Often, especially in times of dry spells, it can be very tempting to back everything people say is a winner. The problem is there are so many opinions out there that most of those winners are probably bad choices to be backing.

Impulsively betting is a dangerous path to walk on and it’s very easily done when focusing on winners. This doesn’t mean you look for losers and bad bets though, this simply means that you shouldn’t be looking for easy wins… Your betting decision shouldn’t be because you’ve been told its a winner because what this does is tunnel vision your betting strategy. You become so invested in winning that you forget about the actual potential of a bet and weighing its risk.

How to not Tunnel vision?

Instead, your main priority and focus should be to find value. This is similar to the idiom. “Do great work and money will follow”. By finding value, profit will come, but instead of chasing winners, finding great opportunities is a much better long-term strategy.

This is because not only are you competing against the bookies, you’re also competing against other punters. If everyone is chasing for wins, being headed by hype, then they won’t be able to see out the box!

Value allows you to see out of the box, you might have heard something is a winner, however, you might find out that it isn’t as great as an opportunity as people think. There may be other, more mathematically better probabilities that are worth your risk.

Are all Winners good value?

No. This is a common misconception. Just because something was a winner, doesn’t mean it was a good value bet. Check the odds of the winner, check how much you had to risk, what was the real probability of the win?

Yes, you made more money off it so that is profit, but was it worth it? Would it of been worth the risk if you had lost?

This is all about adjusting the perception and mindset when betting, there is always a perceived value and a true value.

Remember there is no guarantee of a win, so even if you’re extremely biased of a team or you see the bet as a no-brainer. Take a step back and really analyse the situation.

This isn’t the most thrilling way to bet because you lose the thrill of the unknown a little more, but this is a much more intelligent strategy if you want to go at it long-term.

Simply put, it is dangerous to tunnel vision on winners, instead seek value and opportunity and look at the risk/reward of the bet you’re placing.

Value and Winning isn’t the same thing!

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