By: Tricky Dave, 2023 October
Betting excites me. Why lie? There is something pleasurable about placing bets and winning. Heck. Even losing has its thrills, especially when you are very close to winning, or when a VAR decision makes you lose a bet. It’s entertaining for most parts, but when the fun stops, it can be as depressing as the current economy.
I started football betting with the 2014 World Cup. I remember well. I think it was USSD-based betting. At that time, my budget was quite low. I rarely surpassed 100 Kenya Shillings per week. I then graduated to internet-based betting, mainly on Sportpesa (a leading Kenyan Brand at the time). Still, I continued with placing KES 100 bets. I rarely won, but I enjoyed it as a hobby. Maybe it is just me, and it sounds crazy, but I also find it enjoyable when I lose bets.
To be honest, betting helped me avoid another problem that I had, alcohol consumption. Before I started betting, I would spend a significant portion of my income on alcohol, in a pub or at home.
But after I discovered betting, I would choose to stay at home and bet instead of going out to drink. Sometimes my reasoning would be to spend the money that I could have used for drinking to bet. Believe me, I was a pretty heavy drinker at the time, and drinking would drain significant portions of my income each week. Betting was helping me save!
I was very happy with my life. Moderate drinking with moderate betting. I sometimes had small wins (the five hundreds, seven hundreds even a thousand).
Then one day in early 2016, I woke up to a very exciting message. I had won over 25,000 Kenya shillings from a 100 shillings stake. It was an amazing win as I had placed 9 teams and most had the odds of around 2. I cannot remember the teams, but there were 2 home wins, 1 under 2.5 FT, 4 over 2.5 FT, and 2 GG. At that time, I had some serious issues with money as I had not paid my KES 6,000 rent. It was, literally, a lifesaver.
Then it hit me, what if I had placed a bet with 1,000 shillings (KES)? That could have been KES 250,000! What if I had added two other teams of 2 odds each? I could have had KES 100,000!
That was the start of my obsession! I withdrew KES 20,000 and ‘reinvested’ KES 5,000. I placed so many bets for the first time (I had a practice of placing the utmost 2 bets per week; mostly 1, and sometimes none). That week I placed over 30 bets. Surely, spreading the risk is a wise strategy. I will most likely win one of these 30 bets, I thought to myself. Each of the 30 bets had a return of at least KES 5,000. I was convinced that I would win at least one (or two) of the bets.
Long story short, I did not win any of the bets that week. The famous ‘Game moja tu’ (Swahili for only one game) truly applied. Out of the 30 bets, I lost about 7 by one game.
I remember the team that killed most of my bets, Manchester United. I had placed the team in over 50% of the bets under various markets: Over 2.5 FT, Manchester United Win, GG, and HT/FT. The game ended with Manchester United losing by 1-0. It was playing with Southampton FC, which was a pretty decent team back then, to be fair.
I had waged KES 1000 in one of the bets, and I was expecting about 150,000 from the bet; which could have been a significant sum for me back then. Who am I kidding? It is a pretty significant sum even now. I had 8 teams in that bet, and I got 7 correct, as I had a GG for Manchester United Vs Southampton, a goal from Man U could have made my day, and probably my life.
Now I was a heavy Gambler. I sometimes deposited half of my salary (which was around KES 30,000) on payday to try and win big. The script was the same, I was always very close to winning big. In some cases, I won a decent amount. I think I won about 20,000 twice between 2016 and 2017. But I was spending far more money on placing bets than winning. The least I was spending each month was KES 10,000. I was caught in the trap of chasing losses.
