The sports betting fraternity of members are effectively split into 3 different groups when it comes to the psychology of spread betting:
i) The Thrill Seekers
There are plenty of ways to win and lose money in a very short space of time on the spreads; these 'opportunities' attract those who like the feeling of a furious adrenaline rush. They are, from the point of view of the companies, the best clients. A gamble is not a gamble unless it is a large one and it may take ever-increasing stakes to produce the same buzz. A long drawn out event in which the result slowly becomes evident is unattractive to this breed – they much prefer the crucial 'do or die' moment to set the pulse racing.
The main difficulty with the long term financial prospects of the thrill seeker is that he is more concerned about spicing up sporting events with a wager than consistently making money from them. The spread companies are keen to promote markets that attract this type of punter. The ultimate thrill seeker's ride is with markets where the spread is measured in seconds, for example, the number of seconds a boxing match lasts, or even the no longer standard bet of the first throw-in in a game of football.
Even the stately game of cricket isn't without its stomach churning markets. If you are so inclined you may bet on the out-come of the balls bowled in the first over of the test match. Thrill seekers pursue an entirely different betting philosophy to serious gamblers. They tend to be attracted by risk and seek out bets that are, by their nature, governed mostly by chance. This distinguishes them from the generally more successful gamblers who are mostly concerned about eliminating risk.
Individuals in the next two categories can often easily fall into this category when there is the lack of decent looking spreads to occupy them.
ii) The Sporting Know-it Alls
It goes without saying that a certain degree of sporting knowledge is vital to stand a chance of profiting from Spread Betting, although I suspect that those who carry a wealth of sporting facts and figures in their brains do not necessarily make the best gamblers. It really comes down to the type of sporting knowledge one possesses. The ability to recite the Derby winners since 1950 may raise a few eyebrows down the local but carries little weight when considering a spread bet.
I dare say a really excellent knowledge of second string betting sports such as golf may put you at a considerable advantage. However, generally the type of information that spread bettors need is so obtuse and specialised that it falls out the normal limits of any conceivably interesting sporting facts.
I would have some difficulty naming the winner of last year's Gold Cup, and the rules that govern the racehorse handicapping system are a complete mystery to me. I have on the other hand gained the not-particularly attractive ability to recall that 'on standard going in a non handicap race at Southwell, the average winning margin is 2.9 lengths, and as such ranks amongst the top 5 of all flat racing courses'. As such this places me firmly in the third category of Spread betting personality types.
iii) Anoraks
When the phrase 'professional gambler' is uttered one's mind tends to conjure up images of gauche wealth, cigars the size of baseball bats and private helicopters – along the lines of the image displayed by legendary gamblier Terry Ramsden. Ramsden, in fact fell more accurately into the thrill seeker category and as such his huge gambling debts were his downfall. The true professional gambler tends to be pale and drawn from too much book study and even if they are not walking encyclopedias of sporting knowledge they are set in a professional gamblers way of thinking; considering accurately whether the odds on offer are in line with the true chance of the said event occurring. This may mean relating the current situation back to past results and involve some fairly serious study. This, more often than not leads to no actual bet being placed as genuine betting opportunities are few and far between.
Gamblers which straddle both the 'anoraks' and the 'sporting know alls' cateogry are problably the most dangerous types to the spread companies.
What is the way to go then?
The way to go is clearly a combination of the anorak and the sporting know it all, while never treading into the first category.
Now to use all of this knowledge to our advantage. We know that a large majority of the spread betting public are thrill seekers, and thinking like a thrill seeker would you prefer to BUY the spread or SELL it? Well 9 times out of 10 a thrill seeker is going to buy because in their minds there is unlimited amounts of money to be made by BUYING whereas not much by SELLING.
Because of this 'philosophy' of the thrill seeker a lot of markets have inflated spreads to counteract the thrill seekers, this is because the way Spread Companies make their money is by having an equal amount of punters BUYING as they are SELLING. Let's look into this further.
Say the spread for the number of runs in a t20 game is 140 – 150. Now say £1m is BUYING and £1m is SELLING, the spread firm will make £10m guaranteed regardless of the result. e.g. The total runs where 180, the spread firm will have won £40m from the people selling and lost £30m from the people buying giving an overall £10m profit. This is similar to a punter closing out early to take a profit except that the Spread firm start from this position!
Therefore the Spread firm are going to be setting their spreads based on what will split the public, half go one way the other half go the other, and as we have just seen that thrill seekers will often BUY because of the perceived sense of 'infinite profits' the spreads will therefore be a lot higher than the actual likeliness of those results happening.
Through this look at the psychology of the spread betting public we can come to the conclusion that more times than not it would be better to SELL the spread than it would to BUY. Therefore when making any spread bets you should always see if the spread is unnaturally high and determine whether it is not in fact better to SELL instead.
Obviously it would be unwise to sell on all occassions but looking through my past year's betting I would say that I am buying at only 30% of spreads, and I am having one of the best years in my spread betting career!
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