This week in my Wednesday newsletter I said that Mannarino’s odds vs Collignon in Geneva of almost 9.0 were a gift, even though he had lost the match. And I received this reply from someone called William: "Odds are never a gift if you lost lol." And this is precisely the mistake many bettors like William make. They see betting as something deterministic, as if the result was already written, and as if only winning bets were good bets, while losing bets were bad bets. I think most of you reading this already know that things don’t work like that. This is about probabilities. If Mannarino wins 1 out of every 5, 6, or even 7 or 8 matches in those exact pre-match circumstances, then the bet was good. Of course you never know it, but you know what I mean, this must be your thinking. By the way, you will notice that I almost never talk about my winning bets after the event. I find that quite embarrassing. I usually only talk about the ones I lose. Back to the point, in this world, I see a very strong relationship between the narrative and the result. One piece of advice I received years ago, and which helped me a lot, is this: Once you have obviously analysed all the variables that may affect the outcome of a match, try to see the odds as a kind of odds supermarket. You pick the prices that you believe are very interesting given the context, without worrying too much about the short-term results. I know it is almost impossible not to care about short-term results. But ideally, that is how it should be. You analyse carefully, you buy prices, and a few months later you check how you did. Because hasn’t this happened to you before? You start analysing a match. You look at the pros and cons of betting on a certain player. You get too focused on the narrative, the variables, the context… and in the end you decide not to bet. Then later you realise you probably should have, because the price was just too good. For example, you think: “Yes, this player is top 10, but he hasn’t been playing well on clay this season.” So you decide not to take 2.70 because of that supposed poor form. And then, after thinking about it again, you say to yourself: “Damn, but the price was very high. That was probably already more than priced in.” Those of us who bet without a machine learning model telling us where to bet still have to fight against this way of thinking. It's the price, it's the price, it's the fckn price. The focus should be on the price. Of course, you have to take all those factors into account. But you should not let them distract you from the most important thing: the price. Anyway, today I just wanted to talk about this. A bit of betting philosophy.