5 Ways To Review And Improve Your Betting

There are times when we all need to review our betting and going over some of the most important things once or twice a year can never be a bad thing.

Here are five things that you may want to look at and see if you can improve on any of these to help your betting, if you feel you need to.

Discipline.

There is never a bad time to re-focus on your discipline. If you have let it slip lately then try from today to look at your discipline again.

The great thing is, you can review your betting at any time and if you haven't quite been as successful lately as you would have liked, you can easily start afresh.

There is nothing more exciting than a fresh start and a new beginning. To hit the reset button and go again.

Look back at what you have been doing over the last few weeks and if there are things you know have cost you money from your profits, then ditch them right now.

Be disciplined, be even more disciplined and then be even more disciplined again.

It really is the number one factor that will help those new to betting and seasoned pro's alike.

Even someone with inside knowledge who gets the best information on what horses are 'fit and ready to win', will lose if he has no self discipline and wastes his profits made on those other silly, fun bets.

Stop placing lazy bets that you know are costing you dear. Take a day or two away from betting if need be. Take a week or two off if you feel you need to and in that time just stop betting.

Betting can make you money but without a strong disciplined approach you will always fail.

Specialisation

When you open the newspaper each day or go online, what sort of races catch your eye first?

Are you a sprint master or a follower of Maiden races? Do you prefer betting on the flat or over the jumps? Or have you even thought about what part of racing you really do get excited about yet?

People always do better in all areas of their life when they enjoy what they do. If you look at a Maiden race with little form, or a 20 runner handicap race and feel like you are going through the motions just to find a bet, then ditch these races and concentrate on those that really get you excited and buzzing.

There are plenty of races every year to suit everyone so you don't have to bet in every one of them.

Specialising in one or two areas, maybe 7 furlong races, all weather sprints or 3 mile plus chase races for example, will allow you more time to go through the form and allow you to get to know the horses that run in these types of race on a regular basis.

It may help you understand the Trainers who run horses in these races and to learn the ways they train. Ultimately you may begin to find patterns and know when a winner is on the cards.

This can only help you in the long run.

Try to read a race before making a decision

There is a lot more to reading a race than just looking at the recent form figures.

Races are run to suit some horses and not others and by knowing how the race is likely to pan out will give you a massive advantage over those who cannot be bothered to find out.

Are there more front runners in the race, helping the one or two that like to come off a faster pace?

Is there just one front runner who may be allowed to dictate the pace from the front?

Where is the pace likely to be in a big field sprint and how can you make the most of this knowledge?

You can often find a false favourite in a race where the pace just won't suit its running style and back against it or lay the horse.

Start looking deeper into a race and how it is likely to be run and you will start to spot one or two horses that have far more of a chance than you would have originally thought, that will be suited by the pace of the race.

Inform Racing provides the run style figures for you, so you only need to look at these to know how each horse is probably going to run.

Read more about our Run Style Figures here

Pretend a bad tipster in the last chance saloon

Imagine you just had to pick a winner today.

You're a tispter and people are paying you for tips and you have recently given out ten losing bets on the trot. The emails and phone calls are coming in and you are starting to get more than a little embarrassed, so you know that you HAVE to find a winner today.

Or imagine somone held a gun to your head and told you that you had to short list three runners from one race today and one just had to be the winner.

If this was the case then you would probably look at one race in particular that you knew more about than any other and go through the form and the runners with a fine tooth comb.

If you had to do this every day, don't you think you would find more winners? You would certainly back less silly losers that's for sure.

So try to be a like a failing tipster, where finding a winner is an absolute must!

You won't find the winner all of the time of course but see if you can get the winner from your shortlist of two or three horses more often than not.

If you cannot, then you need to seriuosly look at how you are coming up with your bets.

This idea will help your discipline 100% so maybe just find two races each day that you want to go over in full and see how your success rate improves.

Become A Racing Nerd

When I first started betting I would do what most people do and just look at the form, the betting forecast, the jockey and what the paper verdict came up with.

And then after that exhaustive form research, I would back something that was about 7/1 or so each way.

It's okay to lose but when you continue to lose you start to get a bit fed up with it.

I knew bits and pieces about racing when I was younger but watching the racing professionals and pundits on the TV, I would often get confused with some of the jargon and didn't fully understand what they were saying.

I mean do you fully understand the handicapping system and how a horse can have a higher handicap mark than last time out but be carrying less weight?

Do you know what a Selling race is or a Claimer? What is a Novice and why are some races for Conditional jockeys only? In fact, do you know just what a conditional jockey is?

If you really want to improve and start making gains from your betting, then you really should know as much as you can about racing and start to understand just what it all means.

Understanding more will mean more knowledge and more knowledge as they say is power.

Find out as much as you can about racing, how it is run and who takes part in it every day, even those behind the scenes that you will probably never see and read as much as you can from many books available on the internet.

Just reading the trainer comments each day in the Racing Post will help information sink in about their runners. Read the race comments after each of the previous days racing and see what you can glean for the future.

Watch as much racing as you can, whenever you can and start to look for horses that were unlucky in running and note them down for next time.

Go racing if at all possible and watch the horses and try and speak to someone about how the horses are trained or visist a stable if you can and get more information about that particular trainer and how he runs his horses.

If you can specialise on certain parts of racing as mentioned before and then learn everything you can about those particular race types, you can't help but win more.

So immerse yourself in racing, become a bit of a nerd but ultimately become more successful.