Fixing Betting Mistakes

By Dean Arnold

If you make a betting mistake, you should try to fix it. As simple as this sounds, many players upon realizing they have made an error decide to live with the tickets even though the bets are not what they intended. This has the potential to make a bad mistake even worse if your original selections come in.

If you make a mistake, be it due to teller error, miskeying at a self-service terminal, or punching in the wrong numbers on your TVG account, you should try to fix it before the race goes off. Too many people decide to live with their mistake, citing superstition, fate, guardian angels, or other wishful thinking that the erroneous tickets are somehow the result of other-worldly influence. Nonsense. They were a mistake.

Your first line of defense is to check all of your tickets before you step away from a mutuel teller window. Few players actually do this. Watch bettors make a dozen different wagers and get a stack of tickets handed to them by the clerk. They almost always walk away before looking over each ticket. Interestingly, bettors that go to a mutuel teller to purchase a self-service wagering voucher almost always check the voucher amount after handing over their money. The same bettor that fails to check $1,000 in trifecta bets would never purchase a $1,000 voucher without checking what the mutuel clerk prints (Wagering online with TVG allows players to punch in their own bets and confirm their wager before the bet is officially processed).

Sometimes there is neither the opportunity nor time remaining to exchange erroneous tickets. In this case, the bettor has only one chance to make things right: Place additional wagers. Are you betting against yourself? Yes. Are you betting more money than you planned? Absolutely. But would you rather return to your seat holding $20 in tickets you never wanted in the first place, or holding an additional $20 in bets that you really wanted to make?

This mixup happened to me recently. I wanted to bet #7 to win and box him in exactas with #1, the favorite. For whatever reason, I played the 6 to win and a 1-6 exacta box. As the horses were approaching the gate, I suddenly realized my mistake. Checking the odds, I saw #6 was a 7/1 shot and can only guess the numbers got jumbled in my head. Rather than hoping the 6 made a worthy substitute, I decided to bet the 7 and the 1-7 exacta box as well. The 7 won, paying $14.00. On the entire exchange, I still made some decent money despite my error. Spending $48 on two $20 win bets and two $4 exactas still netted me $92 profit. There is no denying the fact that I wasted $24 on my initial bets, but I didn’t make things worse by failing to bet my 6/1 selection.

The simple lesson is – Mistakes happen. Rather than get wrapped up in blame or wishfully hoping things happen for a reason, fix them. Own up to your mistakes rather than living with them and hoping for the best.

Fixing Betting Mistakes:

– Mistakes happen. Don’t be superstitious about the mistaken bet – it isn’t lucky, it isn’t fate. It’s a mistake. Fix it so you have the bets you wanted.
– If time is short, don’t waste time. Shift promptly to what options you have to get rid of the wrong bets and get the right bets.
– If the bet can’t be cancelled, substitute the lowest-risk bet you can think of to recover.

Be sure to check out Dean Arnold’s handicapping book, A Bettor Way, on sale now through amazon.com