Sports betting luck has gone cold. Lost 2k

Gamban is free blocking software - there is a link to it through this website. Click on 'get advice' then 'what can you do' then 'blocking software'. It's useful.

I was going to bet on Judd Trump to win the English open before self excluding myself. I was going to bet £100 on it. Just checked the Snooker score today, he ended up losing to Liang Wembo!

Dodged a bullet! I would have been sooooooo broke if I had made the bet.

I am getting the urge to place bets from time to time, where the thoughts of winning some money back is nagging me, but I literally can't anymore from the self exclusion, which is a sigh of relief.

Hi darkhorse. I've not really got much to add, but as someone who has been in your shoes in the past and knows what you're feeling regarding the urges and everything else, I just wanted to pop in and offer my support. You can get through it.

Thanks Londoner, I'm glad that it isn't 10s of thousands of debt.

londoner wrote:

Hello Dark horse, just thank your Lucky stars you havent Lost a million pounds.I wish you well in your attempt to give up Gambling. Best wishes Londoner.

Ok ladies and gents - Day 2

Busy day at work, kept myself busy. Didn't think about gambling much, when I did it was after checking my bank balance and seeing the damage I had caused, thinking that I could win some money back. Since I am self excluded, I can't bet anyway. Checked some scores as I wrote earlier, and my bet would have lost. Felt a sigh of relief that I stopped betting, before placing that bet.

Aside from that, I am extremely stressed out, GF has stopped talking to me for 4 days, relationship is on the rocks and constantly worrying about breaking up. Now that I have stopped gambling, everything I seem to be unhappy about in my life has been magnified 10 folds....being 30, and no savings, living at home, relationship potenitally ending, poorly paid etc etc. Walking into Tescos and not even being able to buy food I want to buy because I spent the money on gambling has made me sad.

I am also generally a lot more bored now, this time would be used on gambling - saying that I feel less stressed out from stopping, with the gambling I was constantly stressed out from worrying that my bets wont come through.

Today despite being self excluded l*******s texted my account, I looked at the text message with disgust.

Day 3:

No real urges to gamble, I don't miss it at all right now...Extremely busy at work, and more concerned with my relationship not ending and getting out of debts. Fortunantly living at home means I can take food from home for lunch, so knowing that my bank balance will stay the same (instead of getting worse) comforts me. I have accepted that I am in debt, so the need to chase my losses is deminishing. Previously I did not accept that and it made it harder not to gamble.

I am finding that I am a lot more focused at work now, since I have less anxiety overall (caused by gambling) and can concentrate more as opposed to thinking about whether a bet will come through. I remember how I used to gamble using my smartphone at work, and would be distracted and put in a bad mood for the rest of the day if I had lost.

Self excluding has been the best thing that I have done. Now even if I want to chase my loss. I can't.

Hey just catching up on your diary mate sorry you had to have a few relapses before the penny dropped. The truth is we can all give you advice and tell you our stories but until you make that conscious decision and realise you can't control it and accept it has to stop then nothing will change. Money can be replaced through working hard and remaining gf. Sure we all have regrets about what we've done and the lost money but accepting where you are is a fantastic start. I for one have a lot of debt and I'm not where I want to be in life right now but I've accepted it and I'm working to a plan to change things and you can to 🙂 sadly the hardest things to mend are relationships whether it's with friends or loved ones but you just have to plod along and remain gf and hopefully in time some of these people will come back into your life. In the meantime stay away from sports and don't think about trying to win an easy £30 on a 1/3 shot but think of the £100 you saved! 😉 you can do this! Good luck mate

You're still too engrossed in the semantics and drama of the actual betting. You can't beat the odds compilers unless you have super inside information AND you're a statistical genuis AND you have iron discipline; not prone to gambling addiction. I know this because I worked inside the head office of W Hills for a year. You're a looser at sports betting, like i guess 99.5% of punters are. Quit Sports betting to be a winner at life!

sorry that was a reply to your initial post i hadn't read all

Energzied wrote:

sorry that was a reply to your initial post i hadn't read all

Day 4:

Today is harder, I follow a lot of NBA teams on my Facebook newsfeed, and I can see that some teams I support are doing well. Watching the highlight reel on my newsfeed reminds me of the thrill that comes with betting on a basketball team, and the entertainment aspect of it all. Plus the nagging thought of trying to win £30 back, so that I can pay for my weekend trip away is compounding this, making it more tempting to bet on the NBA.

If I was not self excluded, it would have been super hard not to stay up tonight and place a bet.

darkhorse2016 wrote:

[quote=Energzied]

sorry that was a reply to your initial post i hadn't read all

Day 4:

Today is harder, I follow a lot of NBA teams on my Facebook newsfeed, and I can see that some teams I support are doing well. Watching the highlight reel on my newsfeed reminds me of the thrill that comes with betting on a basketball team, and the entertainment aspect of it all. Plus the nagging thought of trying to win £30 back, so that I can pay for my weekend trip away is compounding this, making it more tempting to bet on the NBA.

If I was not self excluded, it would have been super hard not to stay up tonight and place a bet.

Day 5,

I did not gamble yesterday. GF is putting pressure on me to move in together, and that made me realise how reckless I have been with my money. At 30 I should have at least 43k saved up if I had saved 600 a month. 🙁

Hi all,

It has been a while. I relapsed 6 days ago, the trigger was seeing the NBA basketball scores on my facebook newsfeed so I thought to myself, 'oh I can win some money back since I am good at analysing basketball'. How wrong was I? I found one account where I hadn't self excluded myself, and started betting. At the start of betting I was -1.4k in the red, I then proceeded to lose £500 , now I am -2k in the red. I have nearly maxed out my overdraft and credit card. Following this, I unliked all of the NBA teams I followed, and self excluded myself from EVERY bookie I had an account with. This is the most I have been in debt, ever in my life.

