Safer gambling: how do you stay safe while enjoying a betting habit?

Chris Cook

It may have escaped your attention until this moment but this week is Safer Gambling Week, when we are all invited to reflect on the practices and habits that keep us from going down a dark alley and ending up in a bad place.

From Monday, we’ll all be seeing a lot of messaging about safer gambling, from high-street bookies’ windows to pop-up messages on apps, on websites and in print. It’s become an annual event – maybe it’s caught your attention, maybe not. We’ve all got busy lives and there isn’t always time to take notice of everything the authorities would like us to know.

At the same time, it feels like this would be a really useful moment to show in public that you and I and our fellow racing bettors take this stuff seriously and are not, in fact, in the grip of some addiction that controls us. We are not blase. We are familiar with the risks and have no intention of doing anything that will affect those who depend on us.

Much of that spirit has been well expressed in letters printed by the Racing Post on the subject of affordability checks in recent months. The mood behind those letters has been understandably furious about the egregious and ill-informed intrusion into this area by clodhopping officials. If you have not yet signed the petition to stop the checks, you can do so here – it only takes a minute.

So let’s educate them about how we actually manage the modicum of risk in our betting lives. Let’s share stories with each other about the times when it could have gone wrong and how you coped.

Perhaps you keep records of your bets or maintain a separate fund for betting with. Have you ever taken a break from your habit and if so, what prompted that? Do you change your stakes according to your current finances?

I’ve been betting ever since it was legal for me to do so, which is over 30 years now, and I had been well introduced to the concept of betting in the seven or eight years before that. I started going racing with my father from about the age of ten and still remember a couple of trite homilies which he obviously felt compelled to share with me whenever we would set foot on a racecourse.

“Only the bookmakers get rich from betting,” that was the main one. He wanted me to abstain and, aged ten and for the years that followed, I had no thought of doing anything else. We were there to enjoy the spectacle, cheer for our favourites, learn about the game and test our predictions against each other.

At some point, he started having a few bets, while hiding it from me. Then, when Uncle Merlin unseated Hywel Davies at second Becher’s, he expressed his regret in a manner so vociferous, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps there was something more than intellectual pride riding on the outcome.

That was the year I started driving and the year after that I was drinking in pubs. Without being glib about it, those have always seemed much more likely to harm me than the betting I started at about the same time.

For ages, it was a cash-only activity for me, a kind of inadvertent safety measure in itself but also a way of doing things that seems dated now. Having somebody hand you banknotes was a big part of the thrill and those same notes were a physical reminder of your success, for however long you managed to hold on to them.

Online betting doesn’t offer that kind of pleasure but it is easier and so of course I do more of it. I can have an interest on some NFL game or a race in a different time zone without having to worry about whether there’s a shop open at that hour, or that the rain is hammering down.

It means that my typical stake hasn’t kept pace with inflation over the decades. If I was staking the same in each bet as in the days when I was a Saturday shop punter, there would be serious pressure to keep hitting winners and I try to protect myself from that pressure, which would probably affect my judgement.

I view it as buying entertainment and there have been a couple of times in the past when money was tight (for non-betting related reasons) and I had to cut back on stake size. I don’t think there has ever been a time when I stopped entirely, so I’ve never had to confront the question of how that would make me feel. I think I’d cope. I hope the need will never arise.

One benefit of online betting is that the site keeps a record of at least your recent bets and you can look back at them and reflect on what’s worked and what hasn’t. It has been helpful for someone like me, not a natural keeper of records.

It showed me a long time ago that, while I can hope to make some kind of long-term profit from my racing bets, getting involved in anything else is likely to be pure expense. I’ve hit a couple of Super Bowl winners with bets placed the previous autumn but there’s no way I’ve made a net profit from all my attempts in that line. Poker is occasional fun but I’m still paying for my education about that game and it’s beginning to look like I might not be a very apt pupil.

I place most of my bets through one operator, which will strike many of you as lazy and unambitious, but it does have the benefit of making my ups and downs easier to track. It so happens I’m on one of those happy runs where, after a good win, I haven’t had to deposit funds for a long time.

It worries me that the next time I have to do so, it may trigger some kind of tedious affordability check. I’d like to thank the government for introducing anxiety into my betting habit which was never there before.

I like to think that, while I may not be able to control my mood, I’m at least aware of it and I take it into account. Another of Dad’s lectures was about how people expect alcohol to improve their mood but it only exaggerates what they were already feeling. That may have been more his experience than a general rule, but it was an interesting note of caution.

When I’m betting, I want to feel level-headed and in control. If there’s some strong emotion going on, that’s the time to just close the browser and do something else. The elation of having backed a winner is one of the most dangerous feelings, if you regard the possibility of losing as dangerous.

For that reason, I place all my bets before the racing starts and try not to add to them as the results roll in – I’ve had plenty of experience to show that the outlook for impulse bets is strongly negative.