The funny and also interesting thing is that the whole business is actually best described with American terms or even English words. There are two reasons for this. Cause one: The Americans are simply innovative. They recognise a phenomenon, some interesting appearance, and immediately find a concise, apt, conclusive word for it. And that is then simply used from then on. The terms are often so pretty that I might even add a chapter with only the funniest, prettiest, or best of all, all the terms.
I have to include one of the funniest ones here: If you have ace and king in poker, the Texas Hold’em variant, as hole cards, another expression, then that’s quite a passable hand. That’s obvious. You have an advantage against any hand because you have the higher cards in your hand anyway. So if the “board” (the next term), the cards on the table, all 5 of them together, don’t help either player, you still win. However, if you play against a pair, you always have quasi 50%, the typical, as Michael Körner would say, coin toss decisions. Only against the pairs of aces or kings would you be a clear underdog. But of all things, these two are the least likely, because you have one of them yourself. So ace-king is one of the most popular hands to go “all-in” (look, it’s piling up: “all-in”, all chips in the middle, eyes closed, pray. By the way, for all poker fans, this move has a huge advantage: once you have made it, you can no longer make a mistake, only your opponent can).
A rather long digression, but at least I’m talking about playing: So if someone has ace-king in his hand, he actually has quite a good hand. But it is also difficult to win with it. Whoever plays, i.e. pays the “all-in”, also has something. That’s why people like to call ace-king, i.e. AK, “Anna Kournikova”. Reason? “Looks good, but rarely wins.” Is that irony, sarcasm or even cynicism?
All right, so you’re looking forward to the chapter now, I can feel it. But I’ll stick with the current headline: The swings. What are the ominous swings? You can’t even translate it. My Danish friend and partner, Kristian Hansen, always says “swings”, probably as a favour to me. That is his translation. Only I am hardly familiar with this word. The swing is the difference between profit and loss. Does that mean anything? There are actually two different kinds of swings.
So the difference between winning and losing: Jörg Pilawa, who, by the way, I like very much as you do, always says, for example, “the next question is about 50000 euros.” And, excuse me, Mr Pilawa, but that is gross nonsense. When the 50000 euro question is asked, the first prize level is always secured. But with all the candidates I have seen so far, it was also the second. So it’s never about 50000 euros. Do you want it to sound more exciting or do you actually not know? I fear the worst…. So, if the second win level was 20000 euros and you are currently at 30000 euros, as in the previous example, then the swing at stake is only 30000 euros. You can fall back to the 20000 euros or jump up to the 50000 euros. And then the end is not yet reached, but that doesn’t belong here. So the swing is 30000 euros.
But there are other examples of such swings: If you play odds of 1.1 with 1000 Euros, you have a high stake, but only a small, possible profit (hopefully with a well-calculated probability of occurrence!). So a swing of 1100 euros. If, on the other hand, you bet 100 euros on odds of 20.0, then you have a swing of 2000 euros!
So you are well advised to assess the possible or intended swing when placing your bets. It is a decision-making aid. What swing am I exposing myself to here?
With combination or system bets, the whole thing gets a bit more complicated. The effect that the advantages of combination bets are multiplied, i.e. increased, occurs when some games have already arrived and others are still pending. In addition, of course, one must mention that it is almost always the case, at least with me, since I have selected the bets according to advantages and not according to leagues, let alone according to kick-off times, that the matches, many of them, take place one after the other. So now, if you hit a few games in a combination bet, or in this case even better a system bet, i.e. you guess correctly, then all the money is “pushed on” to the next games. The following games are then played artificially with a higher stake.
So you don’t get the payout yet, but the money lives on. A higher stake is transported to the next game. Suddenly you are exposed to very high swings. To a certain extent, this is intended, because it is the advantage of the combination bet. Your advantages are therefore increased because the advantage amount, the win quity, is purely mathematically bet on the next games. It is also intended in the sense that you can of course only win a lot (sometimes) if you guess many games correctly. But on the other hand, you are also unintentionally suddenly exposed to very high risks.
Nothing is changed by this, it is just worth keeping an eye on it. You can even “insure” occasionally. So if you have a very high amount on a game, which does not correspond to the quality of this bet at all, then it can be quite advisable to play the other team for insurance. I call this “taking out a swing”. The effect is usually the same: you make a bet with a disadvantage, with negative equity. But you do it consciously to reduce the swing. Because high swings always mean high risks, because it can happen that a series of high swings ends up to your disadvantage.
The other form of swing is this one: Players win and lose. Advantage players also win or lose. Also the disadvantage players. But that doesn’t mean it moves continuously in that direction. It swings back and forth. You can win a lot, too much, for longer periods. But you can also win too little, win nothing at all or lose for longer periods. Also good players. Bad players can also move up or down in phases. The pendulum can swing both ways in one evening. You start winning, whether advantage or disadvantage. And suddenly you start losing. In the chapter “Simulations”, I have created some diagrams from which you can read the long-term movements, i.e. the long-term swings. The results are from simulations.