How to Behave During Periods of Drawdowns?

There are two things that constantly threaten your career as a professional caper: bad luck and a bad method of money management. None of the players with serious intentions should not ignore this.

The legend of sports betting – Sonny Reizner said that he once experienced a drawdown period of three years! These 34 months cost him their home and all the savings allocated for the education of their children.

Well-known in Las Vegas, the capper Tony Diamond once issued a succession of 27 wrong predictions in his program broadcast on the radio. A professor from the University of Nevada estimated then how worthless was the chance of such a series. It was a very, very small probability expressed by six zeros after the comma.

In general, in Las Vegas, similar stories are typed so many that they can be filled with many volumes of books. You may not be fed up that you will avoid the painful disappointment that pervades these stories, but in order to avoid serious consequences you need to know how to behave in a similar situation. If you are on the path of a professional better, then keep in mind that Mrs. Drawdown will come to you sooner or later and sooner it will happen earlier than you think.

You will definitely experience a long series of losses and if you still admit yourself that it will be possible to avoid this or somehow bypass these unpleasant moments, then most likely you suffer from a withdrawal syndrome and are simply deceiving yourself. In this case, you better give up the idea to engage in gambling professionally.

The ability to manage a series of losses is one of the main aspects that show your professional level as a sport bettor.

The story told by the professional caper RJ Miller:

“One Sunday afternoon, my brother and I watched a match between the Patriots    and   Jets from the NFL league in the lobby of the Caesar’s Palace hotel , when a man burst out of the crowd watching the match and began to yell curses and curse at the “Jets” team: “Damn, damn, you can’t even win my grandmother! Bloody losers!” – he continued to scream at the limit of his forces, cursing the team on which he put gradually moving away from the hall. We heard him continue shouting curses already out on the street.

Maybe the Jets really did not deserve praise that night, but the actions of this emotionally unbalanced guy were evidence of his immaturity as a better and only talked about that he needed to stay away from sports betting.

No matter what he learned and what his knowledge of gambling was, he had to have at least some level of maturity and control himself. Without this, you can forget about success in gambling. No one can help an immature beta. There must be self-control”.

The term professional capper assumes that you have two qualities. The first is that you are smart enough to have an acceptable method of managing capital. The second is that you have a sufficient level of maturity.

Most people who do not have the second quality, just do not know about it and will not take anyone’s arguments on this. They will simply send you away crying out: “Go to hell, I have enough experience”.

Symptoms of immaturity are easily recognizable. One of them is bets with excessive self-confidence. Doubt their correctness and receive in return a stream of anger. At the same time, “better” immediately takes a defensive position in order to defend its opinion. After all, your doubts about his choice are an attempt on his intellect.

He seldom puts his opinion to honest and open discussion, rather he tries to seize the initiative, putting forward only his arguments and not listening to the opposite, simply ignores them.

When one of these guys experiences a serious drawdown, then “it is always the higher powers that are to blame”. They always did not play a bet only because of bad weather, because of “pure chance”, because of “miracle”. Each defeat they perceive as a personal insult.

And usually such a capper is not enough, that he considers himself to be great and the best. Necessarily all the others will not even be compared with it. No one in the world is gifted like him. He was necessarily born with the rarest gift of a sports visionary.

Another symptom of immaturity is the eradication of anger and vexation in surrounding people. Such an example was shown in the situation in the lobby of the Caesar’s Palace hotel. If a man screams at his loved ones and beats the dog, because a series of his losses has reached 0-13, then he has mental problems.

Oh no, of course, you can be upset because your predictions are so bad at the moment. In the end, you deserve it. But this should not, in any way affect others.

All successful players accept and recognize the inevitability of a band of losses. This is a prerequisite for success. They react to a series of losses of 0-13 almost the same as a series of wins 13-0. They learned to accept accidents as inevitable.

Of course, it is quite natural to feel better after a series of victories of 13-0, but this should all be perceived as the whims of a binomial distribution.

In life, everyone, in all spheres of activity, gets such white and black stripes. It was before, there is now.

Your best weapon against such situations with bad luck is the keeping of personal records. This advice can’t be overrated. Cappers need to know with all their heart that there are mathematically proven limits in the long run. If you have statistics of your 5000 or 10,000 bets and it’s positive, then it keeps your psychological state stably calm on bad days. If you maintain your records in perfect condition, you will see the similarity of the bands of failures with the behavior of storms in a calm region. Storms happen from time to time, but they pass without affecting the overall climate, and the rest of the time is relatively calm.

Given that you have two described qualities: a normal method of managing capital and an acceptable level of maturity, maintaining personal records is the best way to survive a drawdown. Proven long-term results work wonders with your mental calm on bad days.

Records are best done so that they display a series of victories and defeats, and not just generalized information over a period of time.

For example, a record showing the total number of victories and defeats – 110-90 is undoubtedly useful. But it does not display a series that could be inside this record. And the series could be: 20-4, or 4-20. The series of victories and defeats are natural, but if you do not expect them, then they can influence your psychological state – off balance. The scheme in which you make one bet for one “approach” and write it down, will help to better control the situation. Carefully compiled notes will help to increase resistance to surprises, which are possible in betting. If you do not get into euphoria with a series of wins 13-0 and do not start to beat your cat with a series of 13-0 defeats then you probably are already resistant to fluctuations and surprises and this article is not for you.