I have always had a fascination with gambling. At different stages of my life, I have studied horse-racing form, attempted card counting at blackjack, and played poker and backgammon.
In the process, I have met a range of gamblers. Gamblers are not all the same. They have different behavioural profiles.
In order to avoid getting gubbed, you must fit in to a specific gambling type. With my Enhanced Matched Betting Methods, you can represent a mug punter, without placing extra bets.
A. Fit into a Specific Gambling Profile
In poker, you often see new players make bad bluffs that almost always get called. What makes a bad bluff? A bad bluff is when a player represents a hand that contradicts the hand he represented earlier in the hand.
The reason that I am telling you this is because I have seen advice on the matched betting websites telling players to put bets in the casino to show the bookmaker that you are a mug punter. On the forums, I have seen matched bettors saying that they got gubbed despite playing in the casino.
The advice of going into the casino is wrong. I will explain why later. However, for now, you need to understand that, if you are going to try and represent yourself as a mug, you need to know how a mug behaves.
There are several types of gambler and the types often overlap. There are professional gamblers, social gamblers, escape gamblers, and action gamblers. We certainly don’t want to look like a professional gambler. Gambling on the internet is not very social. Therefore, we can rule that type of person out.
1. The Escape Gambler
The escape gambler usually has a background of being a responsible person. They do not tend to be narcissistic, which is a personality trait associated more with the action gambler. Typically, the escape gambling behaviour is induced after some type of psychological trauma. The person gets depressed and ends up using gambling as a way of self-medicating.
Gambling helps them put their problems out of their minds. Often, their first experience with gambling will get them addicted. They may be afraid of stopping gambling because they can’t cope with facing their emotional pain.
The escape gambler usually plays games that require little or no skill and provide an instant result, such as slots and video poker. This type of gambler will play for hours.
The escape gambler does not just dabble in the casino. They will be regulars. If you try to impersonate this behaviour, you will waste time and money.
Escape gamblers are not interested in skill games. People, who bet on horses and football, tend to have some interest in reading form.
Often, you will put your bets on a significant amount of time before the race or match. Escape gamblers want an instant result.
If you are placing bigger bets on horses and football compared to the casino, you are not going to convince anyone that you are an escape gambler. There are about twice as many female escape gamblers compared to males. Therefore, if you are a guy, trying to mimic an escape gambler won’t be particularly believable.
The type of gambler that I want to focus on is the action gambler. There is a lot of overlap between the categories of gambler. Some action gamblers are professional gamblers. Most are not.
2. The Action Gambler
The vast majority of action gamblers are male. The action gambler isn’t an all-or-none phenomenon. At the extreme end, you have the compulsive action gamblers. They are reported to be controlling and narcissistic and these are the types of action gamblers that the media focus on. There are plenty of unsuccessful gamblers, with action gambler tendencies. These players look for value bets.
Action gamblers are interested in games that they believe they can win at. These games include skill games, such as blackjack, poker and backgammon. They are also likely to be into sports betting. They will believe that they can read form well enough to win.
The average intelligence of an action gambler is quite high and has been reported to be around 120. However, there will be some that aren’t so bright. They might believe that they can beat unbeatable games, such as roulette, craps or slots. These gamblers may use some staking system that intuitively seems to make sense (but mathematically makes no sense).
This is the type of profile that a matched better can attempt to represent. We want to be viewed as a non-pathological, action gambler.
a) Representing a Type of Action Gambler
As I have mentioned before, a lot of matched bettors believe that betting small amounts of money in the casino will prevent them from getting gubbed. However, betting small in the casino and betting bigger in the sportsbook, does not fit the behavioural profile of an action gambler. It makes you look like an action gambler in the sportsbook. By contrast, betting small in the casino makes you look like your granny, at the amusement arcade in Scarborough.
If an action gambler believes that he has a beatable system, he would bet similar amounts in the sportsbook and the casino.
The idea of betting in the casino is that you are trying to impersonate an action gambler or a degenerate gambler.
b) The Form Reader and Thrill Seeker Combined
This type of punter is trying to beat the bookies by reading the form. They might study horse racing form, football form or both.
Typically, they don’t have enough good bets to keep them actively gambling. There might be weekends, where they don’t have a bet that fits their form criteria for a bet. So, they put smaller bets on horses that are close and don’t quite fit their system. At weekends, they might place a small double or a yankee for TV racing.
Bookmakers love these types of punters. These are punters, who are trying to use intelligence to win money. However, they don’t have the discipline. They are in a half-way situation. On the one hand, they want to be professional. On the other hand, they are getting enough thrills from gambling to be putting on silly bets. They convince themselves that the small bets are value bets.
Even knowledgeable punters fall into this trap. There was a series called Britain at the Bookies” on the BBC. Part 3 of the series featured a well-known golf tipster called Steve Palmer. Golf isn’t my thing but I have heard that Steve Palmer knows his golf. Apparently, he tipped a 200-1 golf winner, which is a record.
On Britain at the Bookies, this tipster spent an afternoon frittering away money on greyhounds. He regretted it and wished he had saved the money to bet on golf, which was his area of expertise.
This guy is an exception as he knows his stuff. Most form readers don’t do much better than breaking even. This is the type of punter that you could try to represent. However, you need a fake system that the bookies can identify as a losing system.
c) Losing Systems
You want to have a consistent profile. You want to appear to have a system or habit, that bookies know doesn’t win.
For horse racing, I always put qualifying bets and free bets on favourites that are last time out winners in handicap races. I choose favourites that are between 3.0 and 5.0.
The idea is that, if a bookmaker looks at my bets, he will see a consistent pattern to my bets. It will make me look like a form reader. In addition, the bookmaker will know that nearly all punters, who consistently back last time out winners, will lose in the long run. In other words, the bookmaker will know that this is a losing system.
Other types of losing systems that you might consider using are staking systems, such as the Martingale System. In case you don’t know, the Martingale System involves doubling your stake after a loser and returning to your original stake after a winner. It’s probably the most famous staking system and it mimics the punter chasing their losses.
d) The TV Punter
For football, I place big bets on matches that are on TV. I place smaller bets on matches that are not televised. This is quite a natural pattern because TV matches tend to be more important matches that involve the big clubs.
B. Conclusions
If you want to reduce your chances of getting gubbed by bookmakers, you need to get into the bookmaker’s head. Ask yourself what a bookmaker would think of you if he analysed all of your bets. How would the bookmaker profile you as a gambler?
You don’t have to use all of these ideas. However, it will help your mug punter profile, if you put some thought into the type of punter that you are trying to portray.