Going into tonight I had a bankroll of $4.5k.

I made a bet to chase a loss in the Thursday Night NFL game that cost me $1,000 tonight. NY Giants went up by 11 points in the 4th quarter to the PHI Eagles. Odds were 1.05 to win for NYG, and I bet $1,000 on them at that point. I was trying to recover a $80 bet I placed on PHI to win the game. I got greedy and I got burned. PHI came back to score two touchdowns to win.

I lost $800 tonight. It's my second biggest gambling loss ever, besides a $1,000 loss in 2013. That loss rocked me, and kept me from sports betting for six years. $800 is 18% of my bankroll.

The positive thing about this is that I profited $3,500 since I returned to sports betting in 2019, but then took this hit tonight.

Psychologically, its painful. I slammed a few drinks really fast to numb the pain. The good part is, that aside from this blunder, I am usually more controlled and strategic with my betting. I try to divide my bank roll into betting units of about 40 or 50 and stick to that, to prevent a risk of ruin.

$800 was my profit for all of October. I was looking forward to reaching a $1,000 profit month, which I've never done before. $560 is my biggest win for any single night. So to make a $1,000 error was relatively pretty big.

I feel like a donk right now. Slightly buzzed. My life hasn't been going well, which is why I've focused on gambling more. But ya, I do think I can bounce back from this. If I stay disciplined and not make these huge risky bets for small returns, I can chip away and make that $1,000 or $800 back. It would just take a few weekends to do it. I recently had four days in the past 10 days where I won $120 or more. So ya, grinding $1,000 in profit is reasonable.

I just have to bounce back from this tilt and get refocused.

This is the content the Action Network should be steering towards.

do you think you have an edge on the nfl?

yo gotti took a loss of half a mil one week into the pandemic

he recovered. you can too

Good advice here.
Op, I can't give you technical advice, but what I can say is, try to get your life in order first. Stabilise your emotions. Don't use gambling as a way to make yourself feel good. After, more stable gambling results should follow.

i don't know you but i know gamblers. most gamblers won't be in the right place mentally again until they get back to even. that means you might struggle to grind this one back with the small wins you were accustomed to before. your mind and heart are different now. you opened up the box of higher risk. it needs to be shut again but you can't do that until you're back to where you were before it was opened. is there a bet this weekend you feel is extra safe?

we gonna see who is gonna survive and who got hustling skills come wave 3 of this virus

Thanks for the input guys. Nepeeme, thanks for the words of wisdom. That mistake last night hit me pretty hard, so I just had to get that off my chest.

I could really connect with what you had to say here. Yes, as a gambler, I want to fix my mistake. I want to make up that $1,000 that I blundered off. And yes, I have a bet in mind that I am going to make because of that blunder. It does weigh on my mind that a quick thoughtless bet and some button clicks cost me that much money.

However, in my chase to make up that $1,000 I am not going to try and do it in one shot. I am going to try and do it gradually, so that I am not being too risky. My current bankroll is under $4k, so to risk a substantial amount to win $1k back would put me at risk of going down to $0.

What I decided to do is keep track of additional bets I will make, in addition to my regular bets, in order to win back that $1,000 from that one loss. For example, this weekend, I will bet an extra $500 to try to win $200. The bet I like is the UFC Main Event, Khabib vs Justin to go over 1.5 rounds. Both are durable and not reckless fighters. Its a 5 round fight so they won't go wild. This will be my way of trying to chip up and get that money back. If I suffer an additional $500 loss because of it, well then I do have to re-evaluate things.

I also watched some videos today on gamblers taking big losses. One video I found had a message that was very true. The dollar amount isn't as significant, in relation to how much you need that money. For example, a guy who is living pay check to pay check struggling to make ends meet and pay rent, he would consider $2,000 a massive loss that could jeopardize his life. But a guy making a six figure salary could donk off $8,000 in a night, and it's not nearly as detrimental to his life.

Grind it back and make sure you're using sensible bankroll management. I suggest googling kelly criterion and using something like half kelly (half the kelly criterion amount) to place your bets

Avoid artificial targets like 'I want to break even for today/the month/want to win 1k this month' etc just place the maximum amount sensible BRM allows you to bet on a spot when there is an edge, and don't bet when there isn't an edge. If you're accurate in estimating your edges you'll grow a bankroll fairly risk free, if your bets aren't profitable in the long term then well, there's nothing you can do to win anyway in the long term.

Obviously you can size up on big edges, and you should size down on small edges but the kelly calculator will roughly do that for you. The amount i'm betting on a 10% edge is a ton bigger than the amount i'm betting on a 1.5% edge etc

Good luck

You should obv not be firing 18%+ of your bankroll on a spot very often unless it's a once every few years type situation like Mayweather/McGregor where you can get -300 on a guy who should be -5000 or whatever. Something like 3% on a decent EV spot is a lot more typical/reasonable, again, refer to kelly criterion

How aggressive you can be with your bankroll depends on your life situation, if gambling is your main source of income and the bankroll isn't replaceable you obviously have to be more cautious with BRM than if your bankroll is 5k and you make 150k a year anyway or whatever in a standard job

At least you saved $600 by not betting enough to get the full $80 back

Thanks man. I will certainly read up on Kelly criterion. I'm still new to being more structured with my bets and bankroll management. I've always been a bit curious about the proper bet sizing; relative to bankroll, but also relative to the probability of winning.

I'm not sure about the concept of calculating edges. The main edge I believe I have in MMA is that I try to follow reliable expert advice and I shop for the best odds. I'm not sure if I can quantify those edges in any way. I seem to do well and MMA live betting as well.

If you know what you think the 'fair' price is or the fair win percentages are etc an odds calculator will calculate your edge for you

this is absolutely the best approach. if you're able, definitely do this. in my experience, though, it's more difficult than it was before. you see this effect in sports when an athlete starts pressing or in poker when a guy loses a big pot. you aren't in the right mindset to think clearly until you get back to even. so i say give it a try but be careful as a series of small bad bets can also really hurt your bankroll. what do you think about khabib tonight?

Thanks for your words of wisdom Tom. You are absolutely right, that the psychological effect of the Thursday loss affected me for today's UFC bets. I set up that Loss Makeup spreadsheet, to account for additional bets made specifically because of that one big loss. However, it ended up setting me back $240 more.

Aside from that, I took a fairly big loss on my regular UFC bets as well. Overall I lost over $600 tonight. That makes $1,400 in the past 3 days.

At this point, I have to reassess. One thing to consider is likely bringing down my betting unit dollar amount. I had it up to $80-$100. With a smaller bankroll, I'd have to cut that down. Unless I infuse my bankroll with additional funds. I'll see how I want to approach that.

I think psychologically and because of stress, I just need to bet much smaller, where I'm not so emotionally affected by a win or loss. The stress isn't worth it and takes the fun out of watching an event. I just need to find that right balance.

In the long run, I do believe I'm profitable. If I can take $1,100 in May 2019 and run it up to $4,400 in October 2020, I do think I am likely a winning bettor. I did that mainly with safe/opportunistic plays. Its just lately, I made the one wreckless play on Thursday, and then took a big hit today.

I'm definitely in a re-evaluation period. The truth is, that I probably need to get my life together a bit better, so that the sports betting isn't such a key hobby for me, and I don't depend on it so much for something to look forward to day to day and week to week.

And about the Khabib fight, I found it was disappointing performance by Justin. No takedown or ground defense. Got steamrolled so easily. Much less resistance compared to other opponents that Khabib mauled. None of them got destroyed that quickly or easily.