly lucky, in the sense that I do not need to gamble. In fact since I moved from Manchester back in 2008 where I'd lived for six years, I haven't gone gambling to a casino.  I've been to many race days and other sporting events, and placed the occasional let's have a punt for a laugh bet, but that's about it.

When I was living in Manchester though I learned a valuable lesson. 

One company I worked for quite a while was basically ran by wild men, some of which I later found out belonged to a well known Manchester gang, some crazy and looking back scary individuals.  

We'd often end up in a casino after a night out with my work mates, and most of the time leave the next morning, dazzled by the light exiting from the darkness of the casinos.  Manchester has a fair amount of casino's and private gambling clubs that I had full access at that time in my life.

I remember one weekend we arrived in the early hours and I was obviously drunk, but I headed to the blackjack table nonetheless and began to play.  The people at the table knew I was drunk, I knew I was drunk, and I was still drinking, but I was also winning.

It was really funny and I remember thinking to myself this is an amazing feeling, but also knew it was totally fucking bizarre that my hand kept on returning a winner.

Then of course I began losing, and lost a bit more, so I thought to hell with this I'll head over to the roulette table and recover my losses.  Yeah sure you're thinking, but I literally cleaned up and left in the morning with over £35K.

Mind blowing, and a night I'll never forget.

The problem came when we returned the next weekend and I obviously felt invincible.

Within the first hour I was down about £8k and had to put more in to keep going, but in the end I left sometime the next day and walked out in to a Manchester rainy afternoon over £15k down.   

You'd have thought the penny would have dropped at that moment but I was obsessed with it, and returned a couple more times until I finally realized the £35k life changing sum I'd won over that glorious weekend was now gone. 

I'd thrown it all back in to the casino, with all that time and energy wasted.  No wonder they were comping me free drinks and food to keep me there.  Casino's are strange places were time stands still, with no outside light you can forget what day it is until you look at your watch.

The penny did finally drop though, and I thought fuck this never to return to another casino since.

It seems to me that there are two components to people who gamble, there is the obsessive and the compulsive parts. 

Now the obsessive part is what basically says you need to stay there and keep on doing it, because you enjoy the activity.  

It's easy to get a little obsessed about it.  I'm obsessive in that regard, I like to grind on things and overthink them, really analyze and scrutinize everything, and just go and go.

Then there's a compulsive part where you have that irresistible urge, and it compels to keep on against all rationale thought, without respect for the detrimental impact it would have on your life.   

I don't have this part in me, and I'm not addicted to anything.  Not addicted to drugs, alcohol, and I'm not addicted to gambling. 

I love gambling, but when I'm not gambling I don't think about it at all. 

Which is the point of this post, because you should figure out who you are in regards to gambling.  Especially as you're reading this on a website that has betting and trading products that run using Betfair.

As much as Betfair are in comparison to the other Bookmakers kind of in our corner as they gave us the exchange, they still operate a bookmaker and casino on the website.  As much as they want you to win on the exchange to take their slice, they would also like you to take those winnings and lose the lot in their casino or sports book, a true fact.

Enormous fortunes have been lost at the gambling tables, or the multitude of other set ups that are stacked against you.  As in books that always favour the bookmaker to win in the long run. 

Something you need to learn about yourself really early on, is if you can take it or leave it, and more to the point you have to understand why for whatever reason you need to gamble or don't need to gamble.

What is it about you that you know latches on to gambling, or does not care about gambling, because it reveals something very important about you. 

See everything in life teaches us about ourselves and you should be paying attention to the great temptations in your life, gambling, sex, alcohol, drugs.

You can see where these temptations latch onto you, and where those claws are ineffective, because that's how you learn about yourself.

Getting that knowledge about yourself will help you in other aspects of your life, because like in my case gambling taught me a lot about who I am, and that I don't need to gamble, but when I'm doing it I focus all my attention on it, and I do it over and over again.

Now this is a tremendously powerful quality, in so far as a lot of activities especially work benefit from this.  As I'm not somebody who will leave things half arsed. I'm going to the bitter end in as much detail as necessary every time, and I've seen that in myself in so far as my work is concerned.  I want to always improve it, and I want to go over all the little details so it's just right. 

Now that is a very very good quality, but on the other hand obsessiveness can sometimes be very annoying, because I start to drill down into things that I shouldn't be drilling down.  Which is part of the reason I'm cutting back huge swathes of unnecessary content on Exponential Bet at the moment, slimming it all down.  

As my attention to detail mixed with wanting to constantly improve everything in an overly obsessive way, has ended up working against me creating too much content. 

I'm now going through a major edit / audit of what I provide on site, and also how I spend my time.  I will then be able to work smarter, increase effectiveness and profits, but also enjoy my work a lot more.

When I was younger this was a bigger problem than it is now, because I was just an annoying little shit that just would keep on poking poking poking poking, till you know whatever it was that I was poking finally blow up in my face.

Obsessiveness is not always a good thing, and the lack of compulsion, the lack to sometimes stick with things has allowed me to walk away from bad situations, and prevented me from falling into the sun cost fallacy.  You can read more in this in a previous blog post here.

