Hi
I'm new to this and I just wanted to write down everything that i felt and share it with people who might feel the same way.
I started betting on football in 2012. I've always loved watching football from an early age but then someone mentioned this +0.5 goals challenge where you put £10 on a game to have at least 1 goal, then when you win you roll on with your winnings. Adds a bit of something to watching football and if you lose, hey it's only £10.
When I started playing this game I was quite skint. I was working full time but I was paying off loans and credit cards from years and years ago (a lot of going out on the town in my early 20's) so £10 seemed like quite a lot.
I'd been yearning for my redundancy at work in order to pay off these debts and start from scratch and in 2015 i finally got it. all those loans and credit card bills disappeared. i finally had freedom from them. i got a new job. things were looking up. i was a lot more secure.
I'd carried on doing the £10 +0.5 challenge for a few years with absolutely 0 success. but this year in january we had a holiday to pay. im basically the only money earner in the house. my girlfriend works part time and doesn't earn a good wage and our kids obviously rely on us. so i had to find £2600 from somewhere. so i started doing £100 on the +0.5 challenge but instead of rolling the winnings over, I'd just take out what I'd won instead. and i did alright. by february i'd got about £1200 from it and i felt i could do this. but i lost a few times and then the reality set in that i'd have to use my credit card again to pay off the rest of the holiday.
In June I decided to use £500 to do this randomly and I actually won £2500. I was over the moon. The worst thing about this was that i thought I had a plan to beat the bookies. I'd taken my original bet and increased it 5 fold. So i booked us to go to Disneyworld in Florida and set out a plan that I thought in my head i could keep to pay it off. July didn't go too well (think i lost £1k) but then I increased my original stake on my bets in August to £1k and the money started coming in. By the start of October i'd already rolled in half of the Disneyworld money and I had plans in my head for proposing on xmas day (buying a ring) and also getting tickets for Universal for while we're over in the US.
Then October happened. More precisely a downward spiral started last Friday. My football betting relies on there being a goal in every game. 0-0 draws are my worst enemy. I don't just pick any random game to do this with, I have a distinct strategy that I've tried to follow. Since last Friday I've just so happened to choose 5 0-0 draws. That's more 0-0 draws than I'd picked since the start of July. And by doing maths that's £5k down. I've got a loan out to cover paying for the rest of Disney, but I don't want to let my kids down and I don't want to let my girlfriend down and not get engaged like I'd already disclosed to her parents.
I understand there are people who are in a worst financial position than I am. But I fear for what I'm doing right now. I feel like I'm out of control. I have that money to pay for these things but I fear I'm going to use that money to bet to try and make that money instead, and end up losing it. And if I do that there's no holiday, there's no engagement, everyone is devastated and I'm left with crippling debts with no way to get out of. But then I think 'well if I just do what I did in June and win £2.5k everything will be ok'. it's so so so conflicting.
Hi walking dad, I can hear you're realising where this is going. 'Get a loan to win it back' but you won't because you're already in the grip of it, can't stop when you're ahead. If my cg had told me before we got married things would be different, maybe if I'd controlled finance, been more aware. But that's hindsight, a wonderful thing! I would suggest you call gamcare and get some advice. I would also advise you tell your girlfriend. If you think this is a problem then it is. It's progressive and will only get worse. It's starts small and just grows you become a person you don't recognise. Most don't see that, come back when they've lost another £5k, £10k, maybe much more. If you deal with this now you could save your family a lot of misery. Good luck!
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