In my opinion, the biggest reason most gamblers lose money long term can be boiled down into a few important criteria..
Poor Bankroll Management
...a huge, huge factor...so many play too much of their bankroll per play or just play out of the "life roll"...both very, very bad...
Bad Discipline
...Sub categories of this include chasing, playing too many games, getting greedy and trying to hit a big score...many others...
Emotion
Might be clear and might be a sub category of Bad Discipline but I feel it is worthy of its own category. Emotional wagering is much different that wagering with your "gut"...if emotions get in the way of reason, it usually leads to a bad wager...
Lack of knowledge/inexperience
Pretty much self explanatory...if you have no idea what you are wagering on and have no plan...you fail to plan, so you are planning to fail...quite a bit of wagering is about making an educated guess in an attempt to be correct more times than you are incorrect...but the foundations of your guesses have to be based on solid information and/or experience...
What type of wagering can/could help with all of these...?...
System wagering...
Develop a system where you have criteria established that basically make the selections for you...
This removes emotion, eliminates chasing, it's much easier to control bankroll management as you can see exactly how many wagers the system has produced and you can divide your daily wagering bankroll up between those exact plays...and by analyzing how the system does, where it wins and loses, you can build experience through the season that pays off in the long run...
What factors should the system have that COULD make it successful?...
1. Play with the house/books...wouldn't you want to be playing with or on the side of the books?...since they usually win long term, in general, I want to be playing the side that THEY think is going to win...not the side that Joe Q. Public thinks is going to win...Newsflash
...long term, favorites win more than underdogs...!!!
2. Build a foundation with key stats...Run differential was my key stat that I used to lay the foundation of this system...In this baseball era where juiced balls fly off the bats of supposedly non steroid taking players and any home run record is susceptible to being smashed on any given day/month/year...seemed like a good thing to look at teams that can score more runs...pitching is not at a premium and teams seem to no longer care about strikeouts...as long as you can hit the BOMB...
3. Flexibility...more than any other sport, baseball is a game of streaks...sometimes, there is no way to explain it...you MUST identify streaks and jump on/off as you find them...what are the keys to finding streaks?...Might be just as simple as starting as win/loss record over last 10/20/30 games but will quickly get important to identify key players out with an injury that could put a team on a bad streak...
Much more on all this as the year goes on...can't ever hurt to review and discuss anything that makes us better at what we are trying to do...beat the books, my bruthas!...