Writing Down Your Reasons Before the Game: Does a Betting Journal Make You Better?

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Okay so I've been doing the reason thing for 8 weeks now (thanks Oli lol) and I have a question. I have 94 reasons written down. Because I like spreadsheets I counted the words. "Should" is in 31 of them. "Due" is in 12. "Hot" is in 9. "Because" is in 4
So is the journal making me better? Or am I just writing 94 sentences that say vibes in different outfits? I feel like I'm doing something but I can't tell if I'm actually doing something, if that makes sense.

 

[oli_sussex]

Check which words precede losses. In mine: due, should, need. Not: line, price, number. Sample too small to publish.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Let me be clear about what I found, because the answer to your question is more specific than yes or no. I have written a reason for every bet for several years, in a column next to the stake. For the first stretch it did nothing. I could have written the entries in another language. They were a record, and a record is not a method.
Two months ago I went back and coded 412 of them by type. 168 rested on a price or a number: the line was two points off my projection, the closing line should land at 6.5. 244 rested on a narrative: a bounce-back spot, they need this one, the coach is under pressure. The number-based bets returned +5.6%. The narrative bets returned +1.0%. The standard error on that gap is roughly ten points, so I report it as a direction and not a finding.
The part I did not expect is that writing the reasons changed nothing. Coding them changed my behavior. I now find it hard to log "they need this" without noticing it belongs in the lower-returning pile, and the sentence I used to write most often has nearly disappeared.
Princess, your count of "should" is the beginning of that exercise. You have done the coding without knowing it was coding.
Trust the process, not your gut.

 

[FadeThePublic]

Here's what nobody wants to hear: my journal was useless until I started writing it for the wrong audience. For years every reason read like a pitch. "Public 82% on A, line flat, fade." Sounds great. I'd have bought it from a stranger. (I did buy it. Repeatedly.) It was written for a reader, and the reader was me, who already agreed.
The fix was one extra line. After the reason, I write the reason I'm wrong, in the voice of the guy taking the other side. "You're wrong because the line has been flat since the book changed its limits, not since sharps showed up." It's humbling because some of them are better than my reason.
About a third of the time I read my own "wrong because" and just don't place the bet. RIP public money, but also RIP a bunch of criteria plays that were really a mood. Vegas knows. Apparently so does the guy I'm arguing with.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Only thing I do properly is the readings on a job.
You test a circuit, you write the number down there and then. On the job. Not in the van after.
Because by the time you're in the van you remember it better than it was.
Tried it with the betting.
Notes app.
Pub bets, three pints in.
Every single one says Wales.
Reason: Wales.
Reason: Wales again.
Reason: lads say Wales.
Bronwyn found them and read the lot out at tea.
Didn't change the bets mun.
Changed whether I could pretend.

 

[Klaus]

For fourteen years my reasons have been model fields. There is nothing to read back, only numbers.
Two seasons ago I tried free text for one season, to see what a journal would show. I wrote the reason in plain words next to each selection.
The word "motivation" appeared in the Bayern rows 31% of the time and in the rows for other clubs 9% of the time. I had been applying manual adjustments to the model for Bayern that I did not apply elsewhere.
My Bayern ROI is 3.8% against 4.9% overall. The journal did not improve the bets. It showed me a number that was already in the database and that I had not examined, because the database does not contain a reason.

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

As a coach, I've got a journal problem that isn't the one anyone else here has. My reasons are fine. My problem is the other entries.
I write a short note after every bad week. "No bets after 9pm." "Stick to football." "Cut it to two a day." I went back through the last few months and "no bets after 9pm" is in there eleven times. Same sentence. Eleven different weeks. I wrote it like it was new every time.
I think there's a middle ground in what a journal is for. A journal of reasons is evidence. A journal of resolutions is a place to feel better. The second kind is more dangerous because it feels like action. You write the promise, you feel like you've done the work, and you've done the opposite of work.
So I've split it. Reasons live in one place. A resolution only counts now if there's a rule attached that someone else can check. Eleven times was a long time to write the same sentence.

 

[DublinDegen]

lads the thing that actually works for me isnt the reasons... its the typing...
forty seconds of typing a reason is forty seconds i didnt have before... the gap thing from the other thread... i never had a gap and now the typing is the gap...
what i didnt expect is ive got good at it... i can type a reason for literally anything now... backing it because the keeper is poor and theyve conceded late in four of the last six... that sentence takes me five seconds and its half true...
so the typing helps and the reasons dont... the reasons are just words i got good at... which is exactly what happened with everything else i ever got good at...

 

[ThePuntingProf]

I reread the oldest volume of the ledger last month, which I had not opened for decades, the handwriting was quite unlike my present hand, and the reasons were of a kind I should now be embarrassed to say aloud, one must consider that the phrase "cannot concede that many again" appears nine times across two seasons, and the defence in question conceded that many again on at least six of those occasions, it is the gambler's fallacy in a form I taught several thousand students to recognise in a roll of dice and did not recognise in my own sentence, what the journal did for me was not to improve the earlier man, who lost a good deal of money being confident, but to let the present one see him without the flattery of memory, I find it a curious and not altogether comfortable service, one remembers oneself as having been rather more careful than the record allows, and the record, unlike one's recollection, has no interest in being kind.

 

[SharpEddie47]

Conor, that is an observation worth keeping. The reason field is a delay mechanism first and an information source second. Evaluate it as such: measure the interval, not the content. If the typing time is the active ingredient, a mandatory ninety-second wait would do the same work with no pretense about the words.

 

[DublinDegen]

ninety would be better... forty is where i get bored and click...

 

[BairamBekkIE]

A journal seems most useful when it records the decision before the outcome is known. Writing the market, price, stake, reason and conditions that would invalidate the bet makes the later review less vulnerable to hindsight. The result still matters, but the quality of the original decision can be assessed separately.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Wait so my count of "should" is coding?? Eddie I didn't know I was doing math lol. What do I do with the 31?

 

[SharpEddie47]

Put the 31 in one column and the other 63 in another, and compare the ROI once you have a hundred more bets. Do not draw conclusions from 94.

 

[oli_sussex]

Fade's "wrong because" line is the strongest mechanism in this thread.

 

[FadeThePublic]

(Oli complimenting me is how I know I'm dying.)

 

[TaffyTipster]

Klaus mate.
You found out you like Bayern.
Took you fourteen years and a notebook.

 

[Klaus]

Ja. The database knew. I had not asked it the right question.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

Okay I tried Fade's thing on the Chiefs game today and wrote the reason I'd be wrong and I wrote "Mahomes gets hurt" and then I felt SO bad like I jinxed him

 

[bestoddsfinder]

A useful addition might be a “what would change my mind?” column, filled in before the game. For example, if the reasoning depends on a player being available, record that condition explicitly.

Then review the original entry without rewriting it after the result. That could help distinguish a reasonable decision that lost from a weak decision that happened to win.