I cannot forget the day that I thought I would win Sportpesa’s KES 100,000 million Jackpot. The jackpot has 17 games played over the weekend. On a Sunday morning, I saw I got 9 of the 17 predictions correctly. Surely, I could manage to get at least 4 of the remaining 8 games! And I thought my predictions were good. I was super excited. It is possible that it was the most exciting 6 hours of my life (9 am to 3 pm) of the day. Damn! I was even checking which car I would buy on OLX (I think it is called Jiji now), and which holidays I would take my girl (who is now my wife) and my parents. Daydreaming galore. Similar to the tales of Amezidi
And it started well, I had selected draws for the first two games of that particular Sunday. The games were draws up to the 80th minute. Unfortunately, the games were won at the last minutes. All in all, I only managed to get 1 out of the 8 predictions correct for the Sunday. Heartbreaking.
But such incidences only gave me more belief. I turned betting into my full-time investment. Honestly, I would spend significant parts of Friday (even during working hours) placing dozens of multi-bets and jackpots for the weekend.
The script remained the same. I would win a little (less than I spend) and have several near wins. It was a matter of time, I believed, before I won it big.
Something happened in the Easter of 2017. On Thursday, I was in the office. Then my boss left work at around 2 pm, the accountant wanted to leave at around 3 pm, but there was a supplier who was to be paid, around KES 40,000. The accountant asked me if she could leave me with the money and I pay the supplier.
‘Just let the supplier sign here and keep the signed documents on my desk’ The accountant gave me instructions and left me with the cash. I had no problem with that I was planning on staying in the office past 5:00 pm anyways.
Unfortunately, the supplier had a minor accident in the CBD. At around 4:00 p.m., he called the office and informed us that he could not manage to come on the day. Instead, he would come to collect the payment on Tuesday after the holidays. ‘That is no problem’ I assured the supplier. I had so much pending work that day, and I worked until 6 p.m.
Now I was in a dilemma. The office had some insecurity issues as money (and other things) had been stolen before. I could not leave the 40,000 in the office. So, I decided to deposit the money in my MPesa (a mobile money system in Kenya). It had some transaction costs, but I thought it would be the safest and most convenient. We will work out the transaction costs with the accountant on Tuesday. Sure, I went to the Mpesa Agent and deposited the whole amount.
Then temptation crept in.
‘What if I deposit 2k and then pick 2 odds, that would be some quick money!’ I thought to myself. Those times there were not many taxes in Kenya, so an odd of 2 would have quickly resulted in 4k. Then I refund the 2k. Simple.
I picked two games in the live bet, each with odds of around 1.5. Both games were in around the 60th minute. One was at 0-0, the other 1-0. So I selected Over 0.5 for the first game and Over 1.5 for the next game. Pretty safe bet to my thinking. If I can remember correctly, the games were of the 3rd or 4th tier of German football.
Almost immediately (less than 5 minutes) after placing the bet, the 0-0 game became 1-0 as the home team scored. Over 0.5 bet was successful. Then I had a goal notification from Sofascore. I was excited. Things must have been going according to plan. Betting can get you some quick money if you are not greedy. The Philosopher in me started to come out.
However, upon looking at the notification, it was the 0-0 game that added a goal, now the score was 2-0. I wished I had placed an over 1.5 on that one game (it had the odd of 3, and I had thought about it for a second before placing the bet). But, I was hopeful, It was the 70th minute and I thought that it was still likely that I would get an over 1.5 on the 1-0 game.
After 20 minutes the game ended at 1-0. I had lost the bet. The irony (I’m not sure if this fits the definition of ironical) is that the Over 0.5 game ended with a score of over 4.5 or 3.5 (but I recall it ended with a score of 3-2).
I was devastated. Especially after learning that the away team did not convert a penalty before the 75th minute. The game also had the teams hitting the woodwork 3 times. Unlucky.
Then I began what I have come to learn is a very bad habit in betting. Chasing Losses. I deposited another 1,000 shillings and chose a multigame of 3 odds to recover the money and stop. I lost.
I continued this through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I won a few bets (2ks and 3ks), but I was always in deficit. Strangely, I kept depositing money to various platforms (the Mchezas, Sportpesas, Betin, Betika, and a few others at the time) but I was not checking my Mobile Balance.
