Understanding Randomness When Betting

February 12, 2019

Randomness and betting go hand in hand, and although there is, of course, a lot of luck involved when you are placing your bets with new bookmakers, win or lose, many results can only be described as random. Even the best gamblers in the world will have months when they lose, and if they have a method of picking winners that work, a losing month can only be put down to random results having an effect.

What is Randomness:

One of the main reasons that many people struggle to understand randomness is because we all like to find a pattern. When you are betting, by following the form and predicting what will happen in the next game, you are looking for a pattern and trying to follow it. People like patterns and like to know what will come next, whether this is in daily life or when betting. Anything that doesn’t follow the pattern can be described as random, and if it is a random result that doesn’t follow the pattern, then that means you will be backing a loser because of that.

Classic example:

There are many people out there who believe in superstitions, and these also play a part in betting. Those who use superstitions to explain a result often struggle to understand that the result is simply random. For example, if their team loses a game when they have placed a bet with one of their new bookmakers, instead of putting this down to a random act, they will happily blame it on not wearing their lucky socks. Of course, eventually, this superstition will be broken, and the team will lose even when the lucky socks are being worn and that person will then move onto a different superstition to follow, instead of putting it down to being random.

What all the above shows you is that randomness does exist, but it is something that we find very hard to understand. This is because there is no pattern to be found on random events, and that is something that human beings find very hard to compute. We all search long and hard for a pattern in life, and when one is not there, we struggle to understand that and believe that we are missing something, when actually all we are seeing is the randomness of certain events, whether they are sporting events or not.

How you can use Randomness when Betting

When looking back through your bets, even when you are looking at long spells covering hundred of bets, it can be hard to know whether you have just been lucky or whether you genuinely are gifted. When you look at your bets it is important to try and factor in randomness, even though it is something that many of us don’t believe in and don’t want to factor.

We will all get lucky and unlucky due to the results from time to time, but over the course of a long period despite having random results as part of your findings, you will still be able to work out whether you are a profitable punter.

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