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Gambling for a living

gabi, I was a professional gambler for about two months (I was doing fine a paid off a few debts but quit when I started losing and lost confidence). So I'm no expert but from what you've posted - what you have at the moment is a pipe dream, you really don't know what you are doing, please keep it as a hobby before you start getting into serious trouble. You've had a few lucky bets - something that can happen to anyone. Enjoy it but don't let it go to your head.

The kind of people who make money from sportsbook betting are absolute experts in the sports they choose to bet on, and they will bet large sums, and they won't be spectacularly choosing winners every time but will be doing well enough to have the percentages in their favour.
 
A lot of people do it. It is possible, but it's not an easy life. There's some fair insights and advice on the forums at www.twoplustwo.com. It's a poker site but they cover some general gambling and especially sports betting. There's often a sports betting article in the online magazine also (issues stay up for 3 months only so no archives).

The absolute essential skill is bankroll management. There are all sorts of algorithms out there to maximise profit whilst minimising risk of ruin, but you can keep it quite simple. Chris Ferguson's system is pretty straightforward (see his $10,000 challenge on fulltilt for details, and other articles as he used this system to start his career with $1 originally). Your bankroll is your business - your working capital - so if you're planning on making a living at it, you need to be careful not to lose it and also be clear about what money you take out from it to live on and what it leaves you to work with.

Good bankroll management will help you to not go broke too quickly if you're a losing gambler and avoid going broke through bad luck if you're a winning one. Whether or not you're a winner in the short-term is all about luck (hence the bankroll management) but in the long-term it's about skill. It's not about predicting what the outcome will be, it's irrelevant - betting on a 100-1 outsider is a great bet if the true odds are 70-1 but a terrible bet if they're actually 150-1. You need to know/research enough to spot when you're being offered better than the true odds and/or by managing more complex series of bets to ensure a win (see oranges&lemons on the big brother threads).

Most professional gamblers go bust sooner or later. There's a lot of good advice around on the pitfalls and what to think about if you're going to try it. Don't ignore the risks just because you've been lucky on a few bets - if you don't know what you're doing you will come unstuck. For reference, in poker 200,000 hands at a specific game and limit is considered the absolute minimum to determine whether you have a positive or negative winrate (at that specific game and limit).
 
Jazzz said:
gabi, I was a professional gambler for about two months (I was doing fine a paid off a few debts but quit when I started losing and lost confidence). So I'm no expert but from what you've posted - what you have at the moment is a pipe dream, you really don't know what you are doing, please keep it as a hobby before you start getting into serious trouble. You've had a few lucky bets - something that can happen to anyone. Enjoy it but don't let it go to your head.

The kind of people who make money from sportsbook betting are absolute experts in the sports they choose to bet on, and they will bet large sums, and they won't be spectacularly choosing winners every time but will be doing well enough to have the percentages in their favour.
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Thanks for that, I'm just gonna carry on dabbling with the foreseeable future, wont throw in the day job just yet ;)
 
My BF gambles quite a bit but he never gambles more then he's won so he puts his original stake away.

I still don't like it then, it's a slippery slope. :hmm:
 
Is it possible? Anyone know anyone whos thrown in their day job and just gambled for a living?
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The whole financial industry is predicated on the concept, and most of the money is made by being the bookie.
 
fractionMan said:
Actually, that's not entirely true. It is possible to make money, just much, much harder than people initially imagine. But yes, the industry does like people like the OP, cos they'll undoubtedly go broke and rebuy.
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It is true. It is psychologically and statistically correct.
 
phildwyer said:
Always bet on the favorite. Each time you bet, wager enough so that if the favorite wins, you win back everything you've lost since the last time you won, plus a hundred quid. The favorite wins often enough for this to be a fail-safe system, provided you have a lot of capital (enough to cover 9 or 10 races which the favorite fails to win. Its never more than that).
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This strategy (the 'martingale') - as played by Casanova - is extremely risky. I would advise anyone to stay well clear of it. You are very likely to win a small amount but when your run of bad luck comes, which it will sometime, you lose absolutely everything you have!
 
Jazzz said:
This strategy (the 'martingale') - as played by Casanova - is extremely risky. I would advise anyone to stay well clear of it. You are very likely to win a small amount but when your run of bad luck comes, which it will sometime, you lose absolutely everything you have!
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True, but you'd need some very bad luck indeed. How likely is it that 10 races will go by without the favorite winning? If it happens never, or almost never, you'd be fine. Obviously its not a particularly exciting system, but it works.
 
phildwyer said:
Always bet on the favorite. Each time you bet, wager enough so that if the favorite wins, you win back everything you've lost since the last time you won, plus a hundred quid. The favorite wins often enough for this to be a fail-safe system, provided you have a lot of capital (enough to cover 9 or 10 races which the favorite fails to win. Its never more than that).
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Just to say a bit more on this, and explain why phildwyer is not posting from his yacht on St. Tropez - suppose your favourite is always evens and you set out to win £100 with each bet. Then your first bet is £100. When your bad streak comes and your first nine bets lose, your tenth bet will be £51,200. And that bet will more likely than not lose.
 
