The majority of punters are referred to as ‘mug’ punters by the old-fashioned bag men. Why are they called ‘mug’ punters? Because they bet with their hearts and not their heads and because they don’t bet to any sort of system. This is especially true when it comes to managing their money. They bet until their wallet runs out, often chasing losses, and then celebrating wins by having another bet. Bookmakers used to love these punters; they new them all by name and made them most welcome in their betting shops.

Professional punters, on the other hand, use systems for selecting their bets and systems for determining how much they are going to bet. You don’t have to be a professional to use a system; in fact, your current selection methods will probably do fine. What is important in any form of gambling is to manage your money well.

To begin with, you need to be able to predict the accuracy of your selections. How often do you win? The more exotic your bet, the higher payout, but you are likely to have a long run of outs. If you back favourites, you are likely to have shorter runs when it comes to picking winners, but those winners will be low-profit bets, which makes it harder to recover losses.

For the average punter, a run of 20 outs is usually enough to cover them. If they can’t select a winner in 20 bets, it’s probably wiser to give up betting altogether. If you like the idea of flat bets, then it’s simply a matter of dividing your bank by 20, and that’s the size of your bet. Double your bank, double your bet.  Halve your bank, halve your bet.

That’s a simple betting system, and there are more complicated systems around that can cover you for more than 20 consecutive losses. There are also systems that will see you out of money after only 8-10 consecutive losses. It all depends on your selection strategy, the betting odds of your selections, and how much you are willing to set aside as a bank.