It also cost me a lot of times relationships, when I decided to say fuck it it's not worth my time to work on this relationship.  Whether it be a friend or lover I could just walk away, and that's the sad thing because a lot of relationships I've had I've left behind, because of the lack of compulsion in my DNA. 

This has allowed me to walk away from messy situations, and allows me to walk away from situations and from people that I shouldn't have.   

What gambling has taught me now as a forty seven year old man, is that if it's just for fun, as in you're with some mates or whatever in a safe healthy environment, and you're betting for shits and giggles with your evenings spending money, then it's totally fine if you're in control like this.  

You should never gamble to the point where you're over committing and your actions can seriously affect your life.  If you're ever in a situation where you realize that the loss could potentially hurt you, at that very moment stop, get up, and walk away, because why risk it? 

What is the point of it, as you might win, but you will likely lose. The gambling parlours are built to make you lose, just as I've covered in previous posts about bookmakers and the flashing distractions set up to see you fail.   

It's all business, just look at the incredible decor of these casinos or money spent on the bookmaker websites, or even bookie shops themselves to keep you in there, who do you think paid for that lovely decor and those nice uniforms, and those lovely free drinks, and the pretty cocktail waitresses.... You to pay for it, losers pay for it, losers like you and me both that's who paid for all that crap.

Be smart and stay away from gambling, there's nothing to be won.  You think that you could win money, no you're not gonna win money.  If you get incredibly lucky like I did that time, you'll win, but of course what happens is that you think that you're smarter than the casino, go back, and then you lose, and that's what they want.   They want you to keep on playing because the longer you play, the more likely they are to win.

When I found matched betting and sports arbitrage back in 2009, I literally jumped for joy as it gave me a way to recover my losses in a win win scenario.  I managed to make a lot of money this way for a few years, until the industry cottoned on of course.  Now I'm banned from most bookies, haha.. 

I've met people in casino's, at the race track, and in my work with this site or back in the day when I contributed to Betfair, people who bet consistently each day with money they really cannot afford to lose.  Putting in the equivalent of their hourly minimum wage every spin, hand at the table, punt on the next race, or whatever, but over the long run ending up a loser and having to work more hours in a shitty dead end job just to repeat that process.  They would win a bit one day, then lose more the next, just a downward spiral.

I've literally been at my wits end with head in hands thinking holy shit with some people, trying to help them snap out of it, as these aren't bad people just caught up in a negative repetitive loop. Which to me is a fucking horror story, and something I learned from very quickly, but also I do count myself as fortunate not have that addictive nature.

When I started this site I had just come out of working in property investments, and over my life have been fortunate enough as stated to not be ruled by compulsion, it's just my obsessive determined attitude that has kept me working on mostly positive pursuits.  I really know I'm lucky in this way as not everyone is made the same.

Exponential Bet is a strange one in this industry, as here you are reading a blog post advising you not to gamble, and I'm sharing my life story with you about how I learned gambling is stupid, but on the flip side I'm also providing betting and trading products.

The difference with what I work on is very simple to explain, I always look for long term balance growth. 

If the situation doesn't suit to place a bet or trade, I leave it.  There is always another race, day, or sorting event.  I have no compulsion to get involved every single time for the sake of a bet. 

You can see this in my results as their are gaps where I've just left it until all boxes are ticked.

A 'tipping site' or service that preys on your gambling instincts will be capitalizing on this, and does not have your best interest at heart.   Usually fueled by pundits who don't give a crap, and will spiel off opinions about different sporting events with no thought of any consequence. 

This is why I am distancing myself away from this sector in the industry as far as possible.  When I first launched Exponential Bet I needed to reach people, and to be honest I was no SEO expert or marketing guru.  

However, the products I began with and remain the strongest available on my site to this very day are not set up as tipping services, and originally started as guides showing you how to do it yourself.  

The direction the site will now move in will be to provide investment based products for application on the Betfair exchange, and plot my progress using these services.  I'll do this via my results published, reviews, blogs, and You Tube. 

I'll make as much useful information as possible available to help people get started with the right tools, knowledge, and most importantly mindset, but I'll also keep improving what I deliver to my members.  

The point of tonight's post is this, find out what drives you with your betting and trading. 

Look within, and ask yourself the tough questions.   Is it the desire to bet that you crave, and would you go to desperate lengths taking unnecessary risks to reach your goals? 

If so, then I'd advise closing your betting accounts and finding a healthier pursuit that adds value to your life, and does not trigger these urges.

If you're like me and more analytical, patient, and have a long term plan that you're obsessed with.  If you can manage risk, stress, and you treat your betting and trading as investing, with bet volume not a factor, but instead yielding enough return on your investment to reinvest in to your life is your priority, then Betfair and betting and trading could be a valuable asset in your portfolio.  

I'll post Sunday Slant's as often as I feel the inspiration hit me.  These are obviously my opinions I'm not a clinical physiologist, and you can take it or leave it, but if my shared experiences help anyone in any way make a positive decision in their life, then I've achieved something special.

My next post will be back to business as usual on Tuesday or Wednesday covering In Play Trading and Place Betting.  

I hope you have a great bank holiday break tomorrow and do something nice, definitely avoid those casinos kids...

Thanks for reading.

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