Improve Your Punting – Part 4: The Right Mindset
The Psychology of betting tends to be underestimated by most punters which is a shame as it’s the difference between success and failure.
From my long years of punting I estimate that successful betting is 70% psychological and 30% the mechanics of the bet.
If you want to win long term at this game, then you must have the correct mindset.
The human brain, as evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, isn’t hard wired for successful betting. The brain has developed based on the primary function of one thing – survival.
To succeed at betting, you need to go against those basic automatic human instincts. You must think differently, to be able to adopt new ideas but most importantly you must sometimes be prepared to defy logic.
This month’s article looks at mindset and how you can develop the right mindset for successful horse race betting.
What is Mindset?
Your mindset is the sum of your knowledge and thoughts about the world and yourself in it. It’s your filter for all the information that you consume and put out. It determines how you receive and deal with information.
Having the Right Mindset
Developing the right mindset is the way you learn something new and strip it down to the most relevant information.
Get the Best Information Only
Try to get the best information you can and focus on learning that information only. There’s far too much information for the human brain to take in. The development of the internet has increased the available information hundred-fold. It’s important that narrow down the information retain the most useful and filter out the rest.
What’s the best information?
Look for books on horse race betting. If you can get hold of copies, I would recommend these three authors as a good start point.
Mark Coton – ‘100 Hints for Better Betting’ or ‘Value Betting’
Nick Mordin – ‘Betting For A Living’ or ‘Winning Without Thinking’
Peter Braddock – Braddock's Guide to Horse Race Selection and Betting
Read some great blogs like Josh Wright’s https://racingtoprofit.co.uk/
From personal experience I have found that 90% of horse racing books and blogs are not worth the effort and are either useless or only lead to information overload. You must be able to develop the skill of identifying the right kind of information. The right mindset identifies the useful stuff from the mediocre.
You want to be with the best out there.
Find Your Role Models
Look out for the best people in horse race betting and model what they do right. My role models when I took a serious interest in horse race betting were Mark Coton & Nick Mordin.
Try to adopt their kind of thinking and mindset. The aim is to keep and only add what you think is right for you and in effect personalise their mindsets to fit what suits you.
The key is not to copy them; it’s taking the elements that work for you.
You can never get into the minds of the best people, but you can find plenty of
information on how their thought processes work.
Defend Your Mindset
If you don’t protect your mindset, no one else will. You need to defend it against bad information and against overload.
Always remember your mindset is a middleman between your wins, losses and mistakes and your reactions to them. The mindset can help you to be a successful in your betting, but it can also be a barrier to success at the same time.
All the successful punters I know, approach the technical side of punting differently whether it be form study or betting decisions, etc. However, they do share the same
attributes when it comes to mindset.
The Right Attributes
They keep an open mind and they always think in terms of probability. Their minds are always open to new theories.
They accept that horse racing is chaotic, unpredictable and there is no such thing as a certainty.
Horses that appear to have no chance of winning do win, albeit a small percentage of races and will sometimes beat the fancied horse you picked. That 20/1 outsider may never win another race but today’s the day they pounce to beat your selection.
Horses with a great record on soft or heavy ground do fail when they get their ideal conditions. Likewise, a horse with no form on heavy ground can suddenly go on to win on such going.
The fast-breaking horse drawn in stall 1 at Chester can miss the start and find
themselves behind horses.
You can have the best pace map for a race but more often than not those pace maps have little resemblance to the horse’s eventual positions in a race.
A horse can get an unlucky run it or it can just get a bad ride from the jockey.
The list can go on and on.
How you react and process such events is the major part of the psychological battle. If you don’t have the right mindset, they can destroy you.
The key is to open your mind and accept the unpredictable nature of racing and betting. However confident you are in your selection or how the race will be run there is no guarantee that something will happen as you expect.
If the unexpected does happen it doesn’t mean you have been cursed by the gods of
racing or that you must be the unluckiest punter in the world. That’s the ‘victim mentality’ and not the mindset of a winner.
As the Greek Philosopher Epictetus said – “It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it”
He could well have been talking about horse racing punters when he came up with those thoughts.
Except the probability that you will be on the wrong end of that photo finish, that your fast starter will miss the break in a 5f sprint at Chester or that your horse will be brought down by a faller at the second last when travelling like a winner. You can’t predict
everything that’s the nature of betting and every punter experiences such things.
The right mindset doesn’t mean you don’t get frustrated or you don’t have a reaction. But it does mean you can process them, file them away as all part and parcel of the
uncertainty of horse racing. You move on and don’t let them cloud your future bets.
Own Betting Performance and Results
The key attribute to success in betting is to understand and accept that you and you alone are responsible for your results.
Accept the Losses
Losing is part and parcel of the game when it comes to betting on horses and you will lose more times than you win. Once your mind can accept the losses, you can manage the emotions and reduce the tensions that will inevitably build up.
Avoid the Buzz
For many punters it’s all about the result and the ‘buzz’ they get from it when the result goes their way. That’s the wrong mindset. The winning mindset is more about the
process than the result.
The ‘buzz’ for the successful punter is knowing that they did everything possible to get the result. They read the race correctly but for whatever reason it didn’t go their way. Successful punters are not satisfied if they get a winning bet, but the process was flawed.
In summary: You could say the punter needs to think more like a bookie than a punter.
Success in horse race betting is possible but it takes time, it takes effort and most
importantly it takes the right mindset.
John
Featured Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay