Sports betting is something you should do responsibly. Let’s examine some of the reasons people really think they have the true, winning and unbeatable strategy without any research or concept of money management. There are specific delusions, called “cognitive distortions” that plague gamblers. These are well-documented and well-known to the sports gambling psychology communities. In a study from the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, common cognitive distortions in gamblers “include the magnification of gambling skills, minimization of other gambler’s skills, superstitious beliefs (including talismanic . superstitions), interpretive biases (including internal attributions, external attributions, gambler’s fallacy, chasing, anthropomorphism, reframed losses, hindsight bias) illusion of control over luck.”

That’s a lot of craziness, and we need to do our best to avoid anything on that list. These are actually very common mistakes in thinking we make everyday - however, most of the time these mistakes will not end up costing us hundreds or thousands of dollars. I’d light to highlight a few of these that are especially common so you can have a better idea of what kind of mistakes in thinking to look out for.

“Magnification of skills” - Simply put, this means everyone thinks they have it right. Once you convince yourself of this is hard to realize it, so keep an open mind and ALWAYS do your research and look at your results objectively. Numbers never lie.

“Minimization of other gambler’s skills” - In sports gambling psychology this is the belief of square bettors that everyone else is a square. They’re not - there are many sharps who are much better than you. And the bookies? They’ve always got more information than the normal bettor or else they wouldn’t be in the business, or be broke very quickly.

“Gambler’s Fallacy” - Gambler’s fallacy is an important idea here. The false belief here is that the universe has some kind of memory or wants some a specific outcome. The common misconception is: if I flip a coin and it lands on heads 49 times, the next flip has just GOT to be tails! It’s got to even out sometime, right? Well, wrong. The chance of tails for the next flip is the exact same as all the others: Fifty % This is the feeling that something is due to happen.

Why? Has some thing changed? Have the teams gotten much better or worse or is some thing drastically various? Most likely not, but we maintain considering that some points are merely “bound to happen” or “meant to be this way.” Bookmaking and also the use from the spread make this a bit much more complicated, but the fundamental mistake remains the exact same: there’s no such point as a team “due” for a win or loss. Do not fall into this trap of considering.

“Reframed losses and hindsight bias” - This is when you have the thought of “oh I just knew this was going to happen - my gut was right etc.”

“Illusion of Control over Luck” - Luck is one area which is usually on our minds, and a quite difficult concept to get ourselves away from. And it’s really safe to talk and consider it as long as we’re not making it any part of our mindful sports gambling psychology. Luck does not have an effect on outcomes of games, it does not change sides or support once, and we cannot get more luck or good chances of covering the spread from hanging around lottery winners or plane crash survivors or any other extremely “lucky” individuals. Consider it unlucky that field goal hit the post or lucky how the quarterback took a hit by a pigeon on a red-zone play, but never dwell on it and do not ever allow it be the most crucial of your strategy - or any kind of your method.

Are any of these definitions familiar? This is simply how we jusitfy our mistakes and betting losses we have made in our past. It seems we either “just missed it” or “almost won. The truth is simply that you lost, and when betting on sports, this happens sometimes. Looking back and making up excuses will only lead you to make the same bad wagers all over again.

Share This