You can’t be serious, are you doing it for fun?

There are certain places that seem to generate gambling conversations and my local pub is certainly one of them. Just this past weekend, my drinking buddies and I had an interesting conversation with a seemingly fellow gambling fanatic over an odd pint or three.

This apparently well-informed individual was letting us all know that he had acquired “a winning technique.” Now I’m sure we’ve all met someone similar in our own local, but this individual seemed very plausible in his demos, so both my friends and I listened carefully to see if we could glean any valuable information. A wise old man once told me… “…even a fool has something to say”!

So what did this person reveal? Well essentially her particular approach was something basic and involved selecting 2 horses that were available at 5/1 or higher, nothing exciting there. Then she would back both of them as a pair of singles each way and doubles each way, again nothing new there.

So what was the big secret? Well, nothing really and since the guy doesn’t keep any data records, he couldn’t let me know how many points he had won or lost, however he explained that he made a lot of wins “very often”. “…have you ever heard that somewhere before? Now, to be honest and fair, I’ve obviously heard of the merits and actually used the old each way double many times in the past, but really I think in today’s markets it has lost some of the impact that it used to have — have in the good old days.

Using £1 tier bets, this bet would cost you £6 a time in total, which I think is fine for some fun betting; however, you would need to have a very high success rate to get any real benefit and I’m sure. missed days are quickly forgotten when explaining to others how successful you were. As you may know, any kind of multiple betting is very difficult to pull off and therefore extremely popular with bookies, both online and on the high street. If you are in any doubt about this, just walk through the center or open your browser to the online brigade and you will see how much the major bookmakers are marketing their specialist multiple bets.

There are, of course, many multiple bets available from Trixie at one extreme to Heinz at the other. These multiples have always been popular bets among punters and have been for quite some time. And why this is, well, simple, is the “greed factor” associated with the potential to acquire a large profit for a comparatively small stake. This is what always attracts punters. Even today, both the National and Euro Lotteries work on exactly the same principle.

Going back to my early betting days, much of my betting experience consisted of my failed attempts to pick the winners of the famous ITV6 (I have to show my age because you have to be old to remember that). I would spend many a Saturday afternoon glued to the television screen watching my horses lose one after the other, never coming close. However, it was kind of entertaining and I loved it and that’s exactly what fun betting is all about. You never risk a lot of your hard-earned money, but there’s always the chance that maybe one day you can win a respectable amount and go to the Bahamas for early retirement.

So, going back to the real world for a moment, most serious bettors will avoid any kind of multiple betting for only one reason, and that is that it is usually quite difficult to find a winner, never mind two or even more.

You’d also have to question the value associated with going back each way these days, because with a 1/5 chance of the return, unless both horses get a place, it’s unlikely to cover the outlay. As a viable alternative to backing each way, it would be much more lucrative to pick 2 more horses and place winning bets on them.

I have another problem with multiple bets in the fact that you could end up having a lot more money on a horse than you are comfortable with. So you bet a double and let’s say your first horse wins at 10/1, which means you have £11 for your second horse. Now I appreciate that this is obviously the concept of multiple bets; However, if you had bet on the first horse as a single, are you happy to place all of your bet and winnings on your second selection? I suspect not for fun anyway.

So in conclusion, multiple betting for fun can work and can be quite a cheap and exciting sport in the afternoon or evening. However, in case your goal is to produce a regular income from your horse racing activities, this is not the ideal way to proceed. The vast majority of profitable bettors will take the time and effort to search for a potential winner and then bet to win. As long as your technical selection is reliable, this should show much better performance compared to trying to win a multiple bet.