The Perfect Punter Week 34: Chasing the glass of dreams...

European Leagues / Perfect Punter / 31 March 2010 / Leave a Comment

There's the glass of red, now where's the glass of dreams?

"Much is made of chasing losses in this frankly insane gambling world that we inhabit, but you don’t often hear people talk about failing to sit on winnings."

Dave Farrar won three bets, then he had to go and play up the winnings. A lesson was learned...

I was in Rome on Sunday night, filling a seat in an impossibly perfect bar and listening to two friends of mine make each other laugh, by sharing stories of the things that they've said to try and get women to go to bed with them.

Andy started off by remembering the time that he turned to an American yoga teacher and said to her very sternly that "if you come any closer I'm going to have to kiss you". It was an uncharacteristically forceful thing for him to do and, in case you're wondering, she did and he did.

The other friend, James, as he often does, topped every other story that you could mention. He's not one to die wondering as he searches for love and happiness, and he's proud of the time that Grappa turned him crazy, and he asked a beautiful waitress for "a glass of red wine and a glass of dreams." Admittedly, it sounds better in Italian, "un bicchiere di vino rosso e un bicchiere di sogni", but still it's a fabulously and self-consciously misguided thing to say, and he got the shake of the head and the raise of an eyebrow that he deserved, from both the girl and from his two Sunday night companions.

I like listening to stories, but I was only letting them wash over me, after a frustrating day's punting in which I felt that I'd let a golden egg slip through my fingers. An over 2.5 goal treble in the Palermo, Fiorentina and Juventus games paid out, and Roma's win in Saturday night's big game meant that the [18.5] at which I have backed them for the league is looking pretty good, and let's face it, EVERYONE should want Roma to win Serie A because Claudio Ranieri is the nicest man in football.

The consistently brilliant James Eastham gave me Rennes' win at Le Mans, and I was looking good for a really big profit to enjoy among the war stories in the bar. But - and isn't there always a but - I decided to play up my winnings, and watched them fly out of the window. So much is made of chasing losses in this frankly insane gambling world that we inhabit, but you don't often hear people talk about failing to sit on winnings.

It wasn't as if I started throwing money around here and there as if, to quote a friend "I was effing Harry Findlay", more that I had made a note of six bets that I wanted to have on Sunday, and when three of them won, I should have logged out of my Betfair account and enjoyed the fact that I was yards ahead of the game. You wake up the next day without even a tiny feeling of regret, and if the three bets that you didn't place all come in then you can still say rather contentedly that, even though you'd have been richer if you'd gone in again, you still finished the day in profit.

Those opposed to this view will say that the first three bets should have no impact on the second three. That if I was down at the halfway point in my gambling day, I would keep punting, so why change that mindset when I'm ahead? Well, it's to do with making the best of the situation you're in as a gambler at any given time. If a late-ish goal in a football match allows you to trade out of a bet that you thought had gone, you take the chance to get out, at least part of the way, and if a horse that you backed ante-post for the Champion Hurdle suffers an injury and drifts dramatically in the betting, only then to recover miraculously and shorten again, then you'd probably get some of your stake out, such is your relief that you're still in with a chance of saving part of it. Apologies for that Champion Hurdle example, it's a little bit too outlandish, and couldn't possibly happen, it would look way too suspect.

So my lesson from this week is, on any given day, to quit while I'm ahead. I've learned not to chase, now I'm going to learn to sit on a profit, get my work done early, and then spend the rest of the day sitting in a bar and waiting for a girl to ask me for a glass of dreams. As with so much in this life, it'll be a long wait, but one day my friends, maybe one day.

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