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 and for larger amounts of money as a result of a succession of losses or perhaps a bad beat.

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

I was tired and frankly considered closing up shop for the weekend, but then 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 2 points at half-time were playing with a massive wind at their backs. There and then I made a decision to empty my account out onto the Exeter Chiefs and I 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 of late though and this was an absolute banger as instead of backing the Chiefs I in fact backed the Bristol Bears in a game that was still to kick off. While I cannot explain why I always confuse the two teams.

The Bears were away at Harlequins and the game was not even televised. I watched as the Exeter bet arrived with room to spare knowing my original tilt bet would have landed and now I had to rely on the Bears to rescue me or quite frankly 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 just hoping the game would end only to see the dreaded words “try” pop up, but fortunately it was the Bears that scored and they won the game by 20 points rescuing my weekend.

Tilting is not an advisable strategy, but I got lucky and live to fight another day.

Twitter: @BrentGraham.

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 13 May 2021.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register