Payday tilting at windmills

You will often hear the word “tilt” in poker and sports betting and it is basically when you start making bets you wouldn’t normally take, for larger amounts of money, as a result of a succession of losses or perhaps a bad beat.

There was little going my way last weekend and when I had a chunky bet on under 52.5 points in the Sharks vs Lions game, it was clear early on I would be in trouble – and what had been a mildly poor weekend was quickly turning into a shocker.

I considered closing up shop for the weekend, but saw a message from one of our punting community that he fancied Exeter (-12.5) at the break against Worcester in the English Premiership.

There was plenty of sound logic behind the bet and Exeter, though trailing by two points at half time, were playing with a massive wind at their backs.

I made a decision to empty my account on to the Exeter Chiefs and was amazed when I saw I could get (-9.5) points, so really thought I was on to a good thing.

I had been making some careless errors, though, and this was an absolute banger as instead of backing the Chiefs, I backed the Bristol Bears in a game that was still to kick off.

The Bears were away at Harlequins and the game was not even televised. I watched as the Exeter bet arrived with room to spare, but had to rely on the Bears to rescue me or face a few weeks on the betting sidelines.

Things got ugly early and the team I needed to win by 10 points trailed by 15 deep into the first half, but they somehow turned things around and led by 13 after the 80-minute hooter.

I watched the live scores, hoping the game would end, only to see the dreaded word “try” pop up. Fortunately it was the Bears who scored and they won by 20 points, rescuing my weekend.

Tilting is not an advisable strategy, but I got lucky and live to fight another day. Brent Graham is a sports betting blogger at goodforthegame.co.za. To get on his free weekly e-mail list, just send a message to brent@goodforthegame.co.za titled „Best Bets“. Follow him on Twitter: @BrentGraham