Betting 360 Ep 021: 40 Punting Lessons From 40 Years




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Summary: Dave recently celebrated his 40th birthday and had a great number of insights to share in a recent blog post on 40 punting lessons. Those lessons are explained and expanded upon in this week's podcast. Punting Insights You'll Find How losing can set you on a winning path. Why lazy punters lose. The importance of not falling in love with a horse. Why not to focus on big name trainers and jockeys. What horse racing and poker have in common (and how it can change your strategy). Today's Guest: David Duffield  David's Closing Tip: " Success is like being pregnant... everyone congratulates you, but no one knows how many times you were ... (fill in the blank). " Get the Transcript: Episode 021: 40 Punting Lessons From 40 Years Hi this is David Duffield, and welcome to another episode of the Betting 360 podcast. Normally we have a special guest on, we’ve done that for the first 20 episodes, but today I just wanted to run through the 40 lessons in 40 years that I posted just recently in line with my 40th birthday. Not everyone wants to read a post like that, so I just thought I’d run through it on this podcast. So the first thing was, anyone who claims they never went through a losing apprenticeship early on, is long odds on to be having you on. And what I mean by that is, some people purport to be experts who’ve never had a losing run of any kind. Well from the people I’ve met it’s definitely a learning curve, and most people have gone through an apprenticeship of some kind, where they don’t do very well, they lose, and they find out the reasons why they’ve lost, and they do actually learn from that. So pretty much everyone at some stage, normally early on in their career have had a really bad patch, or even an extended patch where they haven’t done well. But as I said before, you work out why that’s happened, and then you add that to your knowledge, and from there you can develop into a winning punter. Number two is, betting with an edge offers superior returns to any other investment class. When you see a lot of investments of various kinds spruiked in the media, if they can achieve a 10% annual return that’s seen as an excellent performance. In the betting world a 10% return is a reasonable month. So I just think compared to other investment forms which many of them are, you know it’s basically just gambling, but in another name. That what’s traditionally known as gambling, that offers better returns then you can get anywhere else. Number three, was staking and money management are the most underrated aspects of gambling. I’ve spoken and written about that many times, but a lot of work goes in sometimes people doing the form, not so much into how they’re actually going to back that horse. We do mention a lot the balance between risk and reward, but people don’t really put a lot of thought into the staking, and also the money management. As in, how they’re going to cope during losing runs, and also how they’re going to stay controlled when they’re on a really good winning run. Related to that is number four, and that’s no one avoids drawdowns, so why be surprised when you go through it. I’ve written an article quoting Mike Tyson saying ‘everyone’s got a plan, until they get hit in the head’. It’s the same with drawdown, people say that they’ll stick with an approach despite a losing run, but when push comes to shove many people pull the pin too early. There’s no point having a betting bank unless you’re going to use it, there’s no point being surprised when you have a period of drawdown as it’s inevitable. So don’t fight it, just make sure you’ve got a money management plan that can withstand it. Number five, was overestimating your edge, it can make an otherwise successful punter go bust. This isn’t clear to everyone, but we had Elihu Feustel on the podcast I think it was our very first guest. But with him he explained that, if you’re betting in some form of Kelly criterion,