Jazzz said:
This strategy (the 'martingale') - as played by Casanova - is extremely risky. I would advise anyone to stay well clear of it. You are very likely to win a small amount but when your run of bad luck comes, which it will sometime, you lose absolutely everything you have!
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Aye. It requires an infinitely large bankroll and is also predicated on a bookie/casino accepting very large bets in order to allow you to recoup earlier losses (as you're essentially playing a game where you always go "double or nothing" if you lose and walk away if you win). It's the best you can do in a game of pure chance like roulette, but it's still a losing strategy (as is playing any game of pure chance where the house takes a cut).
 
Jazzz said:
Just to say a bit more on this, and explain why phildwyer is not posting from his yacht on St. Tropez - suppose your favourite is always evens and you set out to win £100 with each bet. Then your first bet is £100. When your bad streak comes and your first nine bets lose, your tenth bet will be £51,200. And that bet will more likely than not lose.
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Yes, but how often does it happen that 10 races go by without the favorite winning? If never, then you're fine.
 
phildwyer said:
True, but you'd need some very bad luck indeed. How likely is it that 10 races will go by without the favorite winning? If it happens never, or almost never, you'd be fine. Obviously its not a particularly exciting system, but it works.
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You effectively need an infinite amount of money for this system to work.
 
phildwyer said:
Not infinite. I'd say you need 1000 times more than you're trying to win each time: e.g. if you're trying to win 100 quid you'd need a bankroll of 100,000.
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If you're trying to make a quick one-off profit in a game of chance then the martingale system is probably the best, but by no means guaranteed, option. To make a regular living by this method, the bankroll needs to be theoretically infinite. In practice, it need not be because there is a point where the bookie or casino will not let you bet enough to recoup your losses so the system breaks down well before the infinitely large bet needs to be made.
 
Q: Is betting 50,000 on a coin flip a good idea if it's the last 50,000 you own and your only means of future income?

A: No.
 
phildwyer said:
True, but you'd need some very bad luck indeed. How likely is it that 10 races will go by without the favorite winning? If it happens never, or almost never, you'd be fine. Obviously its not a particularly exciting system, but it works.
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It doesn't. Really, it doesn't. Martingale is doomed because it's intrinsically flawed by a misconception, as it would given when it was first used.

The man in the street thinks - all thing being equal - a normal distribution is even; black, red, black, red, etc, and that variations on that will self-correct. It's wrong.

Normal distribution is clustered, non-normal distribution is even - look up Poisson Distribution on Google.

Martingale will lose you everything in the end - and that isn't a pov, it has to.
 
London_Calling said:
Martingale will lose you everything in the end - and that isn't a pov, it has to.
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Again, this depends on the asnwer to the question I keep asking: how often do 10 races go by without the favorite winning? If the answer is "never," or "effectvely never," then the system works.

I suspect that the real problem with it is that bookies and casinos will not allow people to play it.
 
phildwyer said:
Again, this depends on the asnwer to the question I keep asking: how often do 10 races go by without the favorite winning? If the answer is "never," or "effectvely never," then the system works.
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Sorry, didn't see the question. In horse racing, for example?

For 1991-2008, scroll to the very bottom table here - :)
 
London_Calling said:
It doesn't. Really, it doesn't. Martingale is doomed because it's intrinsically flawed by a misconception, as it would given when it was first used.

The man in the street thinks - all thing being equal - a normal distribution is even; black, red, black, red, etc, and that variations on that will self-correct. It's wrong.

Normal distribution is clustered, non-normal distribution is even - look up Poisson Distribution on Google.

Martingale will lose you everything in the end - and that isn't a pov, it has to.
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It's got nothing to do with the normal or poisson distributions. The distribution for most win/lose bets is binomial, but that's also irrelevant.

The martingale system was developed for roulette - choose a 1:1 payoff (like red, or evens) and then keep betting on it until you win, doubling your bet each time. The most you can win with this system is the amount of your initial bet - the most you can lose is your entire bankroll. That's why it's doomed. You can play the short-run and try to get lucky but you cannot keep doing it and expect to stay solvent.

Professional gamblers repeatedly invest a small % of their bankroll with a small edge. Theoretical winnings will depend on how big their edges are. Actual winnings will depend on chance. Over a very large number of bets, actual winnings will tend to converge with theoretical winnings.
 
gabi said:
Is it possible? Anyone know anyone whos thrown in their day job and just gambled for a living?

Im seriously considering it. I've been tracking my little bets over the past few weeks and im up by about 10x. I win approx 3 out of 5 bets. If I was staking 10 times the amounts I'd be earning what I earn as my salary.

Slippery slope? Im now late to work fairly often as i stay up to all hours watching and betting on US sports (about which I know little altho I do better on those than football - which i know a lot about)
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Are you a mathematics genius. Then yeah you can make a living playing poker.

If you ain't. Stick to your day job if i was you.
 
Well ill keep going for a while and see how much I can turn the original £5 into. Currently at £86. Crickets on tonight, ladbrokes are bizarrely still making england favourites so im putting a little bit on NZ.

Ive also just placed a small bet on erm, womens volleyball.. :D
 
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