"What works, what doesn't" - do you ever do this?

[MPLouis]

One of the best things I've learned to do in my football betting is ask myself "What worked, what didn't" for a given day of betting. I write a short report for myself. It takes a little time (between 30 and 60 minutes I think). I try not to go into too much detail, but concentrate on some of the main bets, with the aim of improving my betting. So I look for areas where I am winning or losing. Just wondered if anyone else does this, and how it works for you?

[Grex]

Re: "What works, what doesn't" - do you ever do this? Always good to learn from one's mistakes ;) But rather that writing "reports" to yourself (up to 60 minutes :loon), why not just keep an Excel database of your bets and results, and then you can interrogate the data to highlight your strengths and weaknesses?

[MPLouis]

Re: "What works, what doesn't" - do you ever do this?

Always good to learn from one's mistakes ;) But rather that writing "reports" to yourself (up to 60 minutes :loon), why not just keep an Excel database of your bets and results, and then you can interrogate the data to highlight your strengths and weaknesses?

Mainly because I make far too many bets - which is also one of the lessons I learn when I do some analysis. If I could easily update a spreadsheet from my different bookmaker accounts, I suppose I would look into this. In practive, it's all done manually. I do like analysis, but I sometimes over-do it. I think it's quite easy to get into over-analysing things and going into too much detail. The key thing in 'learning from mistakes' I think is to try to take a step back, look at the big picture, keep things simple.

[davidc]

Re: "What works, what doesn't" - do you ever do this? Using a well designed spreadsheet is a much easier way to track your bets and to analyse the performance of different bet types and strategies as well as allowing you to keep tabs on your various bookmaker accounts. You can find such a spreadsheet here: http://www.aussportsbetting.com/tools/betting-tracker-excel-worksheet/ This is the one that I have been using for a few years now and it can be (relatively) easily adapted to suit your own needs (as I have done) even if you have minimal excel skills.

[MPLouis]

Re: "What works, what doesn't" - do you ever do this? Thanks for the answers - both recommending spreadsheets. But my angle was not so much how you analyse your bets, but what answers do you get. What do you learn? Can you give examples? Where does your analysis show you succeeding? And where are you going wrong?