Author's note

Below, the last chapter of the book is included; a personal view on the world of betting and the supposed methods to win money safely.

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Once we have studied all the mathematics behind sport betting and have developed methods that will allow us to make money safely in the long-term, there is still one last equation to introduce. This, which may be the most important one, states that:

Even having internalised all the knowledge learnt throughout this book, most people will not able to keep a cold head in order to follow these methods at face value under all circumstances. On the one hand, if we start winning, we will be tempted to increase our stakes to win even more and, on the other, if for whatever reason we lose money (a failed recreational bet, an incorrectly calculated stake in a method, a bad run with the multiple bets, etc.), we could be anxious to recover it immediately. Both situations will lead us to increase our risk and place bets on unfair games, which, if repeated over time, will make us lose even more money. And this is a spiral that never ends.

In my particular case, after having bet intermittently for 10 years, only now, after a period of iron discipline, I have been able to compensate for the losses I accumulated at the beginning. Betting has never caused me any harm at working, economic or social level, but in addition to the anxiety of wanting at least to recover the losses, I have always had an unpleasant feeling of shame for betting. In consequence, no one around me has ever known what I was doing.

However, the consequences of start betting can go far beyond losing a certain amount of money or feeling a bit embarrassed; it may affect in many ways to the player (sadness, depression, anxiety, irritability), to his family (neglect, lack of communication, marital problems), to his work or studies (demotivation, poor performance, unexcused absences, dismissals or abandonment of studies) or to his social relationships (loss of friends, abandonment of other leisure activities) and can lead to substance abuse (alcohol, tobacco, drugs), to legal problems (thefts, fraud, identity fraud) or to economic troubles (loss of money saved for other purposes, debts).

For all this, and especially after talking so much along the book about probabilities, risks, gains and losses, I sincerely believe that, when all that can be lost is taken into account, the possible economic benefits are far from offsetting the risks of betting. If I could go back in time, I would have never started.

That said, I understand that if you have come to read this book, it is probably because you have been betting for many years and tired of losing again and again, you are looking for ways to win and recover your losses. My recommendation would be to assume them and stop betting, but if you still insist on trying to recover them, the only solution is to stick to the methods described here. In addition, depending on the amount you have to recover, it can be a long, tedious and emotionless path, which will ultimately help you to reduce the addictive component of betting, making it easier to quit at the end.

My last recommendation is that not much attention should be paid to the methods that can be read on the Internet. Most of these emphasise the famous ‘value’, which is based on finding odds above what they theoretically should be. This would be the equivalent to finding odds of, for example, 2.05 in a perfectly balanced coin toss.

Theoretically, these methods work, but in practice the almost impossible to carry out. If suddenly a bookmaker offers odds of 5.00 to the victory of FC Barcelona at its home against the bottom team of the Spanish league, those odds will obviously have ‘value’. But establishing that odds of 1.24 (p = 0.8064) are overvalued because they should be of 1.20 (p = 0.8333) is much more complicated. Moreover, our estimate of 1.20 is probably going to be incorrect, since we will usually handle much less information than bookmakers and, namely, much less elaborate estimation methods.

This does not mean that there are no tipsters obtaining money through the 'value' method. By investing a lot of time in following sports news and, in consequence, acquiring a broad knowledge in the sport on which they bet, it can be achieved. But selling it as something accessible to everyone seems dishonest to me.

For these reasons, I distrust the method of looking for ‘value’ in the odds offered by bookmakers. I prefer to take advantage directly from the promotions they offer, since, in addition to requiring much less time, I think they are the only sure way to get benefits in the long-term.

In short, I insist that no one should bet; not even in a recreational and 'responsible' way to give more 'excitement' to a match, since, although likely to most people this will never cause any problem, the consequences of falling into compulsive gambling are too serious. I would tell those people that, ultimately, the important thing is not to wonder why they started betting or how much they have lost, but what they are going to do to quit.

As for me, after betting more or less intensely for several years, finding and carrying out the methods that I have explained here has helped me to quit. May this book serve at the same time as a compilation of the knowledge acquired during all these years and as an end to my journey through the world of betting.