For eight months, I was betting however I wanted without even thinking. Relying on quick judgments took a significant toll on finances.
Last September, I began documenting every single bet placed. Noticing the odds and leagues, and even the times I bet. I tracked my progress for 47 days and noticed some anomalies.
Not surprisingly, my bets placed on Tuesday evenings lost 61% of the time, while those on Saturday mornings lost only 28% of the time.
You can also consider and document the oddities of your own betting and realise something important like I did while researching fixtures with yellowbet.ke. I noticed my betting improved whenever I analysed the matchups at least 6 hours before the start, rather than 20 minutes before the first kick.
The Small Changes That Actually Mattered
The first change was never betting on my favorite teams again. Betting on Arsenal in every match made my decisions extremely biased, and over 5 matches I lost £340 because the odds just didn’t add up.
The next change was implementing a real budget. Rather than my past philosophy of “I’ll be careful” I decided on a budget of £50 and committed to it weekly. There were some weeks where I didn’t bet and others where it took a lot of willpower not to go over. Because of this budget, I saved over £890 by January based on my previous budgeting.
The third lesson was the most revealing. Instead of going with the first option that came to mind, I began analyzing the odds of different matches and choosing the best option. Three point two odds may seem good to you, but is actually an example of bad betting because you could have an option with far better odds.
What My Spreadsheet Taught Me
After logging 312 bets over five months, I began to learn lessons that I didn’t want hear but really needed to. My best option would have been to take a bet on an away team to win on a game that was a mid table league match. My worst decision was to take a cumulative bet over four selections. Any time I placed a bet with more than four selections, my success rate would drop to under 12%.
What was most surprising was the even I have a better success rate predicting goals if there are more than two scored after 7 pm games compared to betting on the goals scored in afternoon games.
More importantly was how big of a difference I began to see if I looked at team news earlier in the day instead of betting closer to the game time. News of injuries or who is playing really started to hear inform of the decisions I was making to bet. I began to notice key defender who I knew was going to be out late in the day really made a difference. My betting success rate went up almost 30% after that.
For tracking, being patient and intuitive about your own unique patterns is critical, do not rush or be impulsive like everyone else (such as loss chasing) and do not blindly follow them. Set smaller goals to begin with and write everything down, even if it seems irrelevant, and wait at least two months before making conclusions and identifying what works best for you and your preferences.
