One of the best things any punter can do - whether you place one £2 each way bet on a Saturday or take your racing very seriously - is record every single bet they place.
Not just the winning bets.
Not just the big priced winners.
All of them.
Because memory is one of the biggest liars in betting.
Most punters remember the brilliant winners, the unlucky seconds and the bets that 'should have won'.
What quietly disappears are the poor value bets, the impulse bets, the bad prices taken ten minutes before the off and the races that never should have bets on to begin with.
Recording your bets removes fantasy and replaces it with evidence.
And if you are serious about wanting to profit from your betting - that is where the improvement starts.
The truth is, most bettors have absolutely no idea where they actually make or lose money. They think they are good at sprint handicaps because they remember landing a few nice-priced winners.
Then they finally look at six months of records and discover they are down heavily in sprints but profitable in smaller field, middle distance races they barely paid attention to.
That kind of discovery changes everything.
The beauty of a betting record is that it turns opinions into data and very quickly you start seeing patterns.
You may soon notice that you lose money backing favourites but do very well on horses priced between 6/1 and 12/1. You might discover your early prices taken massively outperform SP or that you may notice you struggle in maiden and novice events but read Class 4, 5 and 6 handicap races extremely well.
- You will certainly uncover bad emotional habits, like chasing losses on evening cards after a losing afternoon.
Without recording your bets, all of that stays hidden and forgotten, even if it is clear by looking at your betting accounts balance.
With records, your betting starts becoming far more intentional.
The mistake some people make is overcomplicating things. You do not need some giant spreadsheet with 75 columns and advanced formulas from day one. In fact, that often becomes so time consuming that people give up after a couple of weeks.
All you really need is to start with the information that genuinely matters. - The race date and time.
- The horse - if you want to.
- The specific race type, such as maiden, Group 1, 3yo handicap etc.
- Actual race type, so all weather, flat turf, chase, hurdle, etc.
- Number of runners - if you want to track field sizes.
- The reason for the bet - 'well drawn at a better price than expected' , 'looks well handicapped with conditions to suit', 'could be the only pace angle' etc. AND NOT, 'cos the bloke on the telly just said it was being backed and he half fancied it'.
- Your confidence in the bet out of 10 or 20.
- The price taken and then the SP or BSP depending on where you place your bet.
- The result.
- Profit or loss on the bet
- Cumulative profit or loss
Reason for the bet and your confidence in the bet will be great for when you start reviewing your history aftera a month or two and you will very likely be genuinely surprised at what metrics you are better or worse at and you will definitely be surprised at how much money you have staked.
That can be an uncomfortable but incredibly valuable lesson.
However, over time, you will start learning which thought processes genuinely produce your profits and at which race types you fare best.
What about the odds?
One of the most useful things to track is the difference between your taken price and the SP/BSP. If you consistently beat SP, you are usually thinking in the right direction, even during losing runs. The market is not perfect, but over time it is still one of the strongest indicators of whether your judgement is sharp.
I wrote more about how important this is in another blog post here >>
Betting confidence should come from the full process and not short-term results.
A punter who backs three winners in a week can still be betting terribly. Another who loses for ten days straight might actually be making excellent decisions and taking outstanding value.
Recording bets helps separate variance from bad judgement and it also helps remove emotion.
After a while, betting becomes less about 'fancying one' for a fun bet and more about a studious process towards success.
You stop chasing excitement and start looking for repeatable edges. You become calmer during losing runs because you can see the bigger picture and perhaps most importantly, you become far more selective.
That selectiveness is where many punters improve dramatically and start to realise how silly all those previous, on the whim bets because the racing is on the telly, really are.
Fun bets are allowed but...
You can still have your fun bets and enjoy a reckless afternoon using small stakes if you have to. Taking those funds from another betting account perhaps, but as far as possible, try to make every bet a serious bet that will be recorded.
Because once every bet goes into a permanent record, you naturally become more careful. Suddenly that random 8.15 at Wolverhampton doesn't look quite so tempting if you know you will have to justify it later in black and white!
You will soon see how wasteful these fun bets really are and not half as much fun as you thought they were.
Staking
I don'tt want to start making anyone stake or lose more than they feel comfortable with but one idea is to increase your stakes on your serious bets that you are recording.
I tried this myself a while ago and switched my £5 stakes on anything and everything, to a £50 bet on what I considered my most confident bets. It really does make you think and in the long term it can actually cut the amount that you are betting.
Perhaps stake different amounts depending on your confidence score for each bet. Then start asking yourself why you are betting if your confidence score is only 3 out of 10!
The interesting thing is that recording bets benefits every level of punter differently.
Beginners gain discipline, intermediate punters uncover strengths and weaknesses and more advanced bettors refine edges and pricing accuracy.
But everyone improves because what gets measured gets understood and in betting, understanding yourself is often more important than understanding the horses.
Just try it for a month and I can almost guarantee you will learn something about yourself and your betting.