What Gamblers Can Learn from Women Shoppers

There’s a lot about women that I don’t understand. In fact, it would be a much simpler and quicker task to outline the things about women that I do understand. One thing that would find itself on the latter list is this – a large number of people who want to improve their gambling could do so by simply studying the mindset many women shoppers exhibit and applying the same principles to their betting. You’re extremely sceptical, right? Well, let’s see if I can convince you that this idea has merit…

I should note at the outset that this column won’t be of much use to people who don’t gamble, nor will it be of much use to gamblers who already take the time and effort to make price assessments for the contests of interest and only bet when they’re getting ‘overs’ (i.e. where the odds being offered are more favourable than what the punter has assessed is the ‘correct’ price for their selection). But for people who simply bet on every tip they have irrespective of price, bet their fifth-best selection in a race because the $8.00 odds are ‘value’ or take a rugby league team to win a match by 1-12 points purely because you thought that the head-to-head price was too short, we have much to discuss. Let’s start with a pretty straightforward argument:

 Gamblers as a collective group lose, so try not to follow the herd too closely.

This is a pretty simple philosophy really – punters as a collective group must lose in order for both bookmakers and the TAB to survive, so if you follow the crowd too closely, you will eventually lose as well. The people who make the most money do so by waiting for the times where their opinion differs significantly from the rest of the market and then making their moves. Let’s look at a couple of examples to highlight what this all means in practice.

Suppose you’ve worked out that for the sixth race at Flemington on Saturday afternoon, you like the top weight to win and think it is the clear top selection, with No. 5, No. 2 and No. 8 rounding out your top four picks. The odds come out and you’re presented with the following: The top weight is $2.80 favourite, the No. 5 is at odds of $4.00, the No. 2 at odds of $6.00, the No. 8 at odds of $9.00 and the rest of the field at odds of $13 or better.

Assuming for a moment that you’ve simply picked out your selections in order and haven’t gone to the trouble of assessing exact prices for each horse, do the odds being offered present you with any value? They certainly do not. The market has almost perfectly mirrored your opinion – as the market collectively loses, you will eventually follow suit if you bet in scenarios such as this one. And do not confuse bigger odds with ‘value’. Many a media personality will refer to a sports team, a horse, a potential first try-scorer selection, etc. as ‘representing a bit of value’ purely on the basis that they’re at slightly longer odds than the favourites. It’s a nice throwaway line, but more often than not it also represents unmitigated crap. A $9 selection is not value if it only wins once on every ten occasions – all that leads to is a return of $9 for every $10 invested, or a slow leakage of money to your bookmaker(s) of choice. However, if the top weight was only the second or third favourite, or maybe if the No. 2 horse was at odds of say $15, now you’ve got a scenario where your opinion differs from that of the market and you can step in and bet.

In a similar vein, suppose now that you’ve looked at the Hawthorn v Carlton clash for Saturday night at the MCG, and decided that you think Hawthorn will sneak home in what should be an epic and very tightly contested game. The odds come out and you’re presented with the following:

Hawthorn: $1.70 to win, $2.50 to win by 1-39, $5.00 to win by 40 or more, -6.5 pts handicap.

Carlton: $2.10 to win, $2.80 to win by 1-39, $6.00 to win by 40 or more, +6.5 pts handicap.

Again, the odds being offered do not present you with any value, because the market has almost perfectly mirrored your opinion that the match is likely to be very close but that Hawthorn have a small edge. And you do not want to be behaving in the same way as the market collectively does. However, if your tip in that same match was Carlton to win by two goals, the $2.10 being offered about the Blues winning would constitute a good bet.

One way that you can occasionally distance yourself from the crowd is to keep in mind that the market loves to overreact to very recent performances, so you must be willing to wait until you believe that your selection is underrated.

If a horse wins a race well, he/ she can be sometimes overhyped as the next superstar of the track. If he/ she then fails to live up to the hype at the next couple of starts, the market starts to shun them. A horse can go from overrated to underrated and back again two or three times in a matter of months. You only want to be betting on them during their underrated (and by extension, undervalued) phase. The same principle applies to sporting teams – a side can jump (or fall) in the collective estimations of the public quite substantially on the basis of a single game. Often this change in perception is greater than is warranted, leading to ‘boom’ teams being overrated. Again, you only want to be backing teams during their underrated/ undervalued phase.

The undervalued concept brings me nicely to why the ‘women shopper’ mindset is very effective for gambling purposes.

Any woman who has spent any length of time looking at clothes, shoes, bags, etc. and making assessments of what would be a fair price to pay for them, what price would be too expensive and what price range would constitute an absolute steal has the mindset required to be a successful gambler. For example, she might think that a particular Coach* bag is perhaps worth about $600 – at $750 it's overpriced, and at $400 or less she’s definitely going to buy it. There's also a Fendi* bag of even better quality in her sights – she sizes it up as being worth around $2,000 because it will go with a ton of different outfits or whatever (to reiterate, there’s a lot about women that I don’t understand) – if the price drops below say $1,500 she’s in like Flynn, and if there's a big sale and it dips below $1,200, she'll bowl people over to get it. In essence, she’s made an assessment of the price she'd be willing to pay for each bag based on its quality, is waiting for her opinion of the bag's value to differ significantly from the market and then she'll use those opportunities to get the best value from her dollars. Sound familiar? All we need at this stage is a media personality to sidle up to her with a clearly inferior bag that only costs $40 and try to convince her that it ‘represents a bit of value’ (Important note: If you try this joke out on your significant other, don’t come crying to me afterwards if you spend the next few nights sleeping in the yard. You know the risks associated with this joke going in, so weigh them up and act accordingly). 

The process of being a successful gambler requires effort (in terms of assessing the chances of the respective teams/ players/ horses beforehand) and discipline (in terms of walking away from a betting opportunity if your opinions match those of the market a little too closely). But much as for the woman who bides her time until the sales periods before hitting the shops hard, the rewards are there to be had for the gambler who knows that there is a time and a place to strike.

* With thanks to a female friend of mine who supplied the names and price ranges for some international bag labels and helped establish my ‘street cred’ with female readers – all five of them.

Thanks to Joe Castro (AAP) for use of the photo