Every week I come across a number of punters who are desperately trying to find the amazing system that will make them untold riches. While these punters really want to believe that every day should be a winning day, I have some bad news for anyone still chasing the punting 'holy grail'....

I'm sorry but it doesn't exist. No-one wins every day or even every week. No-one achieves 100% Profit on Turnover. No amazing system will make you rich overnight.

The truth is that punting success is about doing the hard work required to have a profitable edge. And once you have a profitable edge you need the discipline and money management to take advantage of it.

The 'pot of gold' mentality inevitably ends up with a busted betting bank and here are a few of the reasons why:

(1) Swallowing the hype.
I am happy to be installed as the President of the 100% Profit on Turnover Sceptics Association. If I had a million bucks I'd gladly wager it against anyone who wanted to try and validate their success in achieving this level of profitability over any reasonable number of selections. My money would be pretty safe because it simply isn't possible to achieve 100% PoT. Yet many punters subscribe to services or purchase systems with ridiculously high profit claims and are then surprised when their own results are break-even or worse.

(2) Backfitted systems.
There are a number of software programs that allow you to develop and test your own systems, but many punters fall into the trap of backfitting the rules to manipulate very good results. For example they might test a last start winner system with a few basic rules and see that it breaks even. But they then go through the selections and tweak the rules to such an extent that a very solid profit is made.

This is OK if the rules are (a) logical, (b) don't reduce the sample size below what is considered a valid sample , and (c) the results aren't reliant on one or two big priced winners to achieve profitability. A good rule of thumb is the fewer the rules, the less likely it is to be backfitted and hence more likely to achieve similar results when you go live. Another reasonable suggestion is to expect half the return going forward, for example if the system you tested achieved a 20% PoT without any backfitting, then aim for 10% PoT going forward.

(3) Over aggressive staking.
Most punters outlay too much per bet. If you average a 25-30% strike-rate you are highly likely to experience losing runs of 10 or more fairly regularly, yet this kind of losing streak wipes out a lot of punters.

(4) Chasing a hot tipster after an exceptional period.
Punters gravitate towards tipsters who have been red-hot recently and often jump on board after a very good winning streak. The only problem is this 'streak' is just that, a short-term above average performance that simply isn't sustainable long-term. When the tipsters performance reverts back to normal, the punter who missed the very profitable period now has to be able to persevere through a rough patch. Think about it...if Joe Blow has shown he can make 5% on Turnover long-term but for the past month he's at 50%, do you think he suddenly a 10 times better tipster and can keep up that sort of profitability? It's far more likely that this is a short-term spike and his results will soon come back down to his long-term average.

(5) Quitting during a losing run.
If you allocate a certain amount of units or dollars as your betting bank, why drop it when your bank is only half-gone? If you have done your homework and the method you're following is proven over two or more years, why jump off just because it's going through a bad run? Losing streaks are inevitable, they are a fact of punting life and your staking plan should allow for this. If you know the method has had 20 straight losers previously then don't suddenly stop betting when you have had 10 straight 'live' losers.

There is no get-rich quick method in the punting world, but there are a number of methods and tipsters that grind out a regular profit.