The Most Useful Information about Survivorship Bias

Every beginner gambler dreams of earning decent benefits at placing wagers on sports events. Everyone is blinded by this hope, and no one thinks of reaching quite the opposite result. Numerous tipsters talk only about success and winnings, which creates a feeling that they did not ever face any loss. The Internet is full of various betting strategies and tips how to make gambling lucrative and only few of them dedicated to problems of losing money. And even they describe these faults as a poor money management, rather than as wrong actions and decisions.

In fact, most gamblers deal with the negative expected value, which eliminates their possibility to obtain long-term profits. Moreover, they do not have appropriate forecasting abilities, while a poor money management only increases the negative influence. Thus, every bettor should understand that it is not easy to make a living from sports gambling. For some people, it is not even possible.

It is a quite obvious thing that the greatest attention is paid only to winners. Winners write history, and it is normal. Losers seem to disappear from view because people tend not to bother about negative things that happen either to them or the others. This phenomenon is known as survivorship bias. In other words, the bias is an error of focusing on things or people who managed to achieve some success over a certain period of time, while those witnessed loses are intentionally neglected. Among others, this bias can result in overestimating chances of achieving some success in this or that activity.

Survivorship Bias History

The given phenomenon was initially introduced by a mathematician during World War II. Then, they were deciding where to place additional armor plating in order to make bombers more resistant to enemies’ bullets. For this, they examined bombers that managed to survive after battles and decided to put plating on wings and fuselage because they showed the highest concentration of bullet holes. Thus, they made a serious mistake by neglecting those planes that had been brought down. As it is clear, the additional plating did not have any positive results.

Illusion of Cause and Effect

If you want to determine real winning probabilities in the betting industry, it is not recommended to pay attention only to bettors who managed to succeed. Here, it is a widely distributed disbelief that all the bettors who managed to achieve some success are extremely skillful. On the other hand, it is better to think that skills have only a part of reasons leading to successes.

Gambling experts state that the betting industry is highly subjected to luck, which eliminates the strong connection between results and forecasting activities. Thus, the greatest attention should be paid to a forecasting process itself, rather than to results only. Only this fact will reveal you a full picture of betting history under consideration.

Calculating Real Winning Chances

As it has already been mentioned, monitoring only winners does not provide a full picture of how it is really hard to succeed in this or that activities. Analyzing losers shows main mistakes that should not be repeated anymore, which is extremely beneficial information for beginners.

In order to calculate real chances to win in betting, Harvard scientists analyzed 8 million bets placed by 40 000 gamblers amounting to approximately $60 million. The results obtained were shocking. Profits were gained by a bit more than 10% of gamblers. Even with this, a fact that they had dealt with the negative expected value and high margins did not allow gamblers earning any serious funds in general. Only about 250 gamblers gained benefits of over $1 000.

Despite the negative expected value and high margins, these poor results can be explained by a fact that numerous people place wagers accidentally on the basis of their gut instincts. In this case, it is almost impossible to reckon upon any benefits at all. 1 000 wagers placed according to these principles will significantly decrease winning chances moving it approximately to zero.

How to Earn Money at Gambling?

Though numerous bettors are fooled by the survivorship bias and expect to easily obtain enormous profits, there should be taken certain steps in order to improve the situation. The first thing is to find a bookmaker offering the smallest possible margins. The best variant is to deal with one offering a 2% margin on all the markets.

Secondly, pay attention to a fact that there are bookmakers that close accounts of bettors who show the success. Thus, it is necessary to find an oddsmaker that will welcome sharp gamblers, rather than block their activities.

Finally, it is recommended to spend time on conducting research by reading betting articles and developing a betting strategy suitable for your personal preferences and needs.