A Sad Story...
Hello and welcome!
First of all, I know I said I'd explain the second system I'd be trialling in my next post, but seconds before I was about to finish writing that post, the screen froze and I lost everything. Ticked off, I've decided to go off on a completely different tangent and will go back to the system explanation tomorrow...
There is a gambling forum I visit, every so often. It's quite small compared to the some of the alternatives available, but has a couple dozen passionate members who post on a daily basis, making it quite a tightly-knit community.
Anyway, on this forum, there is one particular member with the username 'Improver?'. Unfortunately, he's one of a growing number of addicted gamblers and his story is one of the most horrific I've ever come across. As I stated earlier, the forum is tightly-knit and Kered, made some very personal posts on his gambling and day-to-day life. It was almost impossible not to feel sorry for him. Without going into too much detail, it was obvious to everyone else on the forum, but him, that gambling was destroying his life. Kered, his real name, was the kind of gambler who'd bet on horses purely beause of their name. In fact, he even startred one thread explaining a new system he created involving "the names of all mates and close family and backing them on a random basis".
People tried giving him advice, but he wouldn't listen. To make it worse he had no prospects. When I first came to the forum, he was unemployed and, from what I gather, living off of handouts from his sister, with most of the money being squandered on betting. To be fair to him, he did manage to get a job as a cleaner, in the end, but couldn't be earning much more than the minimum wage.
The good news is that, after months and months of forum members helping him out, Kered slowly seems to be getting things back in order now (although he still won't attend Gamblers Anonymous). He's now able to stop himself from gambling 90% of the time and has introduced a £5 limit on money he can bet on the days he does bet, in the process saving himself thousands of pounds every year.
Why am I telling you this? Well, by producing the articles I write for laytheodds.com and creating this blog, I realise that I'm actually encouraging people to gamble, because they see what can be achieved from it. However, it is the nature of some people to be more prone to addiction.It's a known fact that some people have an addictive nature. Whether it's, eating, violence, computer games, drugs or betting. No doubt, some of the people who read my articles will struggle with this kind of problem and I therefore am only contributing to the detrimental affects of their gambling. We could make the exact same bets as those people and end up in profit, while they will show a loss, simply because they panicked after a few losing bets and used an ill-advised staking plan (martingale *cough*) that landed them in deep doo-doo.
I'm hoping that this will help a few of those people.
If you're the kind of person that...
- Always needs to make one more bet
- Loses anymore than 5% of their annual income in gambling losses
- Is neglecting his/her family by spending too much time gambling
- Doesn't get enough sleep due to gambling 'till the early hours of the morning
- Will easily go on 'tilt'
- Can't stop thinking about gambling
- Is desperate to make their next bet
- Will kid themself that they are breaking even (perhaps even making a profit) even when they know full-well they are making losses.
Then you may have a problem. If you think this might be you then my initial advice is to take a break from gambling completely for at least a week, before coming back to it. In most cases, this will be enough for people to realise that there is a world outside of gambling.
If you try to stop for a week or more, but are simply incapable, this is when you know there is a high chance you have a problem...
This post would become too lengthy if I was to cover appropriate action to take if this is the case. However, if you think this might apply to you (and without wanting to preach to you, you need to be honest with yourself here) you can easily contact me. I'm no expert, but I'd be more than willing to help you on deciding what necessary actions to take.
I appreciate that this may be irrelevent to most readers, but it's a point I wanted to raise and get out of the way.
Tomorrow I'll reveal the second system I'll be testing as well as offering my opinion on the trading question I posed (you know, the one no one has commented on :)-) Until then,
Have a good one,
Josh.