Please gamble sensibly

MadsL wrote: »

The best profit maximising strategy would be to keep your regular punter solvent, able to earn more money and gambling regularly, would it not?

Not quite what you suggest in your OP.

You'd think that wouldn't you, but the gambling industry can make a lot of money from insolvent people. The gambler borrows the money to give to the bookie. The debt stays with the gambler, the bookie doesn't care where the money to gamble comes from.

I would love to know what percentage of all the lump sum payments made in ireland have gone into the pockets of Bookies?

How many people waste their inheritence or redundancy payments on the horses?

How many people who win money on the lottery go on to give it all to the bookie?

The psychology of gambling to someone who is addicted is that the next bet could be the big one. No matter how much you are in debt, if you gamble a little bit more, you can pull yourself back

There are 3 types of gambler in Ireland.
1. The very occasional gambler. Someone who might put a couple of euros on a horse in the grand national or the world cup or a night at the dogs with work collegues. Here the bet is just for fun and only because other people are doing it too. The risks here are extremely low

2. The social gambler
This is a person who might have a regular game of poker, or bingo or who might put on a bet with friends watching the soccer match in the pub to make it more interesting. Usually they don't bet very much money and their losses are within a level that they can easily afford. This is more risky than the first category because it is easy to get carried away.

The group psychology of gambling is that the wins are remembered and the losses are never mentioned again (unless it's funny, and then they are remembered as something to slag the gambler about 'why did you bet on them ya feckin eejit'). It can be easy to get sucked in over your head especially if you have a few big losses. Often when a gambler loses, there is a psychological need to bet again to recover the loss.
Social gambling can be very expensive, especially as the very rare time you have a big win, you are then expected to buy the drinks for the group for the evening (there goes your winnings)

Category 3 gamblers are the most at risk. These are people who gamble alone and consider themselves to be 'good gamblers'
These are the people who study the horses, form guides, who analyse the data and come up with bets that they think are wrongly priced by the bookies.
These are the gamblers who can ruin their lives the fastest and the most severely. Whenever they lose, they still feel like they 'should have won' except for some external factor that definitely won't happen the next time.

These gamblers may win more often than other gamblers, they certainly appear to win more often, this is beause they place their bets privately, and only tell people about the bets that they win.
The big wins validate their belief that they have a winning system, but the big wins are more than offset by the many losses
You'll find this category of gambler is more interested in accumulator bets because the reward for winning is higher and there are more excuses if they lose.

There are very very few gamblers who actually make money directly out of winning bets. Poker players can manage it for a while but they have to be extremely disciplined and stick to a very rigid strategy. They also need to be satisfied with a steady income. Gamblers tend to need accumulating gains. Poker players often talk about building up a 'bank roll'. They play the games that they can win consistently and make a profit from so that later on, they can play the bigger games where they will almost certainly lose all of their money.