A punter's worst enemy can be in their own head, even when things are going well

When we ask the gods to grant us the skills to be better punters, the desired attributes are judgement and discipline, the pair clear. Another aspect which is given some attention but not, in my view, as much as it deserves, is psychology.

The psychology of betting is not just about having enough ice in the blood. More important is the ability to avoid the pitfalls your mind puts in front of you. The most common would be selection biases, confirmation biases and subtle manifestations of the gambler's fallacy.

There is also an adjunct to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which it is believed turns up a lot in betting. The Dunning-Kruger effect describes what happens when a group takes part in a simple quiz. The less able write in all the answers and presume they have aced it. When asked to guess how they fared, they overestimated their performance. More able types, recognising the ease of the test, underestimate their relative performance, making the assumption that everyone did well.