A Horse Racing Jedi Knight - How To Master Discipline In Betting

I hope you enjoyed my last post which included a couple of free starter betting systems to get you started thinking about making your own. Have you had the chance to put them into play yet?

Before we get stuck in with this article and the 2nd part of my "7 Step Roadmap To Riches" plan of action, I'd just like to revist the betting systems topic for a moment if you will indulge me.

I know I may be preaching to the choir for some readers here and that a great many of you will have your own systems and/or methods. If I could please ask a favour?

If you do have a system, or a strategy for picking horses that you have been developing, and you don't mind sharing it with other readers of this newsletter, would you please send it to me? I promise to have a look at it and offer any help or pointers that may improve it absolutely free of charge!

Please though, be very specific about your system rules, and try to eliminate any grey areas so that even if 100 different readers were to follow the plan as outlined, they would all come up with the same horse. This is crucial for any system developer if you wish to go to market with it or even just to prove to anyone interested that it is a valid betting system.

Can you please also give your betting system a name (the weirder the better in my opinion!), and email it to me HERE. If it is any good, I will feature it in a future article I write (without giving your secrets away) and maybe even consider marketing it with you in a JV should you wish to make money with it.

OK, sorry about that digression, but I forgot to mention it in my last post. So, back to those two systems I shared with you last time.

Have you tried them yet? Have you won any money?

If you did, then you have already failed today's lesson miserably - DISCIPLINE.

I advised you not to "paper-trade" them and to go ahead and start using them to profit.

If you did this then go and stand in the nearest corner!! I'll deal with you later....

Sorry if I just reminded you of your old school headmaster and you've just suffered horrendous flash-backs. Of course I'm only kidding, but I do hope I've made a point? This is your first lesson... NEVER blindly trust a person who says his system can't fail. This is a definite road to the poor house. Test... Test... and Test again! Then, if everything checks out fully, risk your hard earned cash. Anyway, if you did win some cash, then congratulations naughty person, and you can buy the teacher an apple or Lamborghini, depending on how LUCKY.

Notice how I used the word LUCK there. Pro-Investors don't deal in LUCK, they deal with FACT!

I conducted a survey not too long ago, in fact, just for interest, I have launched another poll today on the exact same topic, and one of the questions asked what people found to be their biggest challenge to making their betting pay. Time and time again, they told me that their biggest problem was DISCIPLINE. The biggest challenge wasn't that they couldn't find winners, although this was high in the list of answers, it wasn't that they didn't have time to bet, this too rated highly and it wasn't finding a workable staking plan to match the betting system requirements either. It was that time immemorial human weakness - you guessed it DISCIPLINE and will-power (or lack of it as the case may be).

I apologise for going all biblical on you here but, if Adam could have bet on two horses running around a race track at the Garden of Eden during the National Hunt season, he would have been the first punter in the history of time to go broke, because he gave in to TEMPTATION. Well it beats the apple story and blaming Eve doesn't it!

It's time we looked at the next step in my "7 Step Roadmap To Riches"

Developing the discipline of the Jedi Knight

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.....

We all know the Star Wars story don't we? In case you don't...
Anakin Skywalker was the ambitious young apprentice to Obi Wan Kenobi, who desperately wanted to be a Jedi Master. But he was not focused, and he lacked discipline. He was a maverick. He allowed himself to become distracted and he fell in love with Princess Padme Amidala. Eventually he was seduced by the powerful Emperor and consumed by the evil forces of the Dark Side, to become Darth Vader.

Every one of us has followed a similar path with our betting habits. We all KNOW that we should develop a plan, and stick rigidly to that plan. We all KNOW we should seek to find value in our bets. We all KNOW we should adopt a sensible money management strategy.

But we all also KNOW we should stop smoking, eat our five a day of fruit and vegetables, and get meaningful regular exercise right...!

I know that everyone has their little vices, and bad habits but developing better DISCIPLINE is nothing more than a matter of establishing sound new habits, and empowering your mind over your heart.

How can I start to do this?

• Establishing new habits takes time - you can't change things overnight, but, according to proven empirical data, it will take 60 days for your brain to recognize a change in behaviour as a habit.
• Have a strong reason to make changes, and you will find yourself better motivated to resist in those real moments of weakness. If you really, REALLY want to be a successful pro-investor, you will find yourself not distracted so easily.
• Have a PLAN and WRITE IT DOWN. Be as specific as you can, and set yourself fixed rules. This is not psycho-babble, if you write down your plan, you will find it easier to recognise when you are thinking of doing something NOT IN THE PLAN
• Whenever you are placing a bet, just ask yourself this question. Does this form part of your PLAN? If the bet is unplanned, don't place it! No matter what the circumstances are.

Now, I know you may be saying that all the above is very simplistic, that's easy for you to say and it's just plain easier to put statements like these down in words than to act upon them consistently. Well yes, but, if you apply yourself daily, more and more, and keep resisting the urge to have that "extra bet just for fun" the pain will become less and less over a period of time.

Betting without emotion is certainly not easy, but it is the heart and sole of any pro-investor. We invest to make money and not to lose it. But I appreciate that for many the whole attraction of betting is based upon emotion, this is what sometimes what leads to the addiction many suffer from. How "emotional" do they look, the hundreds of punters holding the winning ticket as the favourite pulls away from the field up the final hill at Cheltenham? Is it good emotion, bad emotion? It doesn't matter, no emotion is what you seek.

I am not saying here that you shouldn't enjoy your successes, we all must, from time to time, stop and smell the roses. But the next time you are at the races, as the race approaches the finish, take your eyes off the horses, and look at the bookmakers in the betting ring. How emotional do they look? Compare this now to the punters and race-goers? Pretty dead-pan by comparison.. right? That's because betting is their business - and that is just how you should treat your betting activities, if you want to come away in profit and with your sanity intact.

Making a sideways leap from the Star Wars theme, Spock in Star Trek would have been a good punter. He could only think logically and had no emotions to speak of. For those of you who prefer The Next Generation, Commander Data, the android, would be a good role model (and would also be a useful companion when you're trying to work out the returns from a winning Super Heinz). Model your betting patterns on these type of people and you won't go far wrong.

In fact, if you really do struggle to keep emotion out of your betting, then using an android to place your bets would be one solution. Not quite so sci-fi but just as effective are the betting 'bots' now widely available. These clever pieces of specially developed software can be programmed to follow your exact betting parameters and instructions to the letter, identify your bets, and place them automatically for you even at your specified prices. All whilst you get on with your day job, well out of harm's way!

These betting 'bots' are never tempted to follow a dead-cert tip or chase losses, or commit any of the "stupid" mistakes to which all we humans are prone.

I will be reviewing some of these betting 'bots' soon.

At the end of the day, developing DISCIPLINE is a skill only YOU can master. I don't mind being your personal Yoda, but the answer still lies with you.

Don't be seduced by the Dark Side... go towards the light.

We'll wrap it up there for now. Soon we'll get on to the subject of finding VALUE and that should be very interesting as it's the most over used, banded about saying in racing, but I'll open that can of worms another day.