On Sunday evening, I had known that I had lost some money. Definitely. In my head, I calculated that I may have lost around KES 20,000 in the Easter Weekend. It was regretting so much. I had spent all my long holiday betting, and I had lost money. I wished I had gone clubbing or visit my parents/friends. Or done some cleaning or reading or even watched some movies. The options were endless.
My regret was soon amplified. You see, I was not checking my balance every time I deposited money into my betting accounts. When I checked my balance, I saw that I was left with only 4,300 shillings. I could not believe it. How can I spend over 35,000? Most of my transactions were around 1000 and 500, I remember I only transferred 2K once in the first transaction. Panic Mode. My bank account had only around 5,000 shillings that was supposed to sustain me for the whole month. I had a loan in my SACCO; which I had actually defaulted.
I quickly decided to withdraw the whole KES 4,000 and place a multibet. I thought that would be my only way out. I placed one multibet bet of 4 teams with KES 3,000, and 10 multibets (of KES 100 each) with the remaining 1000.
The KES 3,000 bet had a return of over 30k. It was my major hope. I have an obsession with over 2.5 FT, I selected four teams for over 2.5. Three of the four teams got the over 2.5 result. The fourth team did not, and I remember that it was Liverpool. I think Liverpool won that game 1-0. What pissed me off even more was the fact that Liverpool over had the lowest odds of the four teams.
Needless to say, by Midnight on Sunday, I lost all of the other 10 Multibets, some by a very small margin. But a loss is a loss.
Now I was in a serious crisis. How will I explain to my colleagues and boss that I lost 40k (meant for a supplier) on betting? All I could raise was 5,000 that was in my account. I had only Monday to raise the money. Betting was not an option now; I was not going to try my luck there.
I did not sleep. My reputation, and possibly my job, were on the line. It was an embarrassing story that I did not want to share with any of my friends or family. How stupid! How illogical! How irresponsible.
It’s now Monday morning. How I wish I could turn back the hands of time, like R Kelly. I would have rather not volunteered to take the cash from the accountant. Or, I wish I had left the money in the office. Or just had the conviction of not betting. But deep in my heart, I wished that the penalty on my first bet could have gone in, or one of the 3 woodworks. Then I would have recovered the 2k, and used the 2k profit for the weekend betting. I also wished I kept tabs on the money I was withdrawing, maybe it could have stopped me from overspending. Surely I would have been more careful once I had surpassed 10k.
But wishes are not horses. I need to find 40K within 24 hours.
I took my ATM card and went to withdraw KES 5,000 from my account. For some reason, I did not qualify for an overdraft. Now I am 35k short. I turned to my phone book. Started calling my family and friends.
‘I need 2k urgently I have an emergency, I will refund at the end of the month’. That was the narrative.
Of course, many of the people claimed that they had just spent their money over the holiday. All in all, I managed to get around 13k from family and friends by around lunchtime. Now I was 22k short.
I cannot forget that day. It was the day I was introduced to the Mobile Money Loans. The Talas, MShwaris, KCB Mpesa, Branch, Faniki (or something from Airtel), and others that I cannot remember. I frantically applied, and even lied on the application (of my income, and whether I had debt). But I was desperate. Of course, my limit was low for the first-time application, but collectively I was able to accumulate over 22k, and now I had around 43k.
I had not taken lunch or breakfast. In the evening, I went to the kibanda to eat kichwa and ugali. Stress levels had reduced. I went to a Wines and Spirit and bought half (375 ml) of Vodka. I gulped the Vodka dry in the house then went to bed.
On Tuesday morning, I returned the money to the accountant as if nothing had happened over the weekend.
The good thing is that I realized that I have a serious betting problem (chasing losses). The bad thing is that the experience introduced me to another problem (debts) that took me over 3 years to manage/overcome. But that is a story for another day.
I still gamble. And drink. And take loans. However, I rarely chase losses after losing bets, especially after I exceed my budget. I try to follow responsible betting rules to the letter.