After reading about yet another spat between users on this part of the forum, and as a long-term poster here of more than ten years, I thought I'd put forward some thoughts about how to improve the atmosphere on these threads which it seems to me has been going downhill for some time. These thoughts mainly take the form of how I believe a forum like this should operate. Some may agree with me, others may not and that's fine as long as disagreements are handled in the right way - and that's one of the things I'll be discussing later.
Firstly, as far as I'm concerned the purpose of the Tennis Forum is to share picks and information to try to help other users to come to an opinion about what they might choose to bet on, whilst bearing in mind that we all bet at our own risk. If anybody chooses to follow any picks put forward by other users then they need to accept that losing is not only possible but inevitable, even if the pick is well reasoned and deemed to contain value in terms of a price that implies a lower chance of a result occurring than is actually the case, and even if the price is short.
What this forum shouldn't be about, but increasingly seems to be, is arguing about picks to the point of personal attacks and boasting about wins as well as demeaning anyone who puts up a losing pick. I'm not interested in vaunting tipping superiority or belittling others and I'm not interested in gloating or the goading which also seems to be becoming a regular occurrence, nor am I interested in winning an argument or trying to convince others that I'm right and they're wrong.
There seems to be more and more aggressive and confrontational content here, which is sad to see. It should be simple and straightforward to run a friendly forum and all that's required to make that happen is for users to be respectful of each other. If somebody puts up a pick or some thoughts about a match or tournament, by all means other users can disagree or offer a different perspective and that's conducive to a healthy conversation which should lead to more informed betting choices. What's not acceptable though is to respond to what someone has posted with derogatory remarks, either about what they've posted or the poster themselves.
As for critiquing a pick after the result is known - another increasingly common sight - that can be a useful exercise in terms of bets going forward, but in terms of the simplistic view that a winning bet is a good bet and a losing bet is a bad one there's no merit in it at all. What counts is the long-term. If you place bets with a better chance of winning than the odds suggest, eventually you will get ahead. It can take some time though and that's down to the variance associated with probability, and probability and the assessment of probability is what betting is in its most distilled form and that's why you can lose lots of bets in a row and look as though you don't know what you're talking about. Conversely, it's possible to win many bets in a row without having any idea what you're doing.
Finally, despite all the gloom of the above, there are plenty of users of this forum who post respectfully and have good information and insights to share. It's my hope that by starting this conversation, the forum can return to being the friendly and helpful place that it's historically been. There will always be the occasional troll or misjudged post and that's to be expected, but recently the atmosphere in here has turned pervasively toxic and it would be good to arrest that. Nobody should feel like if they post a losing pick that they're going to get abuse for it, or that they'll get shouted down for voicing an opinion. That's not the way this forum should be.