I have no real intense urge anymore to gamble, it is 6 days and I am GF, the longest I have gone without gambling in the past few months. I feel very s**t though, since it will take me 2 months now just to get out of the red - have a date lined up, and have only £30 for the rest of the month. I don't buy lunch anymore, taking packed lunch which ironically has reminded me how much money I can save. The gambling fog is starting to fade, and I have started to see how reckless I have been with my finances over the past year.

I can't however watch sports or follow sports anymore, it reminds me of betting and I can't disassociate the two. If I was not self excluded, I probably would have placed a bet on Andy Murray the other day to beat Nishikori. (He won). I am keeping a diary of my relapses, and everytime I feel an urge, I read the diary to remind myself of the situation I was in at the time of the relapse which has been helping.

Hi - just read your diary for the first time. I too have focused on Sports Bets. Sports bets themselves have never given me a problem but when there isnt any sport on that I want to bet on or have a fancy for, I have over the years reverted to horse racing and virtual racing - that was my downfall. I successfully went over 3 years with controlled advance bets on sports only which allowed me to reduce my debts considerably. ( Note - I am not saying I won money over that period - I didnt, but I didnt lose control and bet what I couldnt afford to lose or chase losses on virtual racing like I used to. ) I have lost amounts much higher than you describe but its all relevant to earnings. I had a MAJOR relapse last month which I am only now coming to terms with. So I've proved doing sports only for 3 years can work but I've also fallen off the wagon. I'd always advise anyone who is a compulsive gambler to quit everything if they can and there are many success stories on here from those who have done so.
You are only 30, dont waste your life by gambling all your money away. I am oer 20 years your senior and I wish to God I had stopped at 30. I agree with you that you cant watch sport you used to gamble on at all or easily, i have had my periods where I just couldnt watch some sports and I cut out a lot of stuff where I wasnt really interested in the event, I was only watching it to gamble on it, thats not right and not healthy.
Sports I am interested in and have knowledge of thats ok and as I said that hasnt caused me a problem but staying away from random and virtual gambling has.
Try and stop everything if you can, give yourself a better life.

captain46 wrote:

Hi - just read your diary for the first time. I too have focused on Sports Bets. Sports bets themselves have never given me a problem but when there isnt any sport on that I want to bet on or have a fancy for, I have over the years reverted to horse racing and virtual racing - that was my downfall.

Exactly the same happened to me, I could control my betting when I betted on the NBA (Amercan basketball), but during quiet periods I would then start betting on European Basketball, and lately the tennis (my biggest downfall). The tennis really dug a big hole, favourites being beaten by unranked players happened A LOT, or there were incidences where I would often bet on games, the server to hold their game, only to find that the game I place the bet on ends up with a break of service. I remember one match, I had a bet on Andy Murray to win a game, that was the only game in the whole set he lost.

I successfully went over 3 years with controlled advance bets on sports only which allowed me to reduce my debts considerably. ( Note - I am not saying I won money over that period - I didnt, but I didnt lose control and bet what I couldnt afford to lose or chase losses on virtual racing like I used to. ) I have lost amounts much higher than you describe but its all relevant to earnings. I had a MAJOR relapse last month which I am only now coming to terms with. So I've proved doing sports only for 3 years can work but I've also fallen off the wagon. I'd always advise anyone who is a compulsive gambler to quit everything if they can and there are many success stories on here from those who have done so.
You are only 30, dont waste your life by gambling all your money away. I am oer 20 years your senior and I wish to God I had stopped at 30. I agree with you that you cant watch sport you used to gamble on at all or easily, i have had my periods where I just couldnt watch some sports and I cut out a lot of stuff where I wasnt really interested in the event, I was only watching it to gamble on it, thats not right and not healthy.

I am a BIG NBA fan, and for gods sake, it's been ruined for me. Everytime I see a clip on my Facebook or somewhere, I think about betting and trying to win a bet based on the point spread. It got to a point where I had to unfollow all of my favourite teams.

Sports I am interested in and have knowledge of thats ok and as I said that hasnt caused me a problem but staying away from random and virtual gambling has.
Try and stop everything if you can, give yourself a better life.

For a long time in this thread I tried controlled gambling. My last gambling session with the final self exclusion, I realised like an alcoholic I can't do it. When I place on bet, I end up keep wanting more and more. It's really scary when you think about, -2k is a lot but I can so easily see now how people get hundreds of thousands of pounds in debt. Once you get in debt, you become desperate, and then lose the concept of the value of money.

One thing I never got about gambling, is how I would go on these crazy winning streaks, followed by the momentum switching with not being able to win one bet. I also found that the more desperate I was for cash, the more likely I would lose and lose.

2016 has been a s**t year.

Hi all,

I am now 8 days gamble free. The most I have ever been for the past 6 months.

What has helped massively is unfollowing my favourite sports team on facebook and self exclusion. What caused my relapse last time was seeing the basketball results on facebook then viewing that as a lost opportunity to make money back.

I dont miss gambling anymore. Getting over it. I am managing my debt quite well - taking packed lunches to work and leaving my debit,credit card at home. Being single again means that I don't have to worry about spending money on my GF.