Does Your Betfair Strategy Suit Your Personality?

Something many newbie traders do not consider is whether their personality is suited to a certain strategy. This might sound confusing but allow me to explain further.

The Sensitive Punter

Something I have noticed with the majority of punters is that they like to ‘win’. This might sound obvious as we all want to win however it seems some have the personality where any sort of loss affects them terribly. I must admit to being similar to this when I first started. I seemed to be on the search for a strategy that had a 100% strike rate as every time I had a losing day I would take it really personally. There is no strategy that has a 100% strike rate and any strategy that does have a high strike rate will usually have a poor risk-reward ratio.

For example, if you lay 0-0 then you might be risking about £100 to win £8 or so on average. Those who use a strategy like this will then experience lots of frequent small wins and they will get their ego massaged as winning does feel good. If you can maintain a strikerate of higher then 93% then you will profit in the long term. Easier said then done, however if you find it hard to take losses then this sort of strategy is for you. The downside is that weeks or months of a winning streak can often be undone in 1 or 2 bets. Not a great situation to be in but, like I said, it suits some.

The Cool Punter

If you have a more relaxed personality and you understand losing is a part of the game then you can start to look at strategies where the strike rate will be lower. It is much more realistic to find a strategy that wins about 60% of the time with a risk reward ratio of 1:1. This is what most professionals usually aim for. With a 60% strike rate this means you will win 6 bets for every 10. This can also mean you could easily have one day where you have 4 bets and they all lose. Some simply can not handle the thought of losing every bet or trade in a single day and they would then be more suited to a strategy with a higher strike rate.

You could then go to the other end of the spectrum and look at those strategies with long losing runs but a huge pay off when you finally hit a winner. This is what many horse racing professionals have to put up with and it can definitely be hard. Some newbie punters do not understand that if you are regularly backing odds of over 10-1 then you will not have a high strike rate. You might often go weeks or even over a month without a winner but then a couple of winners on the spin would put you in profit. Can you handle going that long without a winner? It certainly takes a lot of faith.

I remember a guest poster we used to have on this blog who would give golf tips. He was often tipping up potential winners priced around the 30-1 mark. As you can imagine, most weeks he did not get a winner. This caused some random commenter to start leaving him nasty comments along the lines of “can you ever find a winner?”. Then the guest poster found 2 winners in 2 tournaments one week. One at 35-1 and the other at 60-1. This put him into a huge profit for the year. I am not saying everyone should have kept following him through the losing run but it is important to understand that when backing such huge odds, you need to expect such long losing streaks. If you do not have the right personality to handle that then you should not bother in the first place.

So when you are searching for a strategy to use you need to be sure to ask yourself if it is one that will suit your personality. If it is something which chases after big odds, can you handle the losing runs? If it is a strategy that produces frequent small wins, can you handle the inevitable huge loss you will